Comparing Writing Errors of English Compositions for Boy and Girl Students in the English Graders of Southern Taiwan

This study aims to investigate the comparison of the English writing errors for both boy and girl students in the eighth graders’ English writing performance. The researcher collected 26 copies of English writing pieces from 26 boy and girl students in the eighth graders at Affiliated Junior High School of National Kaohsiung Normal University. This study is conducted with both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The major findings of this study are summarized as follows: The results show that the levels of boy and girl students’ English writing proficiency are mixed and most boy and girl students are less-experienced writers. All of the errors committed by boy and girl students are mainly fall upon lexical errors and grammatical errors. In addition, subcategorization is made 11 subcategories are listed under the two major error types. Among 26 copies of writing pieces, approximately about 65 % refers to grammatical errors and 26 % refers to lexical errors respectively. Possible factors in the English writing errors may refer to interlingual interference, intralingual interference, induced errors, cultural differences, structural differences, and carelessness.