INSTITUTO ACADÉMICO DE IDIOMAS
REVISTA KRONOS
UNIVERSIDAD CENTRAL DEL ECUADOR
6(1), FEBRERO - JULIO 2025, PP. 25-37
REVISTA KRONOS
Most Common Linguistic Errors Identified in Oral Discourse in Undergraduate Students from a Public University.
Cristian Alexander Pardo Fierro | Universidad Nacional de Educación-Ecuador
Martha Lucía Lara Freire | Universidad Nacional de Educación-Ecuador abstract The main objective of this study was to identify the most common linguistic errors undergraduate students from a public university located in the city of Azogues, in the parish Chuquipata make in oral discourse. Therefore, the teachers-researchers selected students from fifth to ninth semester from the Pedagogy of National and Foreign Languages Major; additionally, teachers also collaborated with the data collection stage. The focus was to analyze students’
spontaneous oral interaction. The researchers were in charge of recording the audios, transcribing the oral utterances, proof-reading them, encoding the information collected in MAXQDA and organizing it in an Excel spreadsheet. The methodology applied in this research was the Corpus Linguistics approach. At the end of the study, the researchers were able to present a list of the most common linguistics errors students make in oral discourse. .
keywords Spontaneous interactions, corpora, errors, communicate competences, English as a Foreign Language.
fecha de recepción 27/08/2024 fecha de aprobación 24/02/2025
Errores lingüísticos más comunes identificados en el discurso oral de estudiantes universitarios de una universidad pública.
resumen El objetivo principal de este estudio fue identificar los errores lingüísticos más comunes que los estudiantes de pregrado de una universidad pública localizada en la ciudad de Azogues, en la parroquia de Chuquipata, cometen en el discurso oral. Por lo tanto, los docentes-investigadores seleccionaron a estudiantes de quinto a noveno semestre de la carrera de Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros; cabe mencionar que los profesores también cola-boraron en la etapa de recolección de datos. El enfoque principal de la investigación fue analizar la interacción oral espontánea de los estudiantes. Los investigadores se encargaron de grabar los audios, transcribir las expresiones orales, revisarlas, codificar la información recopilada en MAXQDA y organizarla en una hoja de cálculo de Excel. La meto-dología aplicada en esta investigación fue el enfoque de Lingüística de Corpus. Al final del estudio, los investigadores pudieron presentar una lista de los errores lingüísticos más comunes que los estudiantes cometen en el discurso oral.
palabras clave Interacciones espontáneas, corpora, errores, competencias comunicativas, inglés como lengua extranjera.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29166/kronos.v6i1.7126
pISSN 12631-2840
CC BY-NC 4.0 —Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional eISSN 2631-2859
© 2025 Universidad Central del Ecuador
kronos.idiomas@uce.edu.ec
Most Common Linguistic Errors Identified in Oral Discourse in Undergraduate Students from a Public University INTRODUCTION
The situations in which English is taught across the globe are many and varied. Considering this reality, it is not wise to generalize about the English language classroom. Rath-er, it might be useful to consider the English language classroom – and the experiences of teachers and learners – as a ranging along a continuum (Bhowmik, 2014).
For example, Bartlett (2021) reports an experiment he conducted in a university in Japan. Convinced that the time devoted to learning English in class was totally inadequate for the achievement of communicative competence, he persuaded many of his students to sign a contract agreeing to speak only English to each other whenever they met in or out the university. After a year, the students who regularly participated in such unstructured interaction with other students, had considerably improved both in typical length of utterance when communicating and as had enriched their vocabulary.
One of the major problems that non-native speakers have when communicating with native speakers or with non-native speakers is achieving pragmatic effectiveness. They might use correct grammatical structures but not achieve the intended effect because they are, for example, too formal or informal, too direct or indirect, and too blunt or tenta-tive. It is imperative for leaners to gain substantially more experience in communicating withing the target language with speakers from diverse cultural backgrounds, as well as to develop a significantly heightened awareness of how intended communicative effects can be effectively achieved. (Padilla, 2013).
