Grammatical and Mechanical Error Analysis as Tool in Writing Improvement Program for Student Journalists

This study aimed to develop a writing improvement program for student journalists in one elementary school in the Philippines. It utilized a case study approach using errors analysis in English written tasks of the target participants. Written tasks were used as main instrument in this study. A total of twelve (12) student journalists who were chosen purposively served as participants. Results show that subject-verb agreement is the most committed error followed by usage of a preposition, tenses, word order, and the last on the ranks involved pronouns. Capitalization ranked first among the three common mechanical errors identified in this study followed by punctuation and spelling Based on these results, a writing improvement program for student journalist was developed. Through this study, root causes of participants’ poor writing were analyzed. While through the study’s output, student-journalists may develop a reasonably good writing skill in English language.


Introduction
Writing can be considered as the hardest among the five (5) macro skills in English. Not everybody can write well. It requires proper concentration, and demands great knowledge in grammar and rules of writing for most of the time. It has been even believed that when errors occur during the time people speak, it is more acceptable than the errors they make in writings. For an instance, it can be concluded that writing is organizing experience, ideas or information, in the form of arranged sentences or even paragraphs, by using a combination of letters which relate to the sound someone makes when he speaks. It can also be added that in order to make a good written text, one has to pay attention to the rules of writing when he is going to write a composition such as grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling and letter formation.
One who does not know rules of writing and grammar might really have a hard time to come up with a very comprehensive text or composition. It can also be traced that an inefficient writer has issues or troubles in converting his native language to his second or target language. Therefore, if one is lacking knowledge in his native language, he cannot come up with a good write-up. As what is also stated in the above paragraphs, errors in grammar, syntax, sentence structure, and vocabulary is more likely the problem why learners cannot write well.
Section 2 of the Republic Act No. 7079 or commonly known as the "Campus Journalism Act of 1991" states that the State shall undertake various programs and projects aimed at improving the journalistic skills of students concerned and promoting responsible and free journalism. It also states that, being involved in campus journalism even as early as elementary level would help promote the development and growth of campus journalism as a means of strengthening ethical values, encouraging critical and creative thinking, and developing moral character and personal discipline of the Filipino youth. In line with this, as an English teacher who's also handling the journalism club in her school, she wants to improve the writing skills of the student journalists who are having a hard time in writing in English. They usually face struggles in writing articles with good and correct grammar. As observed by the researcher, student journalists of Doña Concepcion H. Umali Elementary School are good in writing when the medium used is Filipino (Tagalog). But they are struggling when writing in English language. It is hard for them to consistently construct sentences with good and correct grammar.

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Through the process of error analysis, common errors were properly traced. This guided the researcher in the development of a training program that can benefit both the learners, and the teachers. The learners or the student journalists can benefit in a way they can improve their writing skills in English. For the teachers, it will be easy for them to implement a training program specifically for writing in English. They can identify which areas need to be given focus during the time of training. The school could also benefit since it can serve as a training ground for more efficient writers in the future. Through a developed training program, gaps in student journalists' writing needs will be addressed. This will improve students' writing in the areas of composition, sentence formation, grammar and mechanics and can focus students' attention on developing competent writing skills in English Language.

Writing as a Skill
Pratyasto (2011) defines writing as the arrangement of words in a phrase. He believes that if one could properly order sentences, one could readily write down anything. Even if a statement has no sense or does not have a clear meaning associated to the sentence, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students would still write it down if it is a difficult sentence. While there are several principles that must be followed during the writing process in order to create a simple literary composition, a phrase is made up of several types of words to form something meaningful.
Generally, these kinds of words which are applied to make a sentence are: noun, verb, linking verb, adjective, and adverb. These five elements are the main section to make a simple sentence.
Writing, according to Durga and Rao (2018), is a highly complicated cognitive activity in which the writer must display simultaneous control of multiple factors. Students with strong writing skills may have a better chance of succeeding. Language is incomplete without writing.
All students require good writing abilities in order to complete their school and employment requirements.
Writing is also a medium that contributes to the production of language, which contains all concepts in syntax. It is critical that students master the craft of good writing because it is an essential component of academic success as well as professional success. There are various reasons why good writing skills are important. First, it is a dynamic method of deducing facts and information from technical and research articles. Second, it is a necessary ability while looking for jobs. Third, in order to explain facts and relevant information in presentations and reports, effective writing skills are required. Fourth, it increases communication skills by teaching all of the language and its meanings, as well as how to apply it in conversations and emails. Finally, it promotes intrapersonal relationship development through the artistic portrayal of thoughts and ideas.
According to Lee (2012), research and classroom practices have demonstrated that implementing an interactive journal aids English language learners by motivating them to write longer (12) and deeper content. It not only provides constant practice because the journal is designed to be used every day, but it also allows the teacher to have easier and more holistic access to students' work, allowing for more tailored training possibilities. Various ways in which to use journal writing in the classroom include reading response journals, correspondence journals, and e-journals. Reading response journals is a means by which students can create meaning from their experience with a text. This type of journal also allows the teacher to observe how a student is developing as both a reader and a writer.

