Includes CD

Includes references (62-68 p.)

'ABSTRACT Many scholars in the field of EA have stressed the significance of second language learners\' errors. Corder (1967), for instance, in his influential article, remarks that \"they are significant in three different ways. First, to the teacher, in that they show how far towards the goal the learner has progressed. Second, they provide to the researcher evidence of how a language is acquired, what strategies the learner is employing in his learning of a language. Thirdly, they are indisputable to the learner himself because we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn\" (p. 161). The present study attempts to investigate the errors in a corpus of 170 essays written by 170 Kurdish-speaking learners of English. This study was carried out at Duhok University which locates in the north of Iraq. The instrument used for this study was participants' written essays. All of the errors in the essays were identified and classified into various categorizations. The results of the study show that the students mostly make syntactical errors. Furthermore, the results show that five most common errors committed by the participants were spelling, omission of indefinite article, and wrong use of preposition, subject verb agreement and punctuation.Based on the findings, recommendations and some implications which are of significance to educators and policymakers as well as to researchers are provided. At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of much benefit for developing teaching and learning English in Iraq. Through this study, language teachers are guided to assess their own teaching methodologies and identify their students\' ability in writing and to choose the strategiesand topics that are best suited to their students Keywords: error analysis, essays, writing, syntactical errors '