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An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors
Made by Hebron University EFL Students
Ahmad Salamin ,Mohammed Farrah, Riyad Zahida, Naji Zaru
Hebron University
Abstract:
This study aims to investigate the most frequent punctuation and
capitalization errors made by EFL learners and to find out whether there
were significant differences in the frequency of such errors due to the
learners’ academic level, major, and / or gender. The sample consisted of
157 students from the English Department of Hebron University/ Palestine
in the academic year 2014/2015. Specially designed test was administered
whereby the students were asked to fill in necessary punctuation marks and
to correct capitalization errors. The results revealed that the most frequent
errors were made in capitalization, comma, semicolon, period, quotation,
hyphen, apostrophe, and the question mark respectively from the highest to
the lowest occurrence. Unexpectedly, there were no significant differences in
the frequency of the punctuation and capitalization errors made by the
students due to their academic level, major, or gender.
Key words: writing, punctuation, transfer, interlingual, intralingual, error
analysis
Ahmad Salamin et al.
.
.
1. Introduction
Writing is an essential skill for EFL learners because it is a means
through which they develop their critical thinking and enhance their
creativity. Specifically, it is crucial for university students as it helps
them to excel in their academic courses due to its interdisciplinary
nature (Zahida, Farrah, & Zaru, 2014). For example, it enables them to
write their essays, answer questions, prepare their reports, write their
research papers, and other writing assignments.
An EFL academic writing environment seems abound in subtle
and insidious challenges for both teachers and learners. One of these
challenges is orthographic errors made by learners of English as a
foreign language. Such errors can sometimes be relatively harmful,
undermine the credibility of any piece of writing, and even raise
questions related to the writer's basic literacy skills. This is why
analyzing learners' errors has attracted the attention of many
theoreticians and practitioners in the field of education. Such analysis,
if properly carried out, is believed to enhance students' performance in
any EFL writing classroom; it should provide teachers with the
required information about their students' performance in general and
linguistic weaknesses, which hinder their improvement, in particular.
The general consensus in the education field is that errors are
inevitable, i.e. errors cannot be avoided in the sense that they are an
inseparable part of the language learning process. Hence, eliminating
or rather reducing the frequency of errors made by learners in an EFL
writing classroom is largely associated with analyzing types and
causes of such errors, among other factors. There are various types of
orthographical errors, such as errors associated with spelling,
capitalization, punctuation, word emphasis, etc. The present study is
restricted to two types of orthographic errors, namely punctuation and
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
capitalization. It may prove fruitful to identify, discuss, and attempt a
solution to these errors in the present study, as they are frequently
made and commonly observed in EFL students' writings at Hebron
University.
1.1 Statement of the Problem:
Writing is considered an important skill and probably the most
difficult to master. It is central to the fulfillment of various writing
assignments/projects in varied fields of human endeavors. EFL
students of Hebron University encounter numerous problems in
writing. One of the most common problems, which are not taken
seriously by most learners and many instructors, is the proper
production of punctuation and capitalization. This is a phenomenon
that is clearly observed in almost all students' assignments and exams.
Therefore, the present paper aims to explore the frequency of
punctuation errors, to investigate the correlation between these errors
and the academic level, major, and gender, to identify the reasons
behind them, and to suggest some practical recommendations.
1.2 Significance of the Study
The significance of the study stems from the importance of proper
orthography in writing. This study can be considered valuable for both
instructors and learners since it aims to improve teaching and learning
of the writing skill in English. It does so by giving instructors some
insights into the most frequent punctuation and capitalization errors
in writing among EFL learners. Such understanding helps
instructors adjust their teaching methods according to the most
frequent errors made by learners and to adopt appropriate strategies to
minimize the occurrence of such errors. The findings of this study can
guide instructors to develop proper writing practices for EFL learners,
which may help them become better writers. Additionally, this paper
is also expected to highlight punctuation and capitalization errors in
order to help EFL learners to avoid committing such errors. Therefore,
this study will be of interest to both instructors and EFL learners.
