An Analysis of Errors in English Signboards in Muang Kamphaengphet

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ประดิษฐ์ นารีรักษ์

Abstract

The purposes of the research were 1. to analyze errors on English signboards in Muang district, Kamphaengphet province, and 2. to find out and explain the opinions of foreign teachers towards the use of English on the signboards in Kamphaengphet. The samples in the study were 36 English signboards collected within Muang district, Kamphaengphet province. They were analyzed to find out error causes: interlingual errors and intralingual and developmental errors. The interview on the opinions of the foreign teachers towards the English signboards was also conducted. The data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, and content analysis. The findings of the study revealed that 1) there were 327 errors found in the English signboards which could be classified into 17 different types. The errors in the use of punctuations had the highest percentage at 14.68%, followed by errors in the use of vocabularies at 14.37%, errors in the use of capitalization at 14.07%, errors in the use of preposition at 10.09%, errors in the use of verb construction at 8.87%, errors in the use of articles at 8.26%, errors in the use of noun at 7.34%, errors in the use of misspelling at 6.42%, errors in the use of pronoun at 3.36%, errors in the use of verb at 2.45%, errors in the use of conjunction and errors in omission of articles at 2.14%, errors in run on sentence and errors in omission of punctuation at 1.83%, errors in the use of subject and verb agreement at 1.53%, and the errors in the use of adjective and the errors in the use of word order had the least frequency at 0.31%. When the errors were classified into the major causes based on interlingual errors, Intralingual and developmental errors, they revealed that Intralingual and developmental errors had the most frequency (93.88%), followed by Interlingual errors (6.12%). 2) Regarding the opinions of the foreign teachers towards the English signboards, it revealed that some small mistakes may cause confusing in the meaning of the sentence, and they all agreed that the mistakes and the spelling errors should be carefully checked and corrected before posting for the public.

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