Error Analysis
Many sorts of research have been undertaken in attempt to discover the reasons of writing problems and to assist EFL learners in overcoming challenges in their writings. According to Nonkokhetkong (2013), Hinnon (2014), Rattanadilok Na Phuket and Othman (2015), analyzing the faults detected in learners' pieces of writing is highly valuable. Some professors used Error Analysis (EA), a well-known tool, in their writing seminars to help students improve their writing skills.
After a long time of examination of literature connected to EA, another expert, Hinnon (2014), verifies that Error Analysis (EA) is necessary. Analyzing errors can help teachers prepare correct and precise lessons that are appropriate for their students. To summarize, Error Analysis (EA) is the study of language forms that differ from the target language's standard and occur throughout learners' language acquisition. When errors are examined, it can show the types and sources of errors, allowing for a more accurate and time-efficient approach to reducing learner errors.
Error analysis is the process of identifying and describing incorrect statements made by a student or a group of learners. Errors have been characterized in a variety of ways, including graphological, grammatical, and lexicon-semantic errors, as well as omission, addition, selection, and ordering errors. Error analysis should go beyond only recognizing errors; it should also classify them and provide an analysis/explanation so that appropriate fixes can be made (Summaira, 2011).
The initial stage is to choose a corpus of language, which is followed by the identification of errors for classification. As a result, this paper gathered a corpus of students' essay writing, recognized and classified the spelling problems present, as well as the causes of these errors, the impact these errors have on students' ease of writing, and suggested ways for fixing students' spelling errors.

Grammatical Errors
Surina Nayan and Kamaruzaman (2010) found similar forms of subject-verb agreement problems in term papers authored by students enrolled in a Malaysian university's English for Academic Purposes course. In fact, not only students but also experts intending to publish in peerreviewed journals make subject-verb agreement problems. Writing is regarded a significant difficulty for teachers in ESL courses (Zerin, 2010). The ability must be cultivated from a young age. Teachers should use engaging tactics and teaching aids to pique students' interest in learning English. Mas'ud (2013) claims that agreement in grammar is critical to learning if one want to understand and use English in written composition. The agreement (concord) between the subjects and the verb is called agreement. Grammar agreement will aid the reader or listener in comprehending the clear meaning of sentences. Similarly, Leech (2016) states that concord is a relation between two elements such that they match one another in terms of grammatical feature.
It means that agreement is a relation between two elements that should agree with each other, for instance the agreement between the subject and the verb used in the sentence.
Many studies have been undertaken in Malaysia on common grammatical faults in the writing of ESL students. According to Ghabool et al. (2012), Malaysian ESL students struggle with writing, particularly with language use (grammar) and punctuation. Students require continual monitoring and explanation from teachers, particularly in generating an excellent piece of writing.
As a result, students should immediately begin working on improving their writings after receiving feedback. Meanwhile, Musa et al. (2012) discovered that students were overly reliant on their mother language when it came to writing. The interference of L1 is considered a hurdle in further inspiring students to produce and earn good results in essay writing. The three most common grammatical errors were the misuse of articles, to be verb, and subject-verb agreement. They also feel that the involvement of the first language, which in this case is Malay, is to blame for the kids' grammatical faults.

Mechanical Errors
While writing skills are required in almost every element of daily life, scholarly writing is an essential part of an academic's career. When writing difficulties combine with writing in a target language, Turkish academics find themselves in a bind; nevertheless, other national academics are having similar problems (Fadda, 2012). Because every word has a collocation, the word 'writing' is inextricably linked to the word 'mistake.' It will be impossible for a writer to avoid errors now that writing is such a complex and sophisticated process, especially if the writing language is a foreign language, as it is in Turkey.
In writing, errors and blunders are unavoidable. Words are used differently depending on their connotation, and this is a process with which most foreign-language users are familiar. It is difficult for a writer to avoid making an error, especially when writing in a language other than their native one.
Language learning is closely linked to the development of other macro skills such as speaking, listening, reading, and writing. When writing for instances involving not just pupils but also teachers, it is unavoidable to make mistakes. However, understanding the many types of faults in written language is considered as advantageous because it is eager to fix. These mistakes are divided into three categories: mechanics, grammar, and usage.
Mechanical mistakes involve an error in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. These mistakes are of the most prevalent occurrence of many writing practices whether a native speaker or ESL student. The main reason for this manifestation involves quick writing intended primarily on the content rather than the form. Furthermore, spelling is also of great importance and improvement in this area can be acquired through the proper utilization of dictionary or spell checks offered by computers for the writer to eradicate spelling mistakes in a document.
For punctuation management, there are few instances that a non-native speaker is more prominent in making errors than a native speaker. The most common mistake occurring in terms of punctuation arise on using period. Students tend to have a mistake in ending sentences that produces either an incomplete clause or a run-on sentence. These are common mistakes particularly to beginners who have basic knowledge on the concept of a sentence and most likely observed to ESL students.

