Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics ISSN: 2707-756X DOI: 10.32996/jeltal Journal Homepage: www.al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/jeltal JELTAL AL-KINDI CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Copyright: © 2023 the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Published by Al-Kindi Centre for Research and Development, London, United Kingdom. Page | 163 | RESEARCH ARTICLE Error Analysis in EFL Students’ Writing Skill Mohamed Elsayed Seddik English language lecturer at ELI, Jazan University, Saudi Arabia Corresponding Author: Mohamed Elsayed Seddik, E-mail: mmelsayed@jazanu.edu.sa | ABSTRACT "Error Analysis" looks at actual errors, explains them linguistically, and explains some of the possible causes of the errors to provide an understanding of the processes underlying the second language acquisition area. The purpose of this current study is to assess, describe and analyze errors committed by students. The researchers followed the error analysis methodology proposed by Corder (1973). It was to recognize, describe and explain errors in terms of their causes. After that, errors will be evaluated. For this purpose, a written test was performed on the study samples. The aim of the study is to analyze the linguistic errors in the writing skills of EFL students in an Egyptian high school, namely the Future high school. Two instruments were applied in this study: written tasks and a semi-structured interview. For error analysis, eighty written tasks by a group of 20 students were collected and analyzed. The results showed that the frequently committed errors were at the sentential level as well as the word level. The most frequent errors were the errors of spelling, and the least were the errors of demonstratives. The marked errors were categorized as errors of omission, addition, misinformation, and disordering. Further analysis of the collected data from the semi-structured interview indicated interlingual interference, intralingual interference, inadequate practice in English writing and carelessness of students as the major sources of the errors. Hence, the study has pedagogical implications as it will help teachers to devise appropriate measures for improving the students’ writing proficiency. | KEYWORDS Error analysis, writing skill, spelling. | ARTICLE INFORMATION ACCEPTED: 01 December 2023 PUBLISHED: 19 December 2023 DOI: 10.32996/jeltal.2023.5.4.16 1. Introduction Writing is one of the basic English language skills that need a lot of practice. It is a complex skill because the learner needs to pour his ideas and feelings into a written form to be understood (Nur Fitria, 2020). Jayanti (2019) explained that writing skills need a lot of practice for students to master them. She added that mastering writing skills is achieved by giving the students some writing activities that stimulate their writing abilities. Then, the student may have some mistakes or errors. These mistakes and errors should be corrected whenever they are made by the students to avoid them in the next writing tasks. Yaghi & Abdullah (2015) differentiated between the error and the mistake in the context of language learning. They explained that the error is a gap in the learner’s target language. That explanation matches the definition by Corder (1975): "Errors of performance (mistakes) are characteristically unsystematic, and errors of competence are systematic". To illustrate, the error can’t be self- corrected by the learner himself because he lacks the right information. On the other hand, the learner can correct his own mistakes as he knows the correct form, but he made these mistakes due to some nervousness, fatigue, or tiredness. 1.1 Research Significance The errors of the learners should be studied and analyzed to find out their weaknesses and to be corrected. As rightly pointed out by Nur Fitria (2018), error analysis is very fruitful for both the students and their teachers. Teachers should look for the best ways to trigger the passive awareness of students to help them write in a meaningful way. She also added that teachers should help the