LINGUISTIC ERROR PATTERNS IN IELTS ACADEMIC WRITING: A CASE STUDY OF VIETNAMESE EFL LEARNERS AT THE B2 LEVEL

Vu Thi Phuong Thanh

Abstract


This case study investigates linguistic error profiles and discourse-level performance of 20 Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners (level B2/CEFR; target band 6.5+) in IELTS Academic Writing Tasks 1 and 2. Guided by Error Analysis (EA) and the official IELTS Writing Assessment Criteria, a descriptive mixed-methods design was employed to categorise errors at the word level (mechanical, morphological, lexical, and grammatical) and sentence level (syntactic, agreement, omission, and addition), complemented by qualitative discourse analysis. The findings reveal a task-contingent shift in the distribution of errors: Task 1 was associated primarily with word-level difficulties (81%), whereas Task 2 generated a substantially higher proportion of sentence-level errors (44%), particularly in modal verb complementation, passive structures, and subject-verb agreement. Discourse-level analysis further revealed a reliance on prefabricated cohesive patterns in Task 2, which constrained performance at the band 6-7 threshold. These findings suggest that the plateau many Vietnamese IELTS candidates experience is not simply a vocabulary or grammar problem but reflects a processing gap: learners lack the capacity to sustain grammatical control under the cognitive demands of extended argumentation. Task-specific instructional directions for learners targeting band 7 are discussed.

Keywords


error analysis; IELTS Academic Writing; Vietnamese EFL learners; case study; writing errors; task complexity

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejfl.v10i2.6808

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