English as an International Language is mainly distinguished from standard native speaker Englishes by its significant features which are more recognizably EIL than Standard English. Many of these are phonological features, some are lexical items, some are syntactic and grammatical features, and some are manifestations of speech acts. In order to determine what these items and features are, it would be necessary to examine the many corpora of Englishes. Such an examination could help us to discover the commonalities between the corpora (García, 2013).
In today’s English classrooms, language learners are frequently observed sitting in pairs and groups talking or working together on a task. Such kinds of activities are aimed at helping learners to gain confidence and fluency in speech and are particularly necessary in countries where English is not widely used (Richards, 2006).
Speaking involves dynamic interactions of mental, articulatory, and social processes.
To express a message, speakers need to decide what to say and use their linguistic knowledge to construct utterances and encode this message in sounds and sound patterns that can be recognized and understood by their listeners. They also need to consider the context of interaction and engage the listeners in socially appropriate ways through various linguistic choices and forms. For example, speakers may use certain vocabulary or register when speaking with people with whom they have shared knowledge and experience. Speaking is also influenced by varied cognitive and affective factors, such as the ability to process speech quickly and feelings of anxiety respectively (Iftah, 2020).
Most spoken interactions occur in contexts where participants have equal or similar opportunities to talk. Very often; however, language learners may have longer turns and are required to produce extended pieces of discourse; for example, when giving a presentation, explaining or describing procedures and narrating an event or a story. They will, therefore, need skills to construct these spoken texts in ways that are consistent with the sociocultural conventions for the respective genres in the language being learnt. In addition to knowing about discourse routines, learners require relevant language to frame the moves. For example, when delivering a presentation, learners must make use of discourse markers to signpost transitions (Maynard, 2006).
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Speaking in an L2 clearly presents many challenges to language learners. These challenge, however, do not always get addressed in the classroom. Although students have opportunities to develop their confidence and fluency through oral activities, they do not in general receive much of the scaffolding they need for learning and improvement to take place during the instructional process. Spurred by their motivation to succeed, many learners must put in extra time and effort to practice their spoken English (Renandya & Puji, 2016).
Subsequently, the key factor for students is to develop confidence and a profound commitment with their learning process. This can be achieved by, first, by identifying specific areas of improvement through self-evaluation and self-reflection; and second, by looking for opportunities to practice their oral communication skills outside the classroom.
Moreover, students should take advantage of the material presented by researchers as a result of their meticulous studies in the English as a Foreign Language in specific contexts.
This includes exploring research-based resources, practicing skills outlined in the studies, and applying these insights to their language learning practices.
Teaching at university level is very often a difficult task compared to teaching at lower educational levels because professors must teach their subjects, conduct impactful research and publish specialized articles, participate in administrative duties, and focus on the needs of their students. Its pedagogical status is ambiguous since university students are assumed to be well-educated adults who are able to pursue intellectual challenges and perform complicated feats of the mind which are beyond the reach of non-university people. On the other hand, while university students may possess general knowledge and skills, they often lack specific prior knowledge in their chosen field of study, requiring them to build their understanding from foundational concepts. Also, their study techniques and emotional response to academic stress are not mature enough in many cases. In addition, there is no clear policy about the role that they should play. The expectations about what teachers should aim at are also diverse, but in most cases, the emphasis is put on getting some measurable results, which should be checked against criteria set up in the learning objectives (Alonso et al., 1999).
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned is a reality in the public university where the research participants belong to. In that sense, the researchers sought to deeply analyze the spontaneous interaction of students who are part of the Pedagogy of National and Foreign Languages program. The starting point was to identify the words students misuse in oral interaction.
Hence, achieving effectiveness in communication requires communicative competence, which involves mastering the language and the ability to use the knowledge in actual communication, or pragmatics, the knowledge of language, or linguistic competence, encompasses mastery of lexis, grammar and the sound system of the language. While linguistic competence needs to be complemented by sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competencies for effective communication to take place, excessive gaps in linguistic accuracy can compromise meanings made (Ahmed & Thabit, 2018).
