A Comparative Study of 10th Grade Turkish Cypriot Students’ Writing Errors

The present study aims to shed light on analyzing the types and the frequency of the written sentence errors committed by 58 tenth grade Turkish Cypriot English as a foreign language (EFL) students in two classrooms, that is, Class A and B at a public vocational high school in North Cyprus. A quasi-experimental design was employed in the study where Class A was the experimental group which was exposed to an audio-visual aid titled “the Little Red Riding Hood” and Class B who acted as the control group. Data were collected from the written sentences produced by the students. All the errors committed by the students were identified and categorized into syntactic, morphological, orthographic, and lexical categories. The results of the study showed that both classes of students committed 11 types of common errors: (a) wrong use of articles, (b) wrong use of prepositions, (c) word order, (d) verb tense, (e) omission of plural –s, (f) misuse of the possessive –s, (g) incorrect use of comparative adjectives, (h) incorrect spelling, (i) punctuation, (j) capitalization, and (k) wrong words. However, the experimental group committed less errors (N = 232, 57.14%) as compared to the control group (N = 320, 78.82%). The findings have implications for EFL teachers to incorporate audio-visual aids into their teaching methodologies when teaching the writing skill.


Introduction
The written errors of learners of a foreign language are unavoidable as they are indications to teachers on the areas s/ he needs to focus on to improve the students' writing skills. However, not many studies have been carried out on the nature and the distribution of errors specifically at public institutions in northern Cyprus. This study attempts to highlight the errors committed by 10th grade public vocational high school English as a foreign language (EFL) students in North Cyprus. The results will provide implications for educators showing them what needs to be taught and which strategies and procedures their students could employ in learning the second or foreign language (L2). The focus of the study is on the EFL students' sentences as they act as small units of language forms and inform teachers about the students' progress in language. In addition, knowing the contributory sources of these errors will contribute to the improvement of the EFL students' writings as they will provide a reduction in the number of errors committed. The study will also account for the language areas of development to eradicate errors. Thus, the study seeks to explore the classification of the most frequently occurring written errors. Furthermore, this study discusses the effect of possible pedagogical implications of providing authentic audio-visual input for EFL students to reduce the errors in their writing.
Turkish Cypriot students have problems in composing sentences. Their written work is not free of errors, and teachers devise strategies by anticipating certain common types of errors. This study aims to help the language teachers notice the most common specific language errors and save time by concentrating on the most frequently occurring errors. Therefore, the present study will identify the types and the most common errors systematically and quantify the percentage and the rank of each error.

Turkish Cypriot Context
It is notable that students in North Cyprus start learning English in the third grade at the primary level and continue 914541S GOXXX10.1177/2158244020914541SAGE OpenTerzioğlu and Bensen Bostanci research-article20202020 1 Haspolat Vocational High School, Mersin, Turkey 2 Near East University, Mersin, Turkey learning English at the secondary schools when they begin to learn complex structures. According to the Department of Educational Planning and Program Development (2005), students learn English and vocational English with respect to their field of study, that is, electrical and electronics, information, and communication technology to be able to communicate in the future. Turkish Cypriot learners commit numerous errors in writing (Bensen, 2014;Bensen & Çavuşoğlu, 2017;Bostancı, 2019). Errors are indications to how far a learner has learnt (Corder, 1982). For this reason, it is vital to reveal the most prevalent errors produced by these students, infer the possible causes of these errors in the light of the literature and thus, suggest pedagogic strategies to overcome these errors. In the light of the above, the main aim of the study was to reveal the causes of the low achievement of learners' written work in general and to classify the grammatical errors in their writings in particular.
The present study was undertaken to identify, describe, and categorize the types of errors in students' writings of 14 sentences in a comparative study of two classrooms with a quasi-experimental design. This study had three objectives to accomplish. The first phase of the study investigated the types and the frequency of the sentence errors committed by the Turkish Cypriot EFL learners. The second phase dealt with comparing the findings of the differences in terms of the total number of errors between the experimental group and the control group. The final phase addressed the sources of the common errors. Thus, this study aims to answer the following questions: 1. What are the most and the least common types of sentence errors EFL learners commit when producing written sentences to describe the story of the Little Red Riding Hood? 2. Is there a significant difference in the errors produced by the EFL learners when they are exposed to audiovisual aids and the learners who do not receive any audio-visual prompt to write the same story? 3. What are the main causes of the written errors committed?

