Grammatical Errors in Written Assessments of Non-Native English-Speaking Undergraduate Students and Pedagogical Implications in Correcting Mistakes

This paper examines the English grammatical errors and their patterns in the written assignments of a General Education course at City University of Hong Kong. Subjects are 60 local and non-local (exchange) undergraduate students who are all L2 learners with diversified education and disciplinary background (i. e. their major of study) which are unrelated to English language studies. The objective of this paper brings to the foreground a broad discussion of L2 undergraduate learners’ average syntactic ability in terms of written assessment. This paper is an attempt in classifying the patterns and categories of grammatical errors committed by students who were brought up and educated in non-native English-speaking countries. Thus, pedagogical recommendations are offered for both L2 learners and educators in tertiary education settings in such ways as to calibrate how and in what manner English language as the medium of instruction can lead to more enduring effects in learners within non-native English-speaking countries.