Making errors in daily writing is a common issue, especially in foreign languages like English. In the official environment, these errors may sometimes hurdle to successful communication. This study investigates the fields of error in writing notices, memos, minutes, office orders, applications, and reports in English and officials' perceptions about mistakes in written English for official communication. The samples are collected from hospitals, business centers, banks, and educational institutions, and the sample size is 40. The researcher also interviewed ten (10) officials. The result shows that almost 53% of the samples contain errors in different types of grammatical and lexical errors (verb, number, spelling, pronoun, article, preposition, punctuation, syntax). The major part of the error occurs in a preposition (18%), verb (18%), word function (18%), and number (13%). The study report is significant for motivating officials to correctly write letters, notices, reports, and memos for official communication. Writing perfect English in the professional setting is essential for clarity and seamless communication. However, these misunderstandings occur due to a lack of comprehension and a restricted vocabulary in the target language.
Keywords: Error in English, Official communication, Written English, grammatical error, lexical error.
30-Jun-2023
