1 SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ERRORS WHEN WRITING IN ENGLISH: Analysis of the interaction of age, language level, linguistic levels and types of error Ana Ibáñez Moreno Paloma Hernández Cerezo UNED Presented at the 2011 Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities 1. Introduction This piece of research presents a study of written errors obtained from examining texts produced by Spanish students who are learning English as a Second Language (from now on L2) in the secondary school “I.E.S. San Diego de Alcalá”, in Puerto del Rosario, capital of the island of Fuerteventura (The Canary Islands). The errors are classified according to the linguistic level affected and the type of error committed. Students were asked to write a composition about their childhood. This topic was selected for a number of reasons: first, they were supposed to use the past tense, since it was related to their own past. Thus, the fact that they had to use the same grammatical structures contributed to the homogeneity of the corpus that is later on put under analysis. In this way, an analysis of how they learn and internalize English past tenses can be more easily carried out; Secondly, the fact that students write about themselves is motivating and promotes a more natural use of ESL as an instrument to express themselves, instead of seeing English as a separate subject that does not concern their own communicative abilities. This is one of the premises of the Communicative Approach, followed in class. English occupies the status of L2 in the Spanish educative system in both primary and secondary schools, but its learning is not an easy task for our students, probably because it is not a mere subject of knowledge, but it also implies the acquisition of more long-term skills and concepts related to cultural and social factors. In this sense, the teaching and learning of communicative competence is essential. Following Canale and