Ahmad Salamin et al.
1.3 Questions of the Study
The study attempts to answer the following questions:
1. What are the most frequent punctuation errors made by EFL
Hebron University students, namely English Language and
Literature major students (henceforth ELs), TEFL Major students
(henceforth TEFLs), and MA English Language and TEFL
students (henceforth MAs)?
2. Are there statistically significant differences in the frequency of
the punctuation errors due to the academic level, major, and
gender of the participants?
3. What are the plausible reasons behind making such errors in
writing?
2. Review of Related Literature
Punctuation is often essential to convey meaning. Poor punctuation
contributes to unorganized writing and confuses readers. Coherence
and structure in any piece of text are influenced by punctuation marks
(Gamaroff, 2000; Shaughnessy, 1977) As the common example of An
English professor who asked his/her student to punctuate the
following sentence:
A woman without her man is nothing.
The males punctuated the sentence as: "A woman, without her
man, is nothing."
However, the females punctuated it differently: "A woman: without
her, man is nothing." This above example demonstrates the power of
punctuation and its role in resolving ambiguity.
According to Carroll and Wilson (1993: 191) learners
"encounter punctuation problems as there are no universal rules of
punctuation." Similarly, Byrne (1988) said punctuation is very
problematic as it has never been standard. Shokouhi and Zadeh-
Dabbagh (2009) believe that learners are inconsistent in utilizing
commas and periods.
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
A review of the related literature on punctuation and
capitalization errors indicates that it is important for EFL learners to
understand the significance and function of punctuation marks. Carey
(1978: 15) indicates that the purpose of punctuation is to eliminate
vagueness and make clear relationship between words. Accordingly,
ambiguity can result from incongruous use of punctuation marks
(Connelly, 2009). In addition, Truss (2003) states appropriate meaning
can be conveyed through proper punctuation. Moreover, Dawkins
(1995: 422) believes that the punctuation of a good writer is
“meaning-dependent, not grammar-dependent.” Furthermore,
Dawkins (1995) quoted Summey (1949) saying "skillful writers have
learned that they must make alert and successful choices between
periods and semicolons, semicolons and commas, and commas and
dashes, dashes and parentheses, according to meaning and intended
emphasis" (Dawkins 1995: 4). Moreover, he recommends educators to
encourage "students to clarify the meaning of sentences and to gain
intended emphasis."
Mann (2003) claims that there is a difficulty in learning
punctuation marks. For example, Awad (2012) investigated the most
frequent punctuation errors among An-Najah National University
TEFL and English major students. He found that participants face
difficulty in using punctuation marks, and they use them
inappropriately replacing one mark with another such as using
commas in place of full-stops. Similarly, Adas and Bakir (2013) and
Gomez (2010) report that some Arab ESL learners struggle in their
writing and particularly in punctuation. Gomez (2010) explains that
this is due to the fact that Arabic has fewer limitations in the use of
commas and periods than English. According to her, several Arab
learners use infinite number of commas in their English run-on
sentences.
Atashparvar (1982) is in favor of using punctuation marks that
may assist readers to understand unstated ideas in a text. To him,
punctuation is very necessary just like telescopic insects that may
sometimes threaten health, but other times it protects people from
passing away.
Al-Qinai (2013:2) explained that, "punctuation is one of the
paralinguistic graphological properties of a text which helps, the same
Ahmad Salamin et al.
way as suprasegmental features, to read a text in a coherent way and
understand its rhythm and tepmo." He also emphasized that "the
proper use of punctuation marks not only helps readers to understand
how phrases, sentences and paragraphs are coherently connected, but
also helps them to mark discourse features such as intonational
contours, pauses and emphasis."
