Investigating Spelling Errors In A Malaysian Learner Corpus

Abstract

This paper describes an empirical study of spelling errors using a learner corpus of university-level English. The corpus, known as CALES (Corpus Archive of Learner English in Sabah/Sarawak), consists of argumentative essays collected from university students in three public universities in Sarawak and Sabah. After describing the methodology of the CALES project, the paper outlines how spelling errors can be classified, using a combination of pre-existing categories from the literature, and categories observed in the data. The data demonstrates clearly that spelling is still a major issue both for teachers and learners, and that many students make spelling errors that fit into known categories, despite the fact that they have been studying English for at least 10 years in the Malaysian education system. As well as making observations, this paper offers a number of speculations about why students make spelling errors, and proposes some recommendations of how to prevent these errors from appearing in student writing.