Studies on spoken English tend to deal with areas such as speaking skills, students’
reluctance to speak in English classes and features of English. Linguistic accuracy of spoken language may be more difficult to study because of the nature of speech. McCarthy (1998) writes about real dialogues which do not look neat with well-formed sentences. According to Bartram and Walton (2002), accuracy in spoken English refers to utterances as near as to a native speaker’s as possible (Mahadhir et al., 2010).
Such experiences have also been experienced by the participants in this study. In fact, in one of the studies (which has not been published yet) developed by one of the teachers from the public university and subject of the current study, he mentions that shy students experience a range of emotions when speaking in a foreign language and anxiety is at REVISTA KRONOS 6(1), febrero - julio 2025 | pISSN 12631-2840 | eISSN 2631-2859
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Most Common Linguistic Errors Identified in Oral Discourse in Undergraduate Students from a Public University the forefront of these sentiments. The apprehension of making mistakes stands out as a significant contributor to anxiety, leading to a reluctance to speak in class. This concern is compounded by the rigid adherence to grammatical rules, as students are often afraid of deviating from these norms and, consequently, check their speech for errors regularly.
The fear of making mistakes also manifests in a tendency to immediately repeat statements upon recognizing an error (Ordulj & Grabar, 2014).
In a foreign language classroom, it is common to focus on the mistakes students make in order to find the most effective strategies to help students improve their oral discourse.
Then, it is undeniable that errors play an important role in the learning process and they can be seen as something natural. Without errors, how do teachers know which specific aspects should be addressed during a lesson? For students who are learning an L2, learning is not much a question of acquiring a set of automatic habits, but a process of discovering the underlying rules, categories, and systems of choice in the language (He, 2024). In order to see if the learning process is effective, students have to go through several stages and processes which include errors making. However, error making is inevitable and is necessary and crucial to language learning. For that reason, it is important that teachers know the type of errors students usually make so they can identify and use techniques to help them correct the errors effectively (Zhu, 2010).
Similarly, in the EFL classroom, it is common to find several types of errors; nev-ertheless, researchers in the field of applied linguistics usually distinguish two: performance errors and competence errors. Performance errors are those mistakes made by learners when they are tired or in a hurry. Normally, this type of error is not serious and can be overcome with little effort from the learner. Competence errors, on the other hand, are more serious since they reflect inadequate learning (Fang & Xue-mei, 2007).
According to Osegueda et al. (2014), mistakes in second language acquisition mainly originate from two sources: impact of the mother tongue and language-specific leaning difficulties. Osegueda describes that as learners acquire a new language, they commonly inte-grate rules from their first language to the target one. This process takes place when learners contrast the characteristics of the target language with their native language, highlighting the profound effect of the native language on the process of acquiring a second language.
Undoubtedly, a significant factor in L2 learning for Spanish speakers is L1 interference. Students tend to translate most of the words they do not know in the target language mechanically.
The use of interaction, actual verbal communication, authentic oral texts or spoken language corpora has been identified as determinant source of learning English as a Foreign Language. Such use can also serve as an approach for reflective practice that is both evidence-based and data-led (Neiva, 2021). Hence, this study focuses on corpus. So, what is a Corpus? From the Latin word for “body,” corpus (corpora in plural) has been used to refer to a collection of texts stored on a computer. Note that references to text are not limited only to language that was initially written. A text can also be a transcription of speech. These electronic texts are equivalent to researchers’ datasets. However, in linguistics, a corpus is even more narrowly defined. In addition to being a collection of information, it is also viewed as systematically collected, naturally occurring categories of texts. Before the age of computers, such collection was accomplished laboriously by hand.
With the advent of personal computers and the digitalization of much of our everyday spoken and written language, Corpus Linguistics, or CL, has become a much more widely practiced, accessible approach to examining languages and their use (Friginal, 2018).
Moreover, the objective of this study was to identify the most common linguistic-related mistakes made by students when interacting in the L2. Since, even though some students have already reached the B2 level, they still make some basic mistakes in their oral discourse. The study was conducted during two academic periods, six months each.
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During this time, teachers recorded students’ spontaneous oral production during diverse activities, such as presentations, dialogues, round tables, and debates developed in the regular class. Some of them English and others Content Subjects like Didactics, Curriculum Management, and Research.
