W 103 F

Introduction

Proficiency essays are written by first- year English majors at Janus Pannonius University (JPU) as one part of their Proficiency Tests at the end of their first two semesters. There are four parts of these tests: a listening comprehension test, a reading comprehension test, a multiple choice grammar test and an essay writing test. My research was taken on the latter part, which was the essay writing test. In 1996 students could choose from 125 different themes, which they put together with the help of the topic table, which consisted of three columns and five rows. Each column had a role. The first one contained the type of the essay: discussion, explanation, doubt-raising, presentation or analysis of the subject matter, which was to make up from the second and third columns. The former contained the main topic: e-mailing, listening, calling, faxing or arguing, and the latter indicated whom the topic referred to: a friend, a teacher, a lover, a parent or a boss. The essays had to consist of four or five paragraphs, with an estimated 400-450 words. Students were recommended 70 minutes to fulfil the task, but they could keep on working up to two hours, when the essays were collected by the tutors. The options of the evaluation were also indicated on the introduction sheet, which held five parts: focus , accuracy, vocabulary, paragraph organisation and essay organisation. Each part could get 10 points, which meant that 50 points were the highest an essay could reach. Essays were cross-marked by two tutors. They both read all the texts to avoid the risk of not paying attention to any mistakes or being subjective. My essay’s main purpose is to show the typical mistakes and the most important issues of accuracy and vocabulary that students have to take good care of. I also wanted to see what effect these two components had on the final score.

Methods
I read eleven essays, seven of them were scored higher than 26, which meant a pass, and four of them were fails. I made a table (see below), where I indicated the essays’ total scores, as well as the given points on accuracy and vocabulary. I listed the mistakes sorted into different categories according to ready made (Horvath, 1997),(Marius & Weiner, 1985) and my own ideas ,and put an ‘X’ in the appropriate box to show, which were the typical faults that I found both in the lowest and the highest scored essays. The categories of accuracy are the following: spelling error, awkward construction, error in number agreement, conjunction error, punctuation error, error in pronoun use, left out word, sentence fragment . There were three types of vocabulary mistakes: incorrect idiom, inappropriate choice or wrong word and unnecessary repetition. To make the categories more understandable, I listed the mistakes with a short explanation and also presented some examples I came across while having been reading the texts. The little letters after the head categories, between the brackets show the code of the mistake (Marius & Weiner), which can also be seen in the table after each category name. If there were also other types of errors in the example sentence, I listed their codes behind the head category code. I underlined the errors in the sentences to make them easier to find and to analyse.

Results

Mistakes in accuracy

Spelling error (sp): The letters in the word are not in the correct order and some of them are also missing.
importan , addults , familyes
Awkward construction (k): The order of the words is incorrect.
..., who is standing always behind us, It makes the teacher feel comfortable and the students too.

Error in number agreement (agr):The noun in plural is followed by the third-singular form of the verb or the other way round or the adverb which should be followed by the plural form of the noun takes the singular form.
...a parent try...,
There are different software that ...,
... a much more trouble...

Punctuation error (p):The usage of commas, colons and semicolons is not appropriate, they are either missing or not necessary.
...and the only reason for that is: we have not those kind of problems.

Error in pronoun use (pro): Non-pronouns occur as pronouns, pronouns do not agree in number with their antecedent, they do not refer to the subject of the sentence or they have nothing to refer to neither in the previous or the following sentences.

... be open to everything what is said to you.
...persons, who is not satisfied with his wife or her husband...,
This is how we believe discipline should be maintained.
To argue with teachers is just impossible, and most of the time, it will never ever occur to them to try to disagree with them.
By the way, this is the basis of every relationship, lies won’t help anyone: what’s more they would be much more confused.
Left out word (^): Either a preposition, an article or any necessary parts of the complete phrases are missing.
... while listen a teacher...

Sentence fragment (frag): A part of the sentence is made to look like a complete sentence by beginning it with a capital letter and ending it with a period.

Probably, because the people questioned do not distinct between love as loving your relatives, loves as loving your boyfriend or girlfriend, and love as loving a friend.

Conjunction error (con)(frag, agr, sp): The correlative or the coordinating conjunctions are not used properly.

Since it shows that there are other persons in the room who share the teacher’s interests.
A parent has a much more trouble like addult as we have as a youth.

Mistakes in vocabulary
Incorrect idiom (id): A made up phrase, which does not make sense in English language.
The root of this problem comes from...,
... serve different positions...
... start arguments on a low voice...
The golden rule is...
Inappropriate choice or wrong word(ww): The word used in the particular phrase is not the best, other synonyms would be better.
...when treating other people- involving our lover - is rather hard.,
...children have to listen carefully to their parent’s speech
Students are more welcome to represent their own opinions and arguments.

Needless repetition (rep)(frag): The sentence or the paragraph consist one phrase several times, which makes the text boring.

Probably, because the people questioned do not distinct between love as loving your relatives, love as loving your boyfriend or girlfriend, and love as loving a friend.

The blue colour shows the most common mistakes, which were spelling error, punctuation error and incorrect idioms. The yellow and pink colour indicates essays of different total scores with the same number of types of mistakes.

The table

Essay Total
Score
Accuracy
Score
Spelling error (sp)
Awkward construction (k)
Error in number agreement (agr)
Conjunction error (con)
Punctuation error (p)
Error in pronoun use (pro)
Left out word
Sentence fragment (frag)
Vocabulary Scores
Incorrect idiom (id)
Inappropriate choice or wrong word (ww)
Needless repetition (rep)
Number of types of mistakes

Discussion

There are two matters of discussion, which this research pointed out: there are still many mistakes in accuracy and vocabulary in proficiency level essays at JPU and due to the five-option evaluation these mistakes do not always make significant differences in the total scores of pass or fail. My research indicated that there are mistakes, which occur in all of the texts: spelling error, punctuation error and incorrect idiom usage. Spelling mistakes can be easily avoided with the help of a thesaurus, which should be allowed to use at all level of English. Native speakers will also commit this fault. Punctuation rules can be studied, but there are still many suggestions on the right usage of commas, colons and semicolons. First-year students do not have practised enough. Most of them follow the Hungarian punctuation rules or do not follow any rules at all. Knowing the right idioms requires much higher level of English, than these students were at, that is why this fault occurred in each essays. Considering the fact, that the writers had all taken parts in courses on English grammar and usage of English , these mistakes were all known for them. The reason for their inaccuracy was the pressure of time, therefore careless revising, or the simple lack of grammatical knowledge or the little stock of words in mind. Proficiency essays of 1996 showed that even if students were still lacking much practise in grammar, they passed the essay test, because their focus, paragraph organisation and essay organisation were graded much higher than the vocabulary or accuracy. These three former options in the evaluation focus on the essay-writing technique, that students are familiarised with from primary school right up to the JPU course of Research and writing skills. Those students who were good at essay-writing techniques, got more appreciation on their essays, even if their grammatical knowledge showed real weakness.

Conclusion

Essay writing task in proficiency level test requires a lot of knowledge in vocabulary, careful use of English grammatical rules and quick and thorough revision. This research reveals some of the mistakes in accuracy and vocabulary, which students should take special care of. It reveals that a proficiency level essay has more to do with the applied grammar and English usage and demand more practise in organising our thoughts in a way that all our readers understand us.