Literature Review
When learning a language, mistakes made in written work are usually produced due to slips in which a learner is able to self correct. On the other hand, errors cannot be self-corrected unless in the case of advanced learners (Çetereisi & Bostancı, 2018;Kashavarz, 2015). For this reason, learners need support on reducing errors. "Errors taper off and are reduced progressively as the learner gains more experience and applies the necessary knowledge" (Al-Sobhi, 2019, p. 52). So, mistakes are seen as "failures in performance" while errors are seen as "failures in competence" (Corder, 1982). To be able to detect whether a learner has made a mistake or an error it is advised to focus on the frequency of occurrence. However, in some occasions, this is also not enough, so, we need to go further and examine the source (cause) of such errors (Keshavarz, 2015). The causes of errors can be divided into two main categories, that is, interlingual and intralingual (Brown, 2007). Interlingual errors consist of the transfer of the first language (L1) forms such as morphological, grammatical, and lexical to the foreign or the second language (L2). In contrast, intralingual transfer is caused by the negative influence of the L2 forms within the same language. In other words, intralingual errors reflect learners' incomplete L2 knowledge. Intralingual errors can be divided into six categories, that is, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restriction, false analogy, hyperextension hypercorrection, and faulty categorization (Keshavarz, 2015). Overgeneralization involves incorrect application of a structure beyond its standard use in the target language (TL). Ignorance of rule restriction occurs when the learner is not aware of the restriction of the L2 rules. False analogy is inevitable, when learners attempt to use a verb or a preposition in an inappropriate context. Hyperextension consists of inappropriate use of an adverb or lexis instead of a conventional structure in the TL. Hypercorrection takes place when learners try to correct themselves consciously by using words or phrases beyond conventional rules. The last sub-category, faulty categorization, occurs when learners place the L2 structures into wrong categories. According to Keshavarz (2012), written errors can be categorized into global and local. It could be said that global errors in writing require close attention because they include wrong word order, wrong use of prepositions, and pronouns. Therefore, global errors cause the message to be incomprehensible. On the other hand, local errors include lack of prepositions, inadequate vocabulary, and misspelling. Thus, the readers can often interpret the intended meaning from the context even if there are minor linguistic errors. Gass and Selinker (2008) stated that errors give teachers valuable feedback about the learners' strategies and their development of the interlanguage system in the foreign or the second language (L2). In other words, errors detect the learners' knowledge. In addition, teachers can do remedial practice on the most frequent errors in their classrooms. Errors are inevitable features of the language learning process as they give valuable insights to teachers about language acquisition. The significance of errors lies in the fact that they are the gaps in learners' knowledge. Errors help teachers devise appropriate materials, effective teaching techniques, and tests to cater for the needs of different types of learners (Jabeen, 2015). Teachers can count the incorrect sentences, identify problematic areas, and initiate different modes of feedback depending on the frequency of errors (Richards, 1974). Errors can give feedback on the effectiveness of materials so that teachers can move on to the next item in their syllabus. Furthermore, teachers gain an idea about the learners' progress by focusing their attention on the troubled items and get a whole picture of the learners' linguistic development (Corder, 1982).
Before the emergence of Error Analysis (EA), errors were seen as sins that needed to be eradicated immediately. Contrastive Analysis (CA) tried to explain the causes of errors as first language (L1) interference on the second language (L2) structures. CA focused on teaching strategies and teaching materials (Fisiak, 1985). Similarity in the TL and the L1 was thought to have a positive effect and facilitated learning. The claim of the CA was that the differences in two languages would cause problems which could be predicted in the contrast of the L1 and the L2.
CA had its roots in Structuralism and Behaviorism between 1950s and 1960s. According to the behaviorist theory, language learning was understood as habit formation with a stimulus, eliciting a response and reinforcing the successful behavior (Brown, 2007). CA was unable to predict a great majority of errors as it was based on comparing structures in two languages. Chomsky (1959) opposed to the behaviorist theory and emphasized that humans were born with a Universal Grammar that included innate linguistic competence. In addition, the Audio-lingual Method was a popular method in the 1970s and involved pure repetition and memorization of language in chunks to avoid errors at all costs.
EA was based on Generative Linguistics and the cognitive theory of second language learning. According to EA, errors are not signs of failure which need to be abolished immediately (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005). In fact, it sees errors as necessary parts of the language learning process and provides feedback for the learners to test and modify their hypothesis about the TL (Keshavarz, 2015). The classification of errors helps teachers to identify the features of the language that cause difficulty (Ellis, 1994). EA reveals how learners cope with the learning process by adopting different language learning strategies. It is a crucial part of learning and provides an insight about language development and tracks down the learners' progress. In short, interpretation of errors helps learners to self-correct or do peer-correction by detecting and describing errors linguistically (Macaro, 2010).
EA is a systematic method to identify and explain difficulties in the TL (Corder, 1967). Therefore, EA is a crucial part of learning and provides an invaluable source of information for teachers about the learners' language development (Lightbown & Spada, 2006). EA was a reaction to CA. There are two processes that are related with EA. First, descriptions of errors involve application of the linguistic theory to the data of erroneous sentences. Second, interpretations of errors occur when researchers detect and describe errors linguistically and find out the psychological reasons for their occurrence. Furthermore, EA is a branch of Applied Linguistics and has two functions. First, theoretical EA describes learners' knowledge in the L2. Second, practical EA looks into bridging the gap between learners' knowledge and the context.
To be able to conduct an EA, Corder (1982) puts forth five stages: collecting a sample of learner language, identifying errors, describing errors, explaining errors, and evaluating errors. Kashavarz (2015) classified errors linguistically into orthographic, phonological, lexical, morphological, and syntactic. These major categories are then classified into subcategories to highlight a more detailed description of error types.
The writing skill is related with conveying ideas and getting the meaning across through composing a written product. Hyland (2009) contends that learners need to be engaged in cooperative writing. So, authentic audio-visual aids can be combined with written texts to connect the classroom with the real world. Quibol-Catabay's (2016) study provided the audio-visual aid of the "Rabbit and the Turtle" story to a random sample of 30 Accounting and Technology students in Tuguegarao to analyze the types and the frequency of errors in students sentences.
Many studies focused on the written errors committed by EFL learners and found out that wrong use of the articles, prepositions, and tenses were the most frequent errors (Abushihab, 2014;Atmaca, 2016;Kirkgoz, 2010;Zheng & Park, 2013). Kirkgoz (2010) analyzed 120 essays of 86 beginner, adult Turkish learners and found that verb tense (N = 75), omission of the articles (N = 65), pluralization (N = 55), and prepositions (N = 55) were the most common errors in a total of 400 errors. Interlingual errors were found to be the most prevalent causes of the grammatical, prepositional, and lexical errors.
A study undertaken by Bensen (2014) to identify both the pre-service teachers' grammatical errors and also to find out the effectiveness of the integration of blended corrective feedback into an EFL academic writing course in North Cyprus revealed that using singular nouns instead of plural and wrong use of tenses (N = 181), paragraph and essay organization (N = 68), mechanical errors (N = 51), and vocabulary (N = 37) were the most frequent errors committed by the Turkish Cypriot students. It is important to recognize the results of the study that planning to write essays in chunks and online peer-feedback in draft-writing engaged learners, increased their motivation and reduced the number of errors. This study highlights that one of the shortcomings of English courses at tertiary level in North Cyprus is that they are exam-oriented (Bensen, 2014). So, they do not include any corrective feedback. The study concluded that EFL pre-service teachers' grammatical performance could be improved with the integration of blended written corrective feedback with the implementation of the Microsoft Office software. Bostancı (2019) analyzed and classified the frequent writing errors of Turkish Cypriot university students. Fifty-five EFL learners ranging from pre-intermediate to advanced proficiency levels, majoring in English Language and Literature at a private university in Northern Cyprus participated in the study. The linguistic analyses of the data showed that morphological errors were the most frequent committed, followed by syntactic errors. The errors were also analyzed in the light of their contributory sources and the results showed that 208 (44.2%) of errors were interlingual, and 263 (55.8%) were developmental and intralingual. Abushihab's (2014) study examined 179 grammatical errors of 20 second year Turkish writing course students' compositions. The results of the study revealed five categories of errors, that is, the use of the articles (29%), prepositions (28%), morphological (18.4%), tenses (15%), and the active and the passive voice (9.5%). Through the quantitative analysis of data, negative influence of the native language became apparent. Abushihab (2014) concluded that CA would be a solution for teachers to obtain information about the similarities and the differences between the L1 and the L2. Atmaca's (2016) study investigated the types and the frequency of errors in written paragraphs of 32 Turkish elementary EFL learners in a 4-month study. The design of the study included interviews about learners' feelings and feedback sessions with the teacher and peers for the cause of the errors. Based on the results, prepositions (N = 63, 23.33%), verbs (N = 46, 17.03%), and articles (N = 7, 2.59%) were found to be the most frequent errors, whereas gerund and possessives (N = 7, 2.59%) were the least frequent errors.

