An error analysis of journal papers written by Persian authors

Error analysis of nonnative authors’ publications in health-care journals

“…[ 8 ] Further, some of these errors originated in negative interlingual interference, as Salehi and Bahrami contended; they referred to mother tongue interference as a leading factor in committing errors by Iranian novice researchers publishing articles, a phenomenon we also observed in the articles we analyzed, i.e., the trace of the Persian language in the wordings of manuscripts written by Persian authors (A few common errors are observed in these examples: “ Although the sample was diverse…, but the results.” or Its validity was approved of by scientific staff members of … University of Medical Sciences.). [ 5 ] Notably, in this study, the discoursal errors gained a low frequency which is in contrast with the findings of Gholami and Zeinolabedini who reported a much higher frequency of discoursal errors. [ 9 ]…”

“…Considering the major and minor error categories (22 categories altogether), the results are in line with those of Salehi and Bahrami with eight error types,[ 5 ] Onwuegbuzie with 35 categories,[ 7 ] Rivera with 20 categories,[ 12 ] Coates et al ., with 35 groups,[ 10 ] Currie and colleagues with 15 error subcategories,[ 20 ] Marina and Snuviškiene with 12 types,[ 15 ] Pierson with eight error types,[ 11 ] and Coates et al ., with three major and six minor classes of errors. [ 10 ] Although error classification differs in style from study to study, almost all of them emphasize the accuracy of scientific writing and refer to a wide scope of errors manuscript authors commit in academic writing.…”

“…As for the lexical errors such as “driven from” for “derived from” or “drawn from,” “another hand,” “in another hand” or “on one hand” instead of “on the other hand,” the findings are consistent with those of Salehi and Bahrami, Rivera, and Onwuegbuzie and Scarfe who pinpointed these error types, attributed utmost importance to them, and put special emphasis on the accuracy of the word usage (to name a few examples are the use of “same as” for “the same as,” “As the result,” for “As a result;” “despite of” for “despite;” and “in order/in order for” for “in order to”). [ 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 ] Furthermore, Habibzadeh believed that statements in a manuscripts may become ambiguous because of poor usage of terms. [ 4 ] In Gholami and Zeinolabedini's study,[ 9 ] lexical revisions ranked second and accounted for nearly one-fifth of the occurrences; while in our study, they were ranked in the third place.…”

“…There has been a plethora of research on error analysis in scientific writing, investigating the errors in journals of health and medical sciences. [ 4 5 6 7 8 9 ] Habibzadeh claims that “the ambiguity in the manuscript comes from poor usage of terms or awkward grammar and syntax;” he further contends that some authors should “ask a native speaker familiar with scientific writing (preferably, one of their colleagues) for advice on language usage because even (native English-speaking) editors need an editor.”[ 4 ]…”

“…They found that errors in word usage and subject-verb agreement were of the highest and lowest frequencies, respectively. [ 5 ] Zeinolabedini and Gholami studied the consulting comments Iranian author-researchers in the field of medical sciences received from English teacher editors. They stated that the most problematic areas in Iranian author-researchers’ manuscripts were related to dangling structures, use of conjunctions, correct tense of the verbs, use of prepositions, reducing the adjective clauses, and use of adjectives.…”