Similarly, Solomon (1990) and Zolfaghari (1999) believe that
punctuation conveys pauses, stresses, intonations that help readers
comprehend any piece of text. Moreover, they claim that punctuation
splits sentences into clauses and makes clear the logical relations
between the parts of a sentence. For example, they mention that a full-
stop indicates stopping and finishing a sentence, a comma decreases
the reader’s reading speed, and a question sign changes intonation.
Shokouhi and Zadeh-Dabbagh (2009) investigated punctuation
problems in Iranian Learners' writing. They classified errors according
to their causes and frequency counts. They reported that the
participants committed high degree of errors in capitalization and
commas due the fact their mother tongue doesn’t have capitalization
and commas are used a lot within sentences joining complete
thoughts.
In addition to punctuation, another factor which may affect
readability and mutual intelligibility is capitalization. Batista (2011: 2)
says that "besides improving human readability, punctuation marks
and capitalization provide important information for Parsing, Machine
Translation (MT), Information Extraction, Summarization, Named
Entity Recognition (NER), and other downstream tasks that are
usually also applied to written corpora."
Studies in general attributed the causes of punctuation and
capitalization errors mostly to two factors, namely: interlingual (L1
interference) and intralingual (developmental or lack of competence).
The term interlingual was first introduced by Selinker (1972).
According to Richards (1971) intralingual errors occur during the
learning process of the second language at a stage when the learners
have not really acquired the knowledge.
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
On the one hand, some searchers dealing with second language
acquisition (Corder, 1974, Scovel, 2001) attributed the major causes
of errors to language transfer. Accordingly, some studies found that
the causes of punctuation and capitalization errors were interlingual
mainly (Liu, Sung, and Chien, 1998; Ridha, 2012; and
Almukhaizeem, 2013). For example, Liu, Sung, and Chien (1998)
found that the less English proficiency learners possess, the more L1
interference was found in their English writings. Almukhaizeem
(2013) stated that language interference has a mainly negative impact
on students' writing mechanics. Almarwany (2008) also found that
students’ first language causes many writing problems including
problems in capitalization and punctuation.
On the other hand, other studies attributed the causes of
punctuation and capitalization errors to intralingual factors mainly.
For instance, AbiSamra (2003) found that two-third of the second
language learner’ writing errors, including punctuation and
capitalization, are attributed to intralingual factors. This result is
similar to other studies she cited in her study such as George (1972)
and Brudhiprabha (1972). Kim (2001: 157) analyzed errors in college
students' writing samples to examine L1 interference phenomenon.
The findings showed that "most of the errors were intralingual and
only in a few cases can be attributed to L1 interference". Kim
suggested that L2 learners follow similar developmental patterns to
those found in children's L1 acquisition. Kaweera (2013: 16) claimed
that "It is clearly seen that writing errors are assumed as being not
only a result of the first language interference habits to the learning of
L2, but also inadequate acquisition of the target language." He opined
that intralingual errors are caused by the influence of the target
language than language transfer. He also explained that the
complexity of certain rules in the target language was difficult to
understand and some exceptions were difficult to memorize, which
makes it confusing to writers. These studies and others support the
assumption that second language learning goes through various
developmental stages governed by similar universal innate principles
although the grammar of L2 is not completely acquired due to
nonlinguistic factors as proposed by Chomsky (Fromkin et al, 2011).
Ahmad Salamin et al.
3. Methodology
3.1 Participants
The subjects of the study were randomly selected from all EFL
Hebron University undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in
the second semester of the academic year 2014/2015 in the English
Department. In particular, three categories with a total of 157 subjects:
61 sophomores, 73 seniors, and 23 MAs served as the subjects of the
present study. The MA students were included to check whether
longer exposure to English reduces punctuation problems. There were
136 females and 20 males, a sample which more or less mirrors the
percentage of females to males in the study population. One
participant did not indicate his/her gender. 83 participants were from
the Teaching Methods Program and 73 were from the English
Literature. One participant did not indicate his/her major. The subjects
were expected to be quite familiar with the topic under examination as
ELs and TEFLs are supposed, by the end of the second year of their
study, to have taken at least three writing-centered courses (English II,
Writing I, Writing II) as part of the department requirements of their
study plans.