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The choice of preposition is a gray area in grammar since it has set of rules that differs depending on a usage in a particular sentence and has sets of exemptions that has indefinite rule. For instance: "I'm good at chess." is standard English, so is, "I'm good in chess." Spelling is a complex cognitive activity in which several mental processes are involved.
Learning to spell correctly is not usually easy for many people but it is very important for all those who are learning the language. This is because part of what determines a learner's proficiency in English Language is his/her ability to spell correctly for accurate expression. According to Kuiper and Allan (2010) English Language spelling seems straight forward in theory but turns out to be a little more complex in practice. They claim that many people find spelling difficult because English Language spelling does not always directly reflect the sounds people make when they say a word. Spelling errors are deviation from the rules of forming words (arranging letters to form words) which could occur in the form of replacing one letter with the other, omission of letters or wrong arrangement of the letters of a word.

Conceptual Framework
Hannafin-Peck's (1987) Design Model was incorporated in this study. The model is a three-phase process shown in figure 1. The aforementioned mentioned three-phase model is then reflected in the conceptual framework of this study.

Figure 1
Research Paradigm were the profiles of the participants (age, gender, grade level, and number of journalism-related workshops attended) and their written tasks. Phase 2 of the process, involves analyzing the profiles of the participants. After this, analyzing or assessing the common errors of the Student Journalists (SJs) in their written tasks followed through with identifying, marking, or recording the frequency of errors committed by the students. The recorded errors between Grammar and Mechanical errors were then classified. Right after analyzing the common errors committed by the SJs in their written tasks, the designing of a writing improvement program that could help the learners improve their writing skills in English followed.
These two phases eventually came up to the last phase, Phase 3, or the output which is a Developed Writing Improvement Program for the student journalist. From the model of Hannafin Peck, implementation on the 3 rd phase was not utilized since this study is only limited until the development of a writing improvement program for the student journalist.

Research Design
The design of this research is a case study approach using quantitative analysis which aims to analyze the phenomenon and to validate the methods that are involved in analyzing the errors in English written articles of the target participants.

Participants
The participants of this study are all the Student Journalists (SJs) of an elementary school in the Philippines. There are twelve (12) students; sixty-seven percent (67%) or eight of them are eleven years old, twenty-five percent (25%) or three of them are ten years old, and eight percent (8%) or only one of them is twelve years old. At this age bracket, children were able to develop their grammar knowledge and vocabulary and were able to write more complex narratives that describe their personal experiences (understood.org).
Majority of them are female; ten (10)  and co-curricular activities, in some cases, joining in academic and journalism clubs. This maybe one of the reasons why there are more female participants in this study than male.
Two out of twelve participants are in 5 th Grade, while the other nine participants are in 6 th Grade. Learners in the intermediate level (from 4 th to 6 th grades) were expected to understand the writing process and demonstrate the importance of using varied sources of information to support writing as content standards. They are also expected to use various strategies to write informational and literary compositions and use varied sources of information to support writing (K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum).
Seven (7) of them had only 1-2 workshops related to journalism, while the remaining five (5) have no experience attending journalism-related workshops. Participants' attendance in training/workshops is an important contributory factor in their writing skills. Training programs help them improve their knowledge and skills. Thus, the more journalism-related training/workshops they had attended, the better they will become in writing.
In the light of the ethical considerations, their participation was based on their agreement with the researcher. Full consent from the participants and their parents/guardians were obtained prior to the study. Participants also have the right to withdraw from the study at any stage if they wish to do so.

