An Error Analysis of ESL College Students’ Research Abstracts in Academic Writing
Marnelle Baguhin
Received: 11 August 2025; Revised: 02 October 2025; Accepted: 11 November 2025; Published: 01 December 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.65931/x3m9n1p6
Abstract
This study examined the linguistic challenges encountered by college students in writing research abstracts in English, focusing on mechanical, omission, addition, substitution, and permutation errors. A quantitative error analysis was conducted on 100 research abstracts from students across various academic disciplines. Findings revealed that mechanical errors were most frequent, particularly in punctuation, followed by capitalization and spelling. Syntactic omissions were the most common omission errors, while lexical additions dominated addition errors. Substitution errors were primarily lexical, and permutation errors occurred mostly at the syntactic level. These results indicate that students struggle predominantly with sentence structure, appropriate word choice, and grammatical accuracy, which affect the clarity and academic tone of their abstracts. The study suggests the need for targeted interventions such as task-based writing activities, explicit corrective feedback, and guided practice to enhance the academic writing proficiency of ESL learners.
Keywords: academic writing, error analysis, grammatical errors, linguistic challenges, research abstracts, ESL learners
Author Information: Basic Education Department-Senior High School Unit, University of the Immaculate Conception, Davao, Philippines; [email protected]
Volume 1, Issue 1, December 2025