3.2 Instrumentations
To achieve the objectives of the study, a specially designed test was
administered by the researchers (see Appendix). To avoid artificiality,
the test is originally an authentic essay taken from Langan's College
Writing Skills with Readings (2005). It was adapted to suit the
purpose of the study, and it comprised a total of 30 test items.
Specifically, there was 24 punctuation fill-in-the-blank and 6
capitalization error identification items which were supposed to be
answered by the students.
3.3 Administration of the Test and Analysis of the Results
The test was administered by the end of the second semester of the
academic year 2014/2015. The participants were given clear
instructions and allowed for about 20 minutes to complete the test.
The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 22 package.
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and ANCOVA are used to analyze the
results. ANCOVA was used because the groups were not
academically equivalent.
4. Findings and Discussion
This section presents the results of the study. First, the findings related
to the questions of the study are going to be presented, and then a
discussion of the findings will follow.
4.1. What are the most frequent punctuation errors made by EFL
Hebron University students?
Table 1 and Figure 1 show the results of the frequency of errors
committed by students majoring in English Language and Literature,
TEFL, and the MA students at Hebron University.
Table 1: Means and SDs for Punctuation Errors
Number
Minimum
Maximum
Mean
Std. D
Capital
157
.00
11.00
2.1975
1.88
Comma
157
.00
8.00
1.9172
1.40
Semicolon
157
.00
4.00
1.2930
.86
Period
157
.00
4.00
1.1720
1.166
Additional
marks
157
.00
4.00
1.1720
.84
Quotation
157
.00
4.00
1.1529
1.01
Hyphen
157
.00
1.00
.7325
.44
Apostrophe
157
.00
2.00
.2229
.43
Question Mark
157
.00
2.00
.1656
.42
Valid N
(listwise)
157
Ahmad Salamin et al.
Figure (1): Means for punctuation errors
In Table 1 and Figure 1, errors are arranged according to the
frequency of their recurrence from the highest to the lowest:
capitalization, comma, semicolon, period, quotation, hyphen,
apostrophe, and the question mark. This finding is in agreement with
Alamin and Ahmed (2012) who found that capitalization, comma and
semicolon were the most common punctuation errors. In addition, this
finding is somehow in agreement with Awad (2012) who reported that
the most common mistakes were comma, capitalization, period, the
quotation mark, and semicolon respectively.
4.2. Are there any statistically significant differences in the
frequency of the punctuation errors due to the academic level,
major, and gender of the participants?
In order to examine whether there are statistically significant
differences in the frequency of the punctuation errors due to the
academic level, major, and gender of the participants, a number of
statistical tests were conducted as follows:
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
First, descriptive statistics and ANCOVA were carried out to
examine whether there were statistically significant differences in the
frequency of the punctuation errors due to the academic level of the
participants as shown in tables 2 and 3. As mentioned before
ANCOVA was used because the groups were not academically
equivalent.
Table 2: Descriptive Statistics for Frequency of Punctuation Errors due
to Academic Level
Number
Mean
Std. D
St. error
Sophomore
61
9.75
3.35
.43
Senior
73
10.40
4.52
.53
MA
23
9.60
2.85
.59
Total
157
10.02
3.87
.30
Table 3: ANCOVA Results for Frequency of Punctuation Errors due to
Academic Level
Sum of
squares
d.f
Mean
Square
F
Sig
Between
Groups
19.455
2
9.727
.645
.526
Within
Groups
2322.443
154
15
Total
2341
156
Tables 2 and 3 show that there are no statistically significant
differences in the use of punctuation marks due to the participants'
academic level at the level of P≤0.05. This result was against the
researchers' expectations and it was inconsistent with what Awad
(2012) concluded in his study. This variation possibly appears because
the participants in Awad's study were all at the undergraduate level
including freshman students which definitely creates a difference
between a freshman student and a senior one who has already received
more linguistic input, practice, and more exposure to L2. On the other
hand, the participants of the present study are sophomore students and
above including MA students, which makes the differences due to the
Ahmad Salamin et al.