Effects of Audio-Visual Aids in Writing
According to Neeraja (2003) audio-visual is defined as "an instructional device in which the message can be heard as well as seen" (p. 206). Audio-visuals presented in prewriting classes have a positive effect on students' achievement (Al-Khayyat, 2016). They can work as a good aid to improve the writing quality of second language learners and can also motivate them toward learning and writing in the second language (Shams et al., 2016). The effectiveness of audio visual media was also made evident in the study of Aflina (2017) who carried out research with an examination that showed significant improvement of the writing skill, critical thinking, and better thinking ability. Using audio-visual aids in writing tasks are useful, reinforce positive behavior and engage students in the task making them active in the learning process (Kholis, 2016).

Methodology
This section addresses the research design, procedures, participants, the data collection instrument, and data analysis.

Research Procedures and Design
A quasi-experimental design with a quantitative approach was carried out at a public vocational high school in North Cyprus. A quasi-experimental research design was employed to carry out the study. In quasi-experimental designs, the samples are not randomly assigned (Cook & Campbell, 1979). The study involved a non-randomized control group and an experimental group. According to Creswell (2012), experimental methods assist in explaining the cause and the effect relationship. So, experimental design was adopted in the present study because it could describe the effect of audio-visual aids on the written errors of the EFL learners.
The study took place at a public vocational high school which only accepted students with 5.00 Cumulative Grade Points Average (CGPA). This CGPA was a determinate to form the two groups, namely, experimental and control. It is notable that the two classes were instructed with the same teacher: one of the researchers.
The public vocational high school was built in 1990 in Haspolat, Nicosia, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Turkish and Turkish Cypriot students formed the population at school. There are four grades, that is, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th at school. The 11th and the 12th grade students receive lessons of either English for Information and Communication Technology or English for Electrical and Electronics twice a week in addition to the general English lessons. Teachers encourage learners to get in contact with the English language beyond English lessons at school. Tenth grade students follow the Solutions pre-intermediate as their course-book which is at Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) A2-B1 level (Falla & Davies, 2008). The curriculum provides students with opportunities to improve their language skills, content learning, and cognitive abilities from language in context. Students are required to prepare portfolios individually or in small groups. So, they can synthesize facts and ideas from different sources of information to present their brochures, written reports, posters, presentations, and projects.
The current English syllabus enables learners to make an active use of English in class through content language integrated learning (Department of Educational Planning and Program Development, 2005). Learners can increase their academic proficiency in English by being self-autonomous and cooperative. Materials empower students to skim and scan texts to understand relevant information in written texts, paraphrase, do class surveys, listen to different extracts, discuss, and write their biographies and messages. Broadly speaking, authentic texts reflect the real life language use, provide a model of the different language structures, and enrich learners' vocabulary. Authentic texts and video clips can also be used to lead to other language activities such as projects, discussions, and role-plays. It is possible to focus on the form and the meaning of the contents for interaction with the TL. In addition, learners develop their real-world language skills as they are engaged with the topical, up-todate, and cultural materials since the challenging element of the lexical and grammatical structures in realia offer an insight into the target culture.
Students were observed to have committed written errors. These errors were detected and noted, and it was made evident that the students were not making mistakes (self-correction could be employed) but rather errors because they were unable to self-correct (their level was pre-intermediate). In addition, they were consistent, that is, "if learners consistently use a deviant form for a correct TL form an error has occurred, but if the deviant forms are random they are mistakes" (Kashavarz, 2015, p. 49) and finally because of the frequency of occurrence. They had a high frequency and were systematic. If they were mistakes then they would be haphazard.
The participants of the study wrote at least 14 sentences on a worksheet where the sentences were numbered. A checklist (See Appendix Tables A1 and A2) was used in order to record the types and the frequency of errors committed in the sentences. Thus, all the sentences were collected through the following steps: 1. The experimental group (class A) was required to listen and watch a 9-min video clip of the story of the Little Red Riding Hood only once. The control group (class B) did not watch the video clip. 2. Both groups were asked to write 14 sentences about the story on a worksheet within a time limit of 30 min. 3. All the sentences were corrected and analyzed by two experienced English Language teachers. 4. Errors were coded with a list of 11 symbols, that is, A , and WW (wrong word). 5. A checklist was prepared to identify the types and the frequencies to categorize the common errors. 6. Participants' worksheets were distributed back to them, and they were trained to self-correct their errors according to the coding as a remedial language practice.
Experimental group. Twenty-nine EFL students in the experimental group were asked to listen and watch an audio-visual aid of the story of " Little Red Riding Hood." Audio-visual aids were employed because they were seen to motivate and have a positive effect on students' writing performances (Aflina, 2017;Al-Khayyat, 2016;Kholis, 2016). It was hypothesized that students' errors will diminish with the help of the audio-visual. Following this, the students wrote 14 sentences individually as much as they could remember from the prompt in 30 min.
Control group. Twenty-nine EFL students in the control group were asked to write at least 14 sentences to describe the same story (Little Red Riding Hood). The learners wrote their sentences individually within a time limit of 30 min.