On that account, this article is the result of the project ““Elaboración de una Guía Didáctica para Estudiantes de Inglés como Lengua Extranjera (EFL): El Proceso de Con-textualización de Palabras para Uso Académico en la Formación de Profesores.”
Therefore, the first stage of this study was to collect data by recording students’ oral interaction activities. For this stage, three modalities were implemented; the subject teachers were the ones recording the audios, the students who were part of the research data collection stage were responsible for the recording, and the researchers visited the classes and recorded the audios themselves.
Once the data was collected, the second specific objective was to transcribe the audios; this activity was completed by the researchers using Microsoft Office 365, and the Word option which was extremely useful and effective as we could save a lot of time. It is worth mentioning that after the audios were transcribed using technology, the researchers checked and made sure the information was clear and understandable to be analyzed.
The last objective was to analyze the transcriptions and work on a list with the most common mistakes identified through the collected data.
Based on the aforementioned, this study is relevant not only because it focused on students’ needs but also because it serves as a starting point for future studies. The data collected helped identify real problems students face when using the L2 in oral interaction.
This is particularly important considering that the main goal of a language is communication.
METHOD
The current investigation took place at a public university in the Cañar Province, with the participation of 600 students and 8 teachers from the Pedagogy of National and Foreign Languages Major, focused on students from the 5th to 9th semesters. Data was ob-tained by capturing natural, unprepared interactions during different subjects and classes.
Using the Microsoft 365 transcription tool, the recordings were transcribed to organize the data systematically for further analysis. The reviewed transcriptions were processed with MAXQDA software to analyze frequent errors and gain insights into typical linguistic trends and inaccuracies.
The methodology applied for this study based on Corpus Linguistics. One way to understand linguistic analysis is through corpus linguistics, which looks at how the language is actually used in certain contexts and how it can vary from context to context.
While understanding variation and contextual differences is a goal shared by researchers in other areas of linguistic research, corpus linguistics describes language variation and use by looking at large amounts of texts that have been produced in similar circumstances (Crawford & Csmay, 2016).
However, in the research area, corpus linguistics is a methodological approach that takes an empirical stance to the study of language. It relies on the analysis, whether qualitative or quantitative, of a body of written texts or transcriptions of spontaneous or semi-spontaneous speech. Corpus linguistic methods have a potentially strong impact on theory as they can offer support or challenge theoretical assumptions. Moreover, corpus linguistics is closely related to various fields of applied linguistics (Staples & Fernández, 2019).
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Most Common Linguistic Errors Identified in Oral Discourse in Undergraduate Students from a Public University In this specific study, spoken corpora was analyzed as it includes a wide range of contact phenomena and may reveal information about the cognitive processes involved in the production and comprehension of bilingual speech. Large spoken corpora of adult language have been constituted on the basis of scripted or unscripted speech from TV and radio broadcasting. Some smaller corpora provide transcripts and recordings of free-speech con-versations. Most of these corpora; however, do no target interactions between bilinguals and can at best provide evidence for the study of borrowing; therefore, the findings of this study clearly contribute to understanding the common mistakes English as a Foreign Language students make in spoken corpora (Adamou, 2019).
In addition, the four main characteristics of the Corpus Approach were considered as explained below.
1. IT IS EMPIRICAL, ANALYZING THE ACTUAL PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE USE IN NATURAL
CONTEXTS AND ORAL COMMUNICATION.
The key to this characteristic of the Corpus Approach is authentic language. For this reason, the researchers made sure that the oral interaction activities were spontaneous and not a result of a prepared task. Since corpora are composed of any real-life situation in which any linguistic communication takes place.
2. IT UTILIZES A LARGE AND PRINCIPLED COLLECTION OF NATURAL TEXTS AS THE BASIS FOR ANALYSIS.
This characteristic of the Corpus Approach refers to the corpus itself. Researchers may work with written corpus, a spoken corpus, an academic spoken corpus, etc. In this specific case, the data collected was exclusively an academic spoken corpus; considering that the students who participated in the data collection stage belong to the Major of Pedagogy of National and Foreign Languages, specifically from the highest levels.