students' academic level less significant than those in Awad's (2012)
study. Although significant differences were expected to appear
between MA participants and undergraduates, such differences did not
appear probably for three reasons;
(1) the number of the MA students was relatively
small (23);
(2) the MA students might not have taken the test
seriously;
(3) the MA students might not have sufficient
linguistic competence in punctuation marks;
(4) the punctuation errors might have been
fossilized.
Second, a t-test was carried out to examine whether there were
statistically significant differences in the frequency of the punctuation
errors due to the major of the participants. The results are shown in
tables 4 and 5.
Table 4: T-test Results for Major
Major
Number
Mean
Std. D
Sig.
Teaching Methods
83
10.5783
3.66300
.073
Literature
73
9.4658
4.02797
Table 5: T-test Results for Equality of Means for Major
t-test for Equality of Means
t
df
Sig. (2-tailed)
Major
Teaching Methods
1.807
154
0.073
Literature
1.796
146.689
0.075
Tables 4 and 5 show that there are no statistically significant
differences in the use of punctuation marks due to the participants’
major at the level of P≤0.05.
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
Finally, another t-test was carried out to examine whether there
were statistically significant differences in the frequency of the
punctuation errors due to the gender of the participants. Tables 6 and 7
display the results.
Table 6: T-test Results for Gender
Gender
Number
Mean
Std. D
Sig.
Male
20
8.9000
3.97227
.710
Female
136
10.1618
3.84750
Table 7: T-test for Equality of Means for Gender
Gender
t-test for Equality of Means
t
df
Sig. (2-tailed)
Gender
Equal variances
assumed
-1.364-
154
0.175
Equal variances not
assumed
-1.332-
24.539
0.195
Tables 6 and 7 show that there are no statistically significant
differences in the use of punctuation marks due to gender at the level
of P≤0.05. This finding is in line with what Awad (2012) found in his
study.
4.3. What are the plausible reasons behind making such errors in
writing?
As mentioned above, errors in punctuation and capitalization
might be attributed to interlingual (L1 interference) and intralingual
(developmental or lack of competence) sources Brown (2000: 224).
Having thoroughly examined the errors made by the participants in
this study, the researchers believe that most of these errors are
intralingual rather than interlingual. For example, the most frequent
error in this study is capitalization, which can’t be attributed to L1
Ahmad Salamin et al.
interference only. It is true that Arabic does not make a distinction
between uppercase and lowercase characters, but this is not the only
source of capitalization errors owing to capitalizing some common
nouns. For instance, some students capitalized the common nouns
president, head, and company which are used in the text as common
nouns (see Appendix). This indicates that although learners have
studied various writing and grammar courses, they have not mastered
the rules of capitalization in English during their years of study
probably due to inadequate teaching techniques, lack of the linguistic
input provided for the learners or insufficient practice.
The comma ranks as the second most frequent error followed
by the period in the third place. Despite the fact that part of the
linguistic knowledge of the learner is to know where a sentence begins
and where it ends, the above two punctuation marks were substituted
one in place of the other by learners. Moreover this substitution might
be because Arabic and English languages differ in terms of sentence
construction and what constitutes a statement. For example, in Arabic,
the use of a comma to end a statement is acceptable; however, in
English a statement ends with a full stop. This may cause a negative
transfer stimulating Arab learners of English to use commas instead of
full stops. Both English and Arabic share the property of having these
two marks, but with some differences in usage. For instance, the
comma is used in both languages to separate phrases and clauses, but
in Arabic, lexical insertion (wa) may replace the comma, which means
either a comma or a lexical word may be used. The period is also used
in both languages to end complete meaningful sentences while in
Arabic commas may sometimes replace periods throughout a whole
paragraph with only one period at the end of the paragraph. This is not
a crucial difference, but it presents a stylistic variation between both
languages, which shows more flexibility in using these two
punctuation marks in Arabic. This lends support to the assumption
that the main source of errors is again intralingual rather than
interlingual since the underlying structure of both languages is
approximately the same (Chomsky, 1965). Therefore, the errors may
be attributed to lack of linguistic competence related to nonlinguistic
factors affecting the adequate development of such knowledge such as
inappropriate teaching strategies, unqualified teachers, lack of
motivation, and ill-designed teaching materials.