Participants and Sampling
This study employed convenience sampling. Ary et al. (2010) highlight that convenience sampling is convenient and economical and can be selected by the researcher who has easy access to the sample. Therefore, convenience sampling was used in this study because the researcher was interested in doing an action research by using the students in the classes that were available at the time of the study. Action research is a systematic inquiry which involves the spiral design cycles of planning, action, observation, and reflection (Burns, 2010). It helps teachers focus on the classroom dynamics and improve their instruction and learning. The sample of the study consisted of 58, 10th grade English language students at a public vocational high school in North Cyprus. The sample size was divided into two, 29 students in each group. The students had been studying English for 8 years. All the participants were 16 to 17 years of age and were Turkish Cypriot in origin. The tenth grade learners were chosen for the study because they had background knowledge and experience in learning English for several years. English was a compulsory subject and the participants were obliged to take 4 hr of English instruction a week. Each class hour lasted 40 min, 160 min in total a week.

Data Collection and Analysis
Data for the research were obtained through 58, 10th grade Turkish Cypriot EFL students' written sentences. Data collection from both groups of participants took place on the same day at the same hour. Corder's (1982) EA method was employed to identify and categorize the errors in this study. First, written samples of learners' language were collected. Second, errors were identified and labeled according to Kashavarz's (2015) comprehensible taxonomy. Third, errors were described and classified into four main categories. Finally, the causes of errors were evaluated and explained. After the data were collected, sample-based classification was employed to assign the errors into appropriate taxonomies. Wrong use of articles, prepositions, and word order were listed under the syntactic category. Verb tense, omission of plural -s, misuse of possessive -s, and incorrect use of comparative adjectives were collected under the morphological category. The orthographic category consisted of incorrect spelling, punctuation, and capitalization errors. The last type of error was the use of wrong words in the lexical category, were classified by the researcher. After the written errors were recorded and analyzed, a table of checklist for errors was formed for each group of participants.
The data were first analyzed using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22. To show whether there was a significant difference between the errors committed by the two groups (experimental and control) a paired samples t-test was employed. Data were presented using mean scores and standard deviations. In addition, descriptive statistical analysis was employed to reveal the frequency, the percentage and the rank of each error. Each sentence was analyzed and labeled for the frequency, the percentage and the rank of each type of error. Four main categories were formed according to the frequency of errors produced by the participants, that is, syntactic, morphological, orthographic, and lexical. The frequency and the percentage distribution of errors were calculated and the most frequently committed errors were determined for each group of learners. Ranking of the errors determined the frequency of the errors in each category. Data were analyzed according to the following procedures: 1. Participants' written sentences were collected and analyzed according to 11 types of errors: wrong use of articles, wrong use of prepositions, word order, verb tense, omission of plural -s, misuse of the possessive -s, incorrect use of comparative adjectives, incorrect spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and wrong words. 2. Each occurrence of the error was marked with an asterisk and coded to indicate the place of an error. 3. The percentage of errors was calculated and tabulated using the following formula: Total errors of the experimental or the control group for each sub-category Total errors of the experimental or the control group ×100 4. Sample common errors from the experimental and the control group were investigated in detail. 5. The sources of errors were explored and explanations were presented for both groups of participants.
Reliability. Two English language teachers who know Turkish and English fluently detected the errors committed in the written sentences produced by the students. Cohen's Kappa inter-rater reliability was employed to check whether the errors committed were "errors." Cohen's Kappa statistics is used to measure inter-rater reliability of two raters. The Kappa statistic varies from 0 to 1 where 0 is minor disagreement and 1 is perfect agreement (McHugh, 2012). The interrater reliability (IRR) score was 0.833333 which made it evident that there was a strong relationship with detection of errors of both raters.

Ethical Considerations
Before carrying out the study an ethical approval form was filled in and sent via email for ethical clearance to the Graduate School of Educational Sciences of the Near East University in North Cyprus. Permission from the institute was received before starting the experiment. Written consent was granted from the Ministry of National Education, Vocational Education Department before carrying out the study. In addition, oral consent was received from the participants before the study. The participants were assured that their privacy would be kept anonymous and their personal data were strictly kept confidential.

Findings and Discussion
This section will present the results of the types of errors from the two classes (experimental and Control) in relation to the total number of errors in each category. Then, the most and the least common errors in the two classes will be described. Finally, sample sentences will exemplify the causes of the most common errors.

