Lexico-Semantic Relations Errors in Senior Secondary School Students' Writing

Abstract

The study examines the lexico-semantic relation errors in ESL writing. The data was taken from 200 SSS students' letter texts in 10 secondary schools randomly selected from two states in the South-Western Nigeria, the lexico-semantic errors were traced to four linguistic sources: collocation, generalisation, similarity, and duplication. From these seven sub-categories of errors were identified. The findings reveal that collocation errors are predominant, accounting for 56.5% of the total lexico-semantic errors. The reason for this may be traced to improper mastery of lexical sense relations. This aspect of lexical studies is often neglected in ESL classroom. As a result, the writers cannot define boundaries that separate lexical items. The study concludes that teachers should teach lexical sense relations and should emphasize collocations, especially the types that learners have difficulties in learning as observed in the writing. Pupils should also be encouraged to read a lot of literature written in English, since collocations are better acquired through reading.