Errors and Difficulties: Grammatical Analysis of Student Essays

Abstract The purpose of the study was to determine the most common errors in sentence construction committed by the Grade 12 students of Pal–ew High School. One hundred twenty-two pieces (122) of essay writing from Grade 12 General Academic Strand (GAS) and Technical Vocational Livelihood (TVL) Academic Year 2024 – 2025 were taken as the data of the study. They were collected and analyzed using the Linguistic Category Taxonomy and the Surface Strategy Taxonomy. The results showed that the most frequent errors committed by students were mis formation of errors with a frequency of 152 or 55%, which includes subject–verb, preposition, verb construction, auxiliary, gerunds, and plural nouns. It is followed by omission of errors with a frequency of 120 or 43%, frequent omission of errors is article, verb (copula), plurals, auxiliary, preposition, and irregular/regular past tense. Lastly, addition errors show that the only recorded error is the simple addition of an article with a frequency of 4 or 1%. This error analysis assists teachers in refining their teaching methods and materials during the language teaching and learning process. As a result, the most frequent student errors and the strategies to address these challenges in essay writing were tackled through simplified grammar and a well-structured booklet. Keywords: Error analysis, Writing Difficulties, and Grammatical Analysis