3. IT MAKES EXTENSIVE USE OF COMPUTER OR TECHNOLOGICAL DEVICES FOR ANALYSIS.
Not only do computers hold corpora, but they also assist in analyzing the language within a corpus when paired with appropriate software. A corpus is accessed and analyzed by a concordance program. In short, researchers can effectively utilize corpora, or employ the corpus approach, without a computer. In the present study, researchers mostly used their cell phones to record spontaneous oral interaction during classes; then, the data audios were transcribed by utilizing the Microsoft 365 transcription tool. And finally, the data was analyzed through word clouds and frequency visualizers in the MAXQDA software.
4. IT DEPENDS ON BOTH QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYTICAL TECHNIQUES.
This characteristic of the corpus approach highlights the importance of intuition as expert users of a language. The quantitative results generated from the corpus are taken and then 30
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qualitatively analyzed to find significance. A table is presented in the results section where all the findings are presented and analyzed (Bannett, 2010).
RESULTS
This study classified and examined different mistakes committed by undergraduate English major students during oral communication. The aim was to quantify the types of linguistic mistakes made by students and to identify areas that English teachers could focus on to help their students to face and correct heir errors. This research identified 94 different errors in categories related to grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. The following chart shows the identified mistakes:
Table 1 Error Analysis: Categories and Frequency Distribution Mistake Category
Total Words
Percentage
Pronunciation – diphthong sound /ai/, /əə/, /ei/
4
4%
Sound Spelling
30
32%
Subject-verb agreement
4
4%
Final consonant sound
2
2%
Specific sound: ‘th’
5
5%
Minimal pairs
4
4%
Initial consonant cluster
9
10%
Confusing Similar-Sounding
4
4%
Schwa sound production
12
13%
Transfer error or interference
6
6%
Use of language
1
1%
Adjective pluralization
1
1%
Coherence
1
1%
Interlanguage error
2
2%
Calque or loan translation
4
4%
Misarticulation
1
1%
Preposition error or misuse
1
1%
Relative pronoun error
1
1%
Adjective misuse
1
1%
Article error
1
1%
Total
94
100%
Note. Data organized in an Excel spreadsheet.
To start with, mistakes related to pronunciation included 25% of the total errors. Diphthong sounds like /ei/, /əə/, and /ai/, represent the 4% of all errors produced by students, REVISTA KRONOS 6(1), febrero - julio 2025 | pISSN 12631-2840 | eISSN 2631-2859
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Most Common Linguistic Errors Identified in Oral Discourse in Undergraduate Students from a Public University advising challenges with sounds like vowel sound that are critical for English pronunciation. For instance:
• Example 1: The speaker pronounced “trænzəlaəəən”, revealing a mispronunciation of “translation” as “trænzəleəəən”, substituting the proper diphthong /eə/ with /aə/.
To illustrate, the sound “th” and the final consonant sound mispronunciation reported 2% and 5%, representing difficulties with some phonemes which are not used by students when they use their native language. For instance:
• Example 2: In the spoken word “/truəə/,” the speaker interchanges the /ə/ sound in
“truth” with /t/, highlighting unfamiliarity with this phoneme.
Additionally, initial consonant clusters mispronunciation was highlighted in around the 10% of cases. Thus, it points out that students have some difficulties with blends that need exact articulation.
• Example 3: The student uttered the word “/skuəl/”, indicating the presence of an added sound, resulting in an error pronunciation “school” as /skuəl/, showing challenges in accurately pronouncing consonant groupings.
Subsequently, sound spelling mistakes represented 32% of errors which emphasizes that students have a disconnection with phonemic awareness and spelling conventions.
For example:
• Example 4: In the utterance “/muə/”, the speaker pronounced “much” as /muə/, indicating influence from Spanish phonology, where “much” is articulated with a compa-rable sound. The correct pronunciation in English is /mətə/.
Likewise, 13% represented significant amounts of mistakes of the improper usage of the schwa sound. Thus, this highlights how difficult it is for students to pronounce unstressed vowels in English. For example:
• Example 5: The speaker said the word “literally” as /əliə.tər.æ.li/, with emphasis on all syllables and using unreduced vowel sounds, differentiating from the standard articulation /ələt.ər.əli/ or /ələt.rəli/.