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
The results of the present study provide evidence to support this
viewpoint since most of the comma errors occurred because of
misusing, omitting, and substituting the comma for a semicolon or a
period. This contradicts with the results of some previous studies
which related most of the comma errors to the overuse of the comma
replacing commas for periods. In Arabic writing this is a stylistic
variation on which firm and generalized results could not be built
while in English it is not. However, the results of the present study are
in line with the results of some other studies. For example, Abdel-
Latif (2007) suggested that non-native speakers of English commit
writing errors because of the lack of knowledge of the foreign
language structure. Similarly, Hammad (2012) traced the errors
committed by English writing learners to the lack of adequate
exposure to English language input. Likewise, another study
conducted by Mourtaga (2010) attributes the main cause of errors
committed by second or foreign language learners to their lack of
practice in English writing.
The least frequent errors committed by the participants in this
study were the apostrophe and the question mark (see Table 1). As for
the question mark, very few errors were committed by the
participants. This is possible because the interrogative forms provided
in the text start with question words which makes it easy for students
to add a question mark at the end of a question. The second least
problematic mark was the apostrophe though it is not used in Arabic.
This adds support to what has been concluded above that L1 transfer
is not the main source of errors (Kim, 2001; Kaweera, 2013) because
if it is so, then the use of apostrophe should be on top of the list of the
most frequent errors since it represents a total difference between L1
and L2.
5. Recommendations and Pedagogical Implications
Based on the results of the study and the findings of other
related studies, the following suggestions and ideas may help in
overcoming or reducing punctuation and capitalization errors for EFL
learners.
Ahmad Salamin et al.
Firstly, students should be adequately exposed to the rules of
punctuation and capitalization of the target language at an early stage
of learning.
Secondly, there is a need for writing practice and sufficient
exposure to English language input to develop learners' writing skills.
Thirdly, instructors need to probably reconsider their teaching
techniques and strategies. They need to continue focusing on
capitalization and punctuation in classroom activities as well as in
exams. In other words, instructors need to give more weight to the
punctuation and capitalization errors whether the course is a writing
one or not.
Finally, instructors need to be able to draw the attention of their
students to areas of similarities or differences between the mother
tongue and the target language to help them avoid interference. As
illustrated previously in this study, in Arabic, for instance, lexical
insertion (wa) may replace the comma, which means either a comma
or a lexical word may be used. This is due to the similarity between
Arabic and English in terms of the punctuation marks used in both
languages and their functions.
6. Conclusion
Since the accurate and proper use of punctuation marks
provides access to text intelligibility and readability, this study has
highlighted the most frequent punctuation and capitalization errors
committed by EFL learners. The present study found that the most
frequent errors were made in capitalization, comma, semicolon,
period, quotation, hyphen, apostrophe, and the question mark
respectively from the highest to the lowest occurrence. Moreover, no
statistically significant differences were found in the use of
punctuation marks in relation to the academic level, major and gender
of the participants. Furthermore, it was found that L1 negative transfer
was not the main source of punctuation and capitalization errors. In
fact, most of these errors probably occurred because of inadequate
teaching techniques, lack of the linguistic input provided for the
learners or insufficient practice.
An Investigation into Punctuation and Capitalization Errors …
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