Instrument
The study used a researcher-made written task to obtain data for the study. This includes three topics accomplished and written by the participants. The researcher-made questionnaire is composed of: Part I: Personal Profile of the Participantsthis includes their age, grade level, gender, and several journalism-related workshops or training they had attended. The researcher included this part to measure relevant characteristics of the participants, which contributed to the analysis of data gathered in this study.
Part II: Three Topics for Writing Tasks, which the participants need to write. These topics were given to the participants one at a time on a specific schedule. Writing tasks were given through their parents/guardians on a two-day interval on each writing task. They were tasked to write an informative essay in which they need to explain something about the topic given in two hundred fifty (250) words. The instrument used in this research was validated by English Language experts. They are English Master Teachers from a secondary school in San Pablo City. It was also tried out to five (5) learners who were not part of the actual participants of the study.

Data Gathering Procedure
In accomplishing this study, the following procedures were considered and followed: The first phase of the data gathering procedures focused on seeking the approval from the School Head for the conduct of the study. A letter of consent was also sent to the participants and their parents/guardians.
The second phase focused on the distribution of the researcher-made written task to the participants of the study upon securing the needed approvals.
Writing Task No. 1 was given first to the parents/guardians of the participants. These were collected after two days, and Writing Tasks No. 2 were given. Again, after two days, Writing Task No. 2 were collected and Writing Tasks No. 3 were given, then eventually collected again after two days. It took 6 days for the writing tasks to be accomplished.
A two-day interval collection of data was compromised between the researcher and the parents/guardians to avoid burden on the part of the parents/guardians.

Data Analysis
This research employed an error analysis methodology to analyze data. This methodology was used since it is suitable to the characteristics of the data gathered and the nature of this research. The following are steps applied in the error analysis methodology.
First, the collection of samples were personal profiles and written articles of the participants were collected through a validated questionnaire.
Second, identification of errors wherein the researcher, together with two other school paper advisers analyzed the gained data and tried to find out the errors committed by the participants (mechanical and grammatical errors).
After identifying the errors, the researcher classified them in the following categories:

Order/Function, and Errors in Preposition); and Mechanical Errors (Errors in Capitalization, Errors in Spelling, and Errors in Punctuation)
This is followed by the calculation of errors. In this step, the researcher calculated the errors in order to know how frequent these errors were made by the participants. By calculating the frequency of each error, the researcher could identify the most and least frequent errors made by the participants. Then, the ranking and tabulating of the result. This was done after errors were calculated, the researcher tabulated and ranked them from most to least frequently occurring errors.
The last step was drawing a conclusion based on the analysis using a brief error description.
After following these steps for error analysis, the researcher came come up with a writingimprovement program in order to help the student journalists enhance their writing skills.  Table 1 shows the percentage of common grammatical errors committed by the respondents in their written essays. Results show that subject-verb agreement is the most committed error by the participants with the highest percentage of 35.16.

Error on Subject and Verb Agreement
The common error committed by the participants is the agreement between the subject and the verb used in the sentence. For instance, the wrote "Sometimes some children interacts with not so nice people which leads to kidnapping then killing them." and "The only good things is that we spent some quality times together, stay fit and healthy and boost our immune systems." These should be: "Sometimes, some children interact with not so nice people which leads to kidnapping ISSN 2719-0633 (Print) 2719-0641 (Online) | 145 then killing them." and "The only good thing is that we spent some quality times together, stay fit and healthy and boost our immune systems." According to Mas'ud (2013), agreement in grammar is very important to be learnt if someone wants to understand and use English in written composition. Agreement (concord) is the agreement between the subjects with its verb. Agreement in grammar will help the reader or the listener to understand the clear meaning of sentences. Similarly, Leech (2016) states that concord is a relation between two elements such that they match one another in terms of grammatical feature. It means that agreement is a relation between two elements that should agree with each other, for instance the agreement between the subject and the verb used in the sentence.
Second most committed grammatical error is preposition with a percentage of 26.56. In light of the study of Mourssi (2015), preposition is a word that shows connection between entities which show the connection in space (between one thing and another), and/or a connection in time (between an event). In the same way, Sari (2017) defines preposition as a word which comes before a noun or a pronoun and expresses relation between them.

Figure 2
Error on the Use of Preposition The common error committed by the participants is the proper use of prepositions according to their meaning. For example, a certain participant wrote "Estailishment closed for a while, gathering are strictly prohvited, policemens are dispatched into the streets, and some city undergo lockdown." These should be: "Establishments were closed for a while, gathering are strictly prohibited, policemen are dispatched in the streets, and some cities undergo lockdown." The rule says that we use "into" to talk about movement of something (e.g. Helen came into the house) while we use "in" to talk about where something is in relation to larger area around it (e.g. in the street, in the garden).

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Third most committed grammatical error is tenses with 19.53 per cent. Verb tense should indicate time and continuance or completeness of action.