Similarly, 4% represented the mistakes students had in confusing similar-sounding words and minimal pairs. For instance:
• Example 6: The word “meat” was pronounced as /miət/, identical to “meet,” exposing challenges in distinguishing the minimal pair /miət/ (meat) and /miət/ (meet In other words, these findings highlight the difficulties face in identifying subtle pho-netic differences that could modify meaning.
Moreover, subject-verb agreement and other grammatical categories showed relatively low error rates (4% each for subject-verb agreement and misuse of articles, relative pronouns, and adjectives). For instance:
• Example 7: The speaker stated, “My studies is...” using inaccurately “is” instead of
“are,” illustrating a lapse in subject-verb agreement.
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Although these errors are less common, they highlight important challenges in syntactic structure, representing a crucial element for the complexity and accuracy of spoken language.
Alternatively, 6% of the total of this study represented interlanguage errors which come from interreference or transfer errors from the students’ native language. For example:
• Example 8: The speaker mentioned, “She is married with the tall man,” incorrectly using “with” instead of “to,” pointing to the impact of a direct translation from the first language.
Thus, all these errors usually implicate direct translation, which may not always align with English syntactic or lexical patterns. Then, the 4% of calques or loan translations shows the dependence that students have on their native language structures which are not translated into English clearly. For instance:
• Example 9: The speaker pronounced, “The sculpture is ubicated in France,” incorrectly using “ubicated” instead of “located,” indicating interference due to a literal transfer from the first language.
Finally, the 1% represented misuse of language, misarticulation positions errors and articulation misuse, discourse coherence, and adjective pluralization. For instance:
• Example 10: The speaker expressed “depend of,” incorrectly using “of” instead of
“on,” signaling an incorrect prepositional choice based on native language norms.
Even though these errors were less recurrent, they could represent issues in language proficiency, such as keeping logical flow in communication and correct morphological inflections.
DISCUSSION
This study provides the variety of linguistic tasks confronted by undergraduate English major students during oral interactions. In fact, it could meaningfully influence their communication with peers and professors. Recognizing these mistakes by English teachers and student-teachers may help developing different teaching strategies that could successfully improve these oral communication mistakes. As discussed in the introduction, communicative competence entails more than just proficiency in grammatical rules; it encompasses the ability to use language appropriately in diverse environments while countering the influence of L1 interference, and fostering fluency by means of practice (Padilla, 2013; Renandya & Puji, 2016). These findings are consistent. With these challenges, emphasizing the critical need for focused strategies to address particular linguistic deficiencies.
First, pronunciation mistakes comprised an important part of mistakes in diphthongs and consonant sounds. Foote et al. (2012) mention that non-native speakers usually strug-gle with sounds that they do not have in their mother tongue, advising teachers to create and practice pronunciation exercises that reinforce these sounds production. Likewise, Niolaki et al. (2023) mention how important it is to help learners develop a coherent system for matching sounds to letters for precise, accurate and precise spelling. This cor-roborates the introduction-s observation assertion that students typically need considerable practice to master English phonological features, as noted in research conducted by García REVISTA KRONOS 6(1), febrero - julio 2025 | pISSN 12631-2840 | eISSN 2631-2859
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Most Common Linguistic Errors Identified in Oral Discourse in Undergraduate Students from a Public University (2013) highlighting the role of phonological features in English as an International Language. Similarly, Kalantar (2024) states that students have problems communicating at a C1 level when they must use unfamiliar topics; however, the use of familiar topics helps them to speak fluently. This method is supported by incorporating different auditory dis-crimination tasks to improve phonemic awareness and pronunciation (Thomson, 2013).
According to Kalantar (2024), the L1 could affect students’ communication negatively when they do not receive proper feedback from teachers, causing language fossilization and affecting their oral communication.
