Misjudgment of English Comma Sense and Types of Errors among EFL Students at Different Educational Levels

Abstract

A comma is one of the most vulnerable types of punctuation marks because a slight misplacement or omission in its position can lead to misunderstanding or ambiguity in the sentences. This study aims to investigate the types of errors (i.e., error of omission, error of addition, and error of mis-ordering) that occur in the punctuation of commas among students. Students from three different educational levels were taken as a population (school, college, and university level). Each student was given 14 different unpunctuated sentences, 7 from the English language and 7 from the Urdu language, with an attempt to analyze any possible influence of the first language on the second language as well. Based on the findings, the errors were categorized into their respective categories, and errors of omission were seen most frequently among all the types of errors, with a similar pattern that clearly shows an influence of the grammatical rules of the first language (Urdu) on the second language (English). This study suggests possible methods that can be implemented to control or minimize the errors in the punctuation of commas.