GENDER-BASED DIFFERENCE IN ENGLISH WRITING ERRORS: AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF MULTILINGUAL PAKISTANI LEARNERS

Abstract

This paper explores gender-based divergence in grammatical error patterns in academic English writing by multilingual Pakistani university learners. Though gender, as a characteristic variable, is much discussed in the discipline of Second Language Acquisition, no specific attention has been paid to its impact in Pakistan context on systematic quantitative analysis. This study has analyzed a corpus of 410 argumentative essays by university students. Errors were coded in 16 grammatical categories, and frequencies were normalized based on 100 words to ensure comparability. Categories were selected on the basis of International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). Results indicate that male students produced an error rate that is significantly higher than that of their female counterparts in most cases. This trend was maintained in most of the error categories, such as Noun, Pronoun, Lexical Verb, Auxiliary verb, Adverb Errors, Adjective, Article, Conjunction, Preposition Punctuation, Form, Miscellaneous, Existential There, Numeral, Particle Proform. However, no significant difference was found for lexical choice, whereas female students made significantly more errors in adverb placement, indicating a more refined error profile. These findings denote that the context of male learners needs to be specifically targeted in foundational interventions.