Most and Least Errors Committed
A total of 812 sentences were collected. The total number of correct sentences was 260 (32.02%) whereas the total number of incorrect sentences was 552 (67.98%) in the two classes. As can be seen in Tables A1 and A2, the experimental group committed 232 errors and the control group committed 320 errors. This indicates that the experimental group who wrote sentences after watching the audio-visual aid produced better written work as compared to the control group who did not watch the visual regarding the story "Little Red Riding Hood." To be able to reveal whether there was a significant difference between the groups a paired samples t-test was employed. Table 1 presents the differences between the experimental and control groups' occurrences of errors.
As presented in Table 1, the significant 2 tail (0.057) has revealed that there is a difference between the two groups. That is to say that, the two groups differ significantly because 0.057 is higher than 0.050, In other words, it was revealed that the experimental group committed less errors as compared to the control group.
Forty-six sample sentences will accompany the most frequent types of errors and their causes. Table A1 illustrates the errors produced by the experimental group (class A). The syntactic errors with a total number of 133 (57.33%) outperformed the morphological 72 (31.04%), orthographic 24 (10.35%), and lexical 3 (1.28%) errors produced. These results correspond with Zheng's and Park's (2013) study that suggests that syntactic and morphological errors were the most frequently found in Chinese and Korean learners. However, this was dissimilar to the study carried out by Bostancı (2019) in the same context (North Cyprus) who revealed that the EFL university students' morphological errors outperformed the syntactic errors. Table A2 presents the detailed distribution of the most frequent errors of the control group. As illustrated, the syntactic errors 175 (54.69%) surpassed the morphological 103 (32.19%), orthographical 37 (11.57%), and lexical 5 (1.55%) errors. The control group learners produced 27 (8.44%) errors in the omission of plural -s, and 25 (7.81%) errors in the misuse of the possessive -s. Learners committed a total of 37 (11.57%) errors in the orthographic category, 16 (5%) errors in incorrect spelling, 14 (4.38%) errors in punctuation, and 7 (2.19%) errors in capitalization. Only five errors (1.55%) were produced in the lexical category.

Difference of Errors
As it could be seen from Figure 1, the top three frequent errors of the experimental group occur in the syntactic category with 64 (27.59%) errors in the wrong use of articles, 40 (17.24%) errors in the wrong use of prepositions, and 29 (12.5%) errors in word order. The experimental group made 27 (11.64%) errors in the verb tense, 16 (6.9%) errors in the omission of plural -s, 15 (6.47%) errors in the misuse of possessive -s, and 14 (6.03%) errors in the incorrect use of the comparative adjectives. The participants committed a total of 24 (10.35%) errors in the orthographic category. Only three errors (1.28%) occurred in the lexical category. Figures  1 and 2 reveal that the control group made more errors in each category than the experimental group. So, there is a significant difference in the errors produced by both groups. To exemplify, the control group learners produced more errors (N = 87, 27.19%) in the wrong use of articles than the experimental group (N = 64, 27.59%). According to Figures 1 and 2, 6.9% (N = 16) of the errors in the experimental group were due to the omission of plural -s, whereas 8.44% (N = 27) of errors were due to the same category in the control group. In all, 6.47% (N = 15) and 6.03% (N = 14) of errors in the experimental group were caused by the misuse of possessive -s and the incorrect use of comparative adjectives, respectively. In contrast, 7.81% (N = 25) and 5.94% (N = 19) of the errors in the control group were related to the misuse of possessive -s and the incorrect use of the comparative adjectives. Table A3 reveals Table A4 shows the distribution of the preposition errors of the control group with a total of 56 (17.5%) errors and the experimental group with a total of 40 (17.24%) errors. The results of this study found similar results with those of Taher's (2011) study. Table A5 indicates the distribution of the tense errors of the control group with a total errors of 32 (10%), 15 (46.87%) errors in the use of simple past instead of past participle, 10 (31.25%) errors in past continuous instead of past simple, and 7 (21.88%) errors in present perfect instead of past perfect. In contrast, there is a slight difference in terms of the distribution of the tense errors for the experimental group with 12 (44.44%) errors in using simple past instead of past participle, 8 (29.63%) errors in past continuous instead of past simple, and 7 (25.93%) in present perfect instead of past perfect. Taher (2011) examined the differences regarding the types and the frequencies of errors of two groups of ninth grade Swedish learners' essays, that is, free written production and controlled written production. The learners in the controlled written production group were instructed with form-focused grammar teaching, whereas the learners in the free written production group did not receive any grammar instruction. Taher (2011) categorized the errors in three categories, that is, verb tense, verb inflection, and subject verb agreement. Likewise, the result of the study showed that both groups made the same types of errors and the causes of errors were due to L1 interference and insufficient grammatical knowledge. However, students who were in the free written production group produced more prepositional errors (19%) than the controlled written group (9%).
Although both groups produced the same types of errors in 11 categories, the experimental group produced less number of errors in each category than the control group. Thus, the provision of the audio-visual aid acted as an input for the experimental group and helped them remember vocabulary by listening and producing more grammatically correct sentences than the control group.

