An Analysis of Article Errors Made by EFL Libyan Students at the Department of English in the Faculty of Arts, Misurata

Abstract

The present study aimed to analyze, identify, and categorize the article errors made by Libyan EFL learners in their use of the English article system. It also sought to attribute these article errors to their possible sources and attempted to know these sources and help learners to get rid of these errors. The sample of this study consisted of 50 Libyan students who enrolled in the second semester of the academic year 2020 at the Department of English in the Faculty of Arts, Misurata. The study employed two data collection tools; an MCQ test and semi-structured interviews with two EFL teachers. In this study, the researchers used the Surface Structure Taxonomy (SST) of errors to explain the different types of article errors made by the participantswhich were addition, substitution, and omission. The findings of this study revealed that the errors of using „the‟ were more common than errors of using „a‟ and „an‟. The obtained results of the test and the interviews revealed that the percentage of interference errors committed by the participants was the highest. The study concluded that the students committed many errors as they transfer from their L1 into L2. The Inter-lingual transfer was not the only source of errors but L2 was another source as well. In other words, ignorance and incompletion application of the article rules push the participants to commit intra-lingual errors.