Writing Style Errors in Ielts Argumentative Writing Committed by Vietnamese Learners of English

Abstract

This article analyses the writing style errors in Ielts argumentative writing committed by Vietnamese learners of English at a Foreign Language Centre, Danang city, Vietnam. These errors have been classified into: Intralingual Errors (including Understatement, Confusion, Waffle, Formulaic/Thoughtless Writing and Immature Writing) and Interlingual Errors (including Overgeneralization, Overemphasis/Exaggeration, Spoken Style, Exclamation, Listing, Rhetorical Questions, Sentence-Initial And/But/So, Long-Subject, Information-overloaded Sentences, Word/Phrase Repetition and Gender-bias/Opinion-Bias). Such types of errors are described after being withdrawn from 160 Ielts argumentative writings as samples written by Vietnamese learners of English learning Ielts at the above centre. The causes of errors are then analysed to find out the solutions to help the Vietnamese learners of English improve their Ielts argumentative writing style.