The Sources of Errors
This section will present six categories of intralingual errors with 12 sentences from the corpora. Then, the frequency and the percentage of the interlingual and intralingual errors of the experimental and the control group will be discussed.
Main causes of errors. The findings of the study by Singh et al. (2017) show that the causes of most errors were due to overgeneralization of rules. The results were congruent with this study. Table A6 illustrates that the control group produced more intralingual errors (N = 198, 61.87%) than interlingual errors (N = 122, 38.13%). Similarly, the experimental group committed more intralingual errors (N = 150, 64.65%) than interlingual errors (N = 82, 35.35%). This finding is also not in line with the findings of Bostancı (2019) who also analyzed errors in the light of their contributory sources, and revealed that 208 (44.2%) of the errors committed by the EFL university students were interlingual, and 263 (55.8%) were developmental and intralingual.
In addition, Table A7 reveals the most frequent subcategory of intralingual transfer, overgeneralization, for the experimental group (N = 59, 39.33%) and the control group (N = 70, 35.35%). The least frequent intralingual subcategory for the experimental group occurred at false analogy (N = 12, 8%) and the control group produced 23 intralingual errors (11.61%) for the same sub-category. 5. Hypercorrection: Here, the experimental group learner attempted to use the expression fire at but produced does instead of was going to. Similarly, the control group learner failed to produce to be form with the word, delighted and used has instead.
EG: The woodsman does* going to fire at the wolf.
(The woodsman was going to fire at the wolf.) CG: Her mother has* delighted with the good news.
(Her mother was delighted with the good news.) 6. Faulty Categorization: The learners in the experimental group failed to add the infinitive to while producing a sentence in the Reported Speech. The control group made wrong classification of the verbs that are followed by the infinitive to. So, they misused gerund -ing after the verb to be surprised.
EG: Her mother told her* set out before it got dark.
(Her mother told her to set out before it got dark). The results about the causes of errors of this study contradict with those of Sawalmeh's (2013) case study which concluded that mother tongue interference was the only source of verb tense, article and preposition errors of Arabic students in Saudi Arabia. Figures 3 and 4 show the frequency and the percentage of interlingual and intralingual errors for each category produced in the sentences of the experimental group. The total number for interlingual errors was 82 (35.35%), whereas the total number for the intralingual errors was 150 (64.65%). The highest percentage of both interlingual and intralingual errors belongs to the wrong use of articles 24 (29.27%) and 40 (26.66%) for the experimental group, respectively. Moreover, 19 (23.17%) word order errors for the experimental group were caused by interlingual transfer, whereas 10 (6.67%) errors were detected as a result of intralingual transfer. Interestingly, no punctuation and capitalization errors in terms of interlingual transfer were produced by the experimental group, whereas 7 (4.68%) and 5 (3.33%) errors of the same group were due to intralingual transfer. Figures 5 and 6 reveal the frequency and the percentage of interlingual and intralingual errors for each category produced in the sentences of the control group. About 37 errors in the wrong use of articles formed the highest percentage of 30.33% of the total number of 122 (38.13%) interlingual errors. However, 50 (25.25%) errors about the wrong use of articles were detected with the highest percentage of the total number of 198 (61.87%) intralingual errors. Like the experimental group, word order errors of 23 (18.85%) were caused by interlingual transfer, whereas only 9 (4.55%) errors were due to intralingual transfer in the sentences produced by the control group. It could be deduced from Figures 3 and 5 that, experimental and control group of Turkish Cypriot learners commit errors because of intralingual transfer except in the case of word order which was caused by the mother tongue interference.
Based on the findings of the current study, the causes of errors were mainly interlingual and intralingual transfer. It   was also found that intralingual errors for the experimental group (N = 150, 64.65%) and the control group (N = 198, 61.87%) were more frequent than interlingual errors of the experimental group (N = 82, 35.35%) and the control group (N = 122, 38.13%). The findings about the causes of errors of this study were contrary to some of the research results of the studies which were investigated (Abushihab, 2014;Kirkgoz, 2010).

Articles
The findings of Atmaca (2016) show that articles and prepositions were the most frequently occurring type of errors. Thus, this study obtained similar results. Figures 7 and 8 reveal the distribution of the most frequent type of errors, omission of the articles, for the experimental group (N = 41, 64.06%) and the control group (N = 50, 57.47%). The  The omission of the definite article in two sentences could be attributed to the L1 interference because such system of articles does not exist in Turkish. It is difficult for Turkish Cypriot learners to use the article because there is no such article system in their L1.  Both groups of learners' lack of attention could cause such addition of the indefinite article with plural nouns. Here, learners' created an ill-formed structure based on their learning experience with the overgeneralization of using the indefinite article before a noun in the TL.
Misuse of the articles in the sentences below was due to the negative L1 transfer since learners do not add any articles in their L1.
EG Misuse of the definite article: She wore the* red cloak. (She wore a red cloak.) CG Misuse of the definite article: Luckily, the* woodsman heard her. (Luckily, a woodsman heard her.)

Prepositions
Figures 9 and 10 indicate that the second most prevalent category of errors was seen in the subcategory of prepositions for the two groups of participants. In all, 37.5% (N = 21) of the errors in the control group were due to the misuse of prepositions, whereas 57.5% (N = 23) of the errors in the treatment group were related to the same category. The second type of error was caused by the omission of prepositions. In all, 25% (N = 10) of the errors in the experimental group and 33.93% (N = 19) of the errors in the control group were because of those type of errors. A total of 17.5% (N = 7) of errors in the experimental group were as a result of the addition of prepositions. In contrast, 28.57% (N = 16) of the errors were attributed to the addition of prepositions in the control group. The following samples of sentences were produced by the two groups: EG Misuse of a preposition: She was at* her way to see her grandmother. (She was on her way to see her grandmother.) CG Misuse of a preposition: He grabbed the wolf and made him spit down* the grandmother. (He grabbed the wolf and made him spit out the grandmother.) The two sentences above show that learners had a wrong choice of prepositions. The experimental group had difficulty in using prepositions because "in, on, at" are used interchangeably without any difference in their L1. So, the reason for this type of error was due to the negative L1 transfer. The improper use of "down" in the sentence of the control group was due to the partial learning of phrasal verbs and learners' wrong hypothesis about prepositions. Therefore, 9 preposition errors (10.97%) of the experimental group and 20 errors of the control group (16.39%) were due to interlingual transfer.
EG Omission of a preposition: Her mother said: Go straight* your grandmother's cottage. (Go straight to your grandmother's cottage.) CG Omission of a preposition: He turned* him. (He turned him upside down.)  Interlingual errors in the sentences above illustrate the difficulty of using prepositions for the Turkish learners because prepositions in Turkish are added to the words instead of being used separately.
EG Addition of a preposition: The wolf asked to* the girl.
(The wolf asked the girl.) CG Addition of a preposition: She entered in* the cottage.
(She entered the cottage.) Both groups of learners overused prepositions in those sentences and errors were due to the incomplete application of rules by adding unnecessary prepositions.