Figure 3
Error on Verb Tense The common error committed by the participant is that tense of the sentence and form of the verb to be used must be dependent to one another. For example, "The module is the printed materials that gave the teacher from his students." and "The safety of the child in browsing should be monitor from time to time." These should be: "The modules are printed materials that were given by the teacher for his students." and "The safety of the child in browsing should be monitored from time to time." Fourth on the rank of most committed grammatical error is word order/function with 14.84 per cent. Word order refers to the way words are arranged in a sentence.

Figure 4
Error on Word Order The standard word order in English is: Subject + Verb + Object (TOEFL website). An example is: "Keep the children monitor for using the internet…" instead of "(You) Keep monitoring children (you-subject, keep monitoring-verb, children-object) in using internet…" On the other hand, word function expresses a grammatical or structural relationship with other words in the sentence. An example of this is: "…they frightened to get infected…." which should be "…they are frightened to get infected…" It lacks the word "are" which functions as linking verb to the words "they" and "frightened". In the last example, it can be observed that the participant/writer omitted the word "are". Dulay et.al (1982) as cited by Yuli (2017) classifies the types of errors into four types, they are omission, addition, misformation and misordering.
Last on the rank of most committed grammatical errors by the participants is pronoun.
These are words which replace nouns in a sentence.

Figure 5
Error on the Use of Pronoun The common error committed by the participants is the rule in the use of preposition is that the object of "myself" is the same person as "I", performing the act of working. For example: "My brother and myself did our modules." instead of "My brother and I did our modules." Another common error committed by the participants in using pronouns is the rule that when owner of an object is written as pronoun, use possessive adjectives (my, your, her, our, their). Avoid possessive pronouns (mine, yours, hers, ours, theirs) in such construction. An example is: "I experience a moment that sometimes I will be very boring at the house with her parents." which should be "I experience moments sometimes I am very boring at the house with my parents."  show that capitalization ranked first among the three common mechanical errors with 37.97%.

Figure 6
Error on Capitalization Khansir (2012) states that one area of the main skills that second language learners find difficult in the process of writing compositions is the correct use of capital letters.
Most common error they committed is capitalizing the word "I" in the sentence. For instance, they wrote "You can also say that i'm a fan girl…" and "…only if i am completely done with my modules. Second most common mechanical error committed by the participants is punctuation. The common error committed by the participants in the use of punctuation is that we need to use commas after an introductory word and clauses.

Figure 7
Error on Punctuation For instance, one participant wrote "Lord I hope that…" S/he omits the comma after the word "Lord" which should be "Lord, I hope that…" Another example is "When pandemic covid 19 came in our country. I never thought that being caged in your home for months will became the new way of life." Instead of using comma (,) after the word "country" s/he used period (.) which makes the first group of words an incomplete sentence.
According to Joseph (2019), the use of capital letters and punctuation marks poses a lot of problems for second language learners of English. This has been one of the reasons why pupils' performance in essay writing has been poor. And as a result of pupils' failure to use capital letters correctly, many of them often lose marks in the area of mechanical accuracy.
Last on the rank of mechanical errors committed by the participants is spelling. The spelling errors that people make can be divided into two types: typographic errors and cognitive errors (Yanyan, 2015).
Spelling is a complex cognitive activity which several mental processes are involved.
Learning to spell correctly is not usually easy for many people but it is very important for all those who are learning the language. This is because part of what determines a learner's proficiency in English language is his/her ability to spell correctly for accurate expressions (Kuiper and Allan, 2010).
Mechanical mistakes involve an error in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. These mistakes are of the most prevalent occurrence of many writing practices whether a native speaker or ESL student. The main reason for this manifestation involves quick writing intended primarily on the content rather than the form (Al-Saudi, 2013).
Based on the identified grammatical and mechanical errors, a Writing Improvement Program for Student Journalists was made. It has its goal to improve the writing skills of these young journalist in English Language. The program has an integrated and interactive activities designed to increase the participants' abilities in writing using English as a medium.

Conclusion
This study takes a case study approach with quantitative analysis, with the goal of examining the phenomena and validating the methodologies for analyzing the flaws in the target participants' English written pieces. Twelve (12) student journalists from Doña Concepcion H. Umali Elementary School took part in this study. The written outputs of the participants are the primary source of replies to the research questions.
The results revealed that the participants lack experiences in attending writing workshops.
Participants of this study lack understanding in the grammatical rules of English. They are confused in determining singular and plural forms, did not properly understand to use suitable prepositions, have doubts about tenses, confused about punction marks and their usage and in doubt and sometimes forgot to use capitalization.
This study recommends the English teacher/trainer adopt the GMEA Approach to better enhance their Journalism training program. Furthermore, the validity and effectiveness of the developed training program can be subjected for future studies.