Second, the sound spelling mistakes, reporting for 32% of the total, advocate an in-terruption between phonemic consciousness and spelling pacts. Perfetti and Hart (2002) specify that improved phonologic preparation could link to this breach, refining mutual spelling and pronunciation skills. If English teachers implement clear phonics, training may be beneficial for their students, teaching the connection between sounds and their system of written forms. Similarly, Andrews, Veldre, and Clarke (2020) emphasize that phonological decoding plays an important role to help leaners improve their spelling precisions and overall lexical mastery. This corresponds to the introduction’s point that oral activities, while vital for fostering fluency, may not offer adequate support for leaners to connect spoken and written language forms. (Richards, 2006).
Furthermore, even though grammatical structure mistakes such as, subject-verb agreement are less frequent when students communicate with each other, they could impact the precision and intelligibility of students’ oral communication. Nassaji and Fotos (2011), mention that clear grammar tutoring, and significant production activities could considerably develop grammatical accuracy in English language learners. In the same way, Nassaji and Kartchava (2019) point out that specific directions and feedback help learners improve the grammatical precisions and comprehensive linguistic competence. In other words, practicing grammar helps students to assume and use complex grammatical structures much better when they communicate in real contexts with their peers and teachers.
These results relate to the introduction-s observation about the need for learners to construct extended pieces of discourse, such as presentations and narratives that depend on accurate grammar and appropriate discourse markers (Maynard, 2006).
Additionally, this investigation emphasized how students make interlanguage mistakes.
It includes calques and transfers which come from specific translations that are not in English syntactical structures. According to Jarvis and Pavlenko (2008), helping students be aware of language interference produced by two common languages, and using a contrast analysis may help students diminish these production mistakes. Also, teachers could incorporate metalinguistic activities to encourage students to be critical when they need to contrast two languages and avoid making oral mistakes. Likewise, Al-Sobhi (2019) emphasizes the importance of helping students identify language interference and increase their awareness of these differences to reduce errors in second language acquisition. These mistakes highlight the need for focused constructive analysis and reflective practices to help students reduce their dependence on native language structures (Neiva, 2021). This associations are essential, as previously mentioned, for learned to achieve pragmatic competence in communication.
Finally, adjective pluralization, preposition misuse, and coherence are the least common mistakes, and they could affect the fluency and precision of students when they must communicate, affecting the acquisition of English as a Second Language. Swain (1995) mentions that it is important to push students about communication activities that test their linguistics skills, which could promote syntactic processing skills and complete language expertise. Similarly, Peker and Arslan (2020) agree with Swaim on the idea of pushing learners to construct output because it contributes significantly to the improve-34
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ment of morphological and syntactical accuracy while fostering the refinement of their overall language proficiency.
CONCLUSIONS
As mentioned in the introduction of this paper, the researchers focused on four objectives which were fulfilled through three stages. Therefore, the authors organized specific visits to different classes, and once they had the consent from teachers and students, recorded 34
audios which have specifically spontaneous oral interaction activities. For the second stage, the transcriptions were made by using Microsoft 365, which was a useful tool, allowing researchers to save time. However, in order to guarantee quality in the transcription, the investigators developed a rigorous proof-reading process. In the next stage, the data collected through the transcriptions was encoded in the software MAXQDA to have a general idea about the frequency of words that the participants were misusing, the analysis was performed through word clouds and frequency visualizers. Once the general data was gath-ered, scholars organized the word categories and the percentages in an Excel spreadsheet.
AUTHORS CONTRIBUTIONS
Cristian Alexander Pardo Fierro: data collection and analysis, writing up the results, and manuscript discussion.
Martha Lucía Lara Freire: writing objectives, introduction, conclusions, recommen-dations, and summary; reviewing and editing the manuscript. Submissions to the journal.
ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS
The authors declare that there are no ethical implications.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that there are no financial or non-financial conflicts of interest that could have influenced the work presented in this article.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
Alonso, P., García, M., Sánchez, M., & Moran, C. (1999). Teaching and Research in English Language and Linguistics. CELARAYN.
Ahmed, S., & Thabit, S. (2018, February). Communicative Competence in English as a Foreign Language: Its Meaning and the Pedagogical Considerations for its Development. The Creative Launcher, 2(6), 267-277.
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Most Common Linguistic Errors Identified in Oral Discourse in Undergraduate Students from a Public University Adamou, E. (2019). Corpus linguistics methods. Boston and Berlin: Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science.
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