Word Order
EG Incorrect word order: They in the garden *sat. (They sat in the garden.) CG Incorrect word order: The wolf the grandmother's wardrobe looked*. (The wolf looked in the grandmother's wardrobe.) In Turkish, the verb is usually at the end of the sentence. So, interference of the mother tongue is obvious in the incorrect order of the words in both groups of learners' sentences.

Verb Tense
The findings of the verbs tense errors were similar to Abushihab's (2014) study. Figure 11 shows the percentages for the morphological category of errors committed by the experimental group and the control group. The total number of tense errors for the experimental group was 27 (11.64%). On the other hand, the control group had a total of 32 (10%) errors. In addition, the experimental group produced more verb tense errors (N = 20, 13.33%) which were caused by intralingual transfer than the control group (N = 18, 9.10%) EG Simple Past instead of Past Participle: When the Little Red Riding Hood knocked on the door, the wolf already ate* her grandmother. (When the Little Red Riding Hood knocked on the door, the wolf had already eaten her grandmother.) CG Simple Past instead of Past Participle: After her mother baked* some cupcakes, she put them in a basket. (After her mother had baked some cupcakes, she put them in a basket.) Learners substituted the Past Simple instead of the Past Participle because in Turkish, Past Simple and Past Participle can be used interchangeably with the time adverb "after." The sentences were result of interlingual errors. The control group committed more verb tense errors (N = 14, 11.47%) which were due to interlingual transfer than the experimental group (N = 7, 8.54%).
EG Past Continuous instead of Past Simple: She was stopping* to pick some flowers.
(She stopped to pick some flowers.) CG Past Continuous instead of Past Simple: The little girl was understanding* that it wasn't her granny. (The little girl understood that it wasn't her granny.) The sentences produced by both groups above include intralingual and developmental errors. Turkish learners had a poor mastery over the use of state verbs that are not used with the Past Continuous tense.
EG Present Perfect instead of Past Perfect: When she was in the forest, she has* noticed some beautiful flowers.
(When she was in the forest, she had noticed some beautiful flowers.) EG Present Perfect instead of Past Perfect: When he has* heard her, he ran quickly to her cottage. (When he had heard her, he ran quickly to her cottage.) There is no present perfect tense in Turkish, as compared to English. So, learners were confused about the use of present perfect and past perfect. Therefore, interlanguage errors can be observed in the redundant use of the present perfect tense.
The study analyzed a total of 812 written sentences of Turkish Cypriot EFL learners in two classrooms. It could be said that the results of this study show that top frequent errors are consistent with the previous studies regarding Turkish learners' errors (Abushihab, 2014;Atmaca, 2016;Kirkgoz, 2010). The top four frequent errors were identified as articles, prepositions, word order, and verb tense out of 11 main categories of errors.

Plural -s
The following sentences were produced by the two groups: EG Omission of plural -s: On the way, the little girl ate two big cupcake*. (On the way, the little girl ate two big cupcakes.) CG Omission of plural -s: Her mother said: Don't talk to stranger*! (Her mother said: Don't talk to strangers.) The errors of both groups were due to lack of plural -s because pluralization of nouns after numbers can-not be used in Turkish. In other words, a singular noun is always formed after numbers in Turkish. So, interlingual errors occurred when the learners transferred the Turkish rules into the TL.

Possessive -s
The control group produced more possessive -s errors that were caused by intralingual transfer (N = 20, 10.10%) than the experimental group (N = 9, 6%). The following sentences were caused by the misuse of the possessive -s: EG: It's* voice sounded odd. (Its voice sounded odd.) CG: It's* teeth were very sharp. (Its teeth were very sharp.)

Comparative Adjectives
Both groups of learners made generalizations about the incorrect use of the comparative adjectives as shown below: EG: The flowers in the woods were *beautiful than flowers in her garden. (The flowers in the woods were more beautiful than the flowers in her garden.) CG: The wolf's ears were more* longer than the grandmother's. (The wolf's ears were longer than the grandmother's.)

Orthographic Errors
The following examples illustrate the orthographic errors which were produced as a result of lack of attention in forming sentences such as: EG Incorrect spelling: She watced* the colorful buterflyes*. (She watched the colorful butterflies.) CG Incorrect spelling: They said* in the garden. (They sat in the garden.) EG Omission of a coma and a period (punctuation): Whenever she went out* she wore a red cloak* (Whenever she went out, she wore a red cloak.) CG Punctuation: A few minutes later* she knocked on the door* (A few minutes later, she knocked on the door.) EG Capitalization: *suddenly, a wolf appeared beside her. (Suddenly, a wolf appeared beside her.) CG Capitalization: *once upon a time there was a little girl. (Once upon a time, there was a little girl).

Wrong Word
The The experimental group of learners' L1 interfered with the plural nouns in the TL. When there are two words in the L2, learners struggle to choose the correct word because there is only one word representing the meaning in the L1. So, the control group made a cross association of the phrasal verb; turned off, with their L1 word, that is, closed which caused negative language transfer. So, the causes of the wrong word errors were due to only interlingual transfer for both the control group (N = 5, 4.10%) and the experimental group (N = 3, 3.65%).

