ERROR ANALYSIS IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING OF SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS TO ESL WRITING

The study analyzed the linguistic errors in scientific paper written by Senior High School learners at an agricultural high school in a city school. It mainly examined the writing errors committed by General Academic Strand, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Technical-Vocational Track students enrolled in Practical Research 1 in the academic year 2019-2020. This investigation also made a comparison of the types and frequency of errors made by these three groups of learners, and specifically examined the (1) types of writing errors in grammar, lexis, semantics and mechanics; (2) differences and similarities in the writing errors made by the students from these three tracks/strands; (3) reasons or causes of the types of errors committed by these learners, and (4) extent to which errors factor in how student papers are graded. This study employed qualitative and quantitative analyses where the method of content analysis was employed to analyze the language data. Findings revealed that grammatical errors were the most dominant errors made by the students from the three tracks/strands followed by errors in semantics, mechanics and lexis. The sources of these errors were attributed immensely to intralingual interferences. Recommendations were drawn based from the findings and a scientific paper rubric was developed to cover the rigid requirements indicated by the qualitative responses from the research instrument used.