An Analysis of Lexical Semantic Errors in English Writing by Thai EFL Learners
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This study examined the semantic lexical errors made by Thai undergraduate learners of English in their writing. A total of 462 writing tasks were analyzed, resulting in 1,256 errors, with an average of 2.72 semantic lexical errors per paper. The errors were classified into twenty categories based on James' (1989) lexical taxonomy. The most prevalent error was calque, accounting for 51.04% of total errors. The second highest number of errors was misselection of vowel-based forms, at 12.58%, closely followed by misselection of suffixes at 9.47%, preposition errors at 6.29%, and near synonyms at 3.98%. Notably, there were five categories of errors that did not occur at all, including overly specific terms, inappropriate co-hyponyms, arbitrary combinations, verbosity, and misselection of prefixes. The study found that calque errors, or errors resulting from direct translation from the learner's first language, were the most prevalent among Thai learners of English. These errors occur when Thai words are translated literally into English, without considering the subtle differences in meaning between the two languages. The study also found that Thai EFL writers often struggle with correctly adding suffixes to words, and that errors related to the use of preposition partners and semantic word selection were also prevalent. These error types, along with specific examples, were carefully examined and discussed in detail throughout the study.
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