Implications of the Findings on Language Learning
The findings of the study indicate the most frequent errors of the two groups of participants (experimental and control groups) that occurred in the syntactic, morphological, orthographic, and lexical categories. The experimental group produced a total of 232 (57.14%) errors, whereas the control group committed 320 (78.82%) errors. The less number of errors for the experimental group can be attributed to the audio-visual prompt which helped learners recount the story of the Little Red Riding Hood. This finding highlights the potential effects of audio-visual aids on students' errors. Students' errors are lessened with the help of an audio-visual before a writing task. Therefore, EFL teachers should engage their students to watch related audio-visual aids as a prewriting task.
The most frequent errors for both groups of participants fall into the category of wrong use of articles. There is no equivalent for the definite article in Turkish. It is also not necessary to use an indefinite article before a countable noun in Turkish. Thus, some of the errors (N = 24, 29.27%) about the articles for the experimental group and the control group (N = 37, 30.33%) were due to mother tongue interference (interlingual errors). In contrast, most of the wrong use of articles were due to the intralingual transfer for the experimental group (N = 40, 26.66%) and the control group (N = 50, 25.25%). Furthermore, Turkish Cypriot learners have difficulty in using prepositions such as in, on, and at because there is no distinguishing difference between these prepositions in Turkish. Interlingual interference was obvious when learners rely on their first language to translate sentences into the L2. So, CA could be presented to learners since interlingual transfer might inhibit them produce sentences in the correct word order.
The verb tense errors for both groups indicate the poor mastery over tenses. Moreover, the majority of errors were due to the lack of tense equivalents in Turkish. For instance, there is no present perfect suffix in Turkish. The main cause of verb tense errors could be explained by the incomplete knowledge about the L2. Above all, carelessness can be a cause for the mechanical errors, that is, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.
The writing skill needs to be perceived as a process and sufficient attention needs to be paid to using writing for communicative language purposes (Pawlak, 2014). Coding the errors facilitated self-correction in both classes. Thus, students can be trained to interpret the coding to experiment written corrective feedback and prevent the fossilization of errors. Furthermore, students can also learn from their errors when they study coding of the errors. One shortcoming of EA is that teachers may ignore the developmental process of learners by focusing on the common errors. On the other hand, making teachers aware of the common types of errors that Turkish Cypriot learners commit will assist teachers in designing their curriculum and teaching materials effectively on the areas of difficulty. In addition, learners need to be exposed to reading and writing in English as much as possible beyond the classroom. Harmer (2007) emphasizes that learners need to be provided with a stimulus to engage them in creativity and imagination of the writing process.
In speaking, non-verbal clues, that is, gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions may help learners to get their meaning across. In contrast, learners are not able to use those paralinguistic features in writing (Harmer, 2007). Therefore, it is vital to categorize and diagnose the common errors to improve learners' written accuracy. Another important difference is that when learners speak, they do not have enough time to return and correct their incorrect utterance. However, learners have more time to reconstruct their incorrect sentences in writing than in speech. Thus, learners need to be encouraged to rewrite by reading through their drafts to reduce the number of errors in their sentences.
Furthermore, by analyzing the frequency of errors, teachers can help learners avoid the errors and create a good piece of written work. Harmer (2007) advises building the writing skill as a habit which can be formed in buzz groups, mind maps, and making notes. Teachers can monitor, collect a database of the most frequent errors in their classrooms so that they can track students' progress. Students can be encouraged to try and use the Microsoft Word application to track changes as peer corrective feedback.

Conclusion and Recommendations
As a result, the findings of the present study have shed some light on the frequency of common types of errors through a comparison of two classrooms with a quasi-experimental design. The results of this research prioritized four main most frequent categories of errors from a total of 552 errors. The most frequent errors for the experimental group were found in the syntactic category (N = 133, 57.33%). Similarly, the control group produced 175 (54.69%) errors in the syntactic category. The second most frequent errors occurred in the morphological category for the experimental group (N = 72, 31.04%) whereas the control group made 103 (32.19%) errors. The third most frequent category was attributed to 24 (10.35%) orthographical errors for the experimental group, whereas 37 (11.57%) errors for the control group. It could be said that the least frequent error belongs to the lexical category with 3 (1.28%) of the experimental group and 5 (1.55%) of the control group. In addition, there is a significant difference in terms of the total number of errors between the experimental group (N = 232, 57.14%) and the control group (N = 320, 78.82%). Interlingual and intralingual interference became apparent in 11 categories of errors. However, most of the causes of errors of both groups can be attributed to intralingual transfer which prevented learners to produce grammatically correct sentences. The mother tongue interference errors were only more frequent in the incorrect word order sentences produced by the experimental group (N = 19, 23.17%) and the control group (N = 23, 18.85%).
According to the observations, presenting audio-visual aids motivated learners and helped them improve writing grammatically correct sentences by acting as a good language model. In addition, more studies need to focus on exploring and analyzing different proficiencies of learners' errors to identify the types of common errors and reorient learning materials for Turkish Cypriot learners to grasp the structures in English.
The participants in the study were limited to the number of students in two classes of 10th grade public vocational high school students in North Cyprus. The learners were given a time limit of 30 min to produce 14 sentences not paragraphs. The study was conducted in two CEFR A2-B1 level English classes. Moreover, the results can-not be generalized to other 10th grade English language classes at CEFR A2-B1 level at any public or private high schools. The study does not assess the effect of extraneous factors, that is, the level of anxiety, motivation, and parents' education on the overall written sentences in English.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.