Deciding on the Degree of Emphasis on Micro skills for Writing Classes Based on the Frequency of Error Occurrence

Good English writing competence is widely recognized as an important skill for educational, business and personal reasons. So, English writing instruction has an important role in foreign language education. In this regard, extracted and edited from his MA thesis, the purpose of the researcher in this study was to decide on the degree of emphasis on micro skills for writing classes based on the frequency of error occurrence. The first step for carrying out the research was to analyze the essays of a pilot group (i. e. , 30 students) to provide the researcher with a rough checklist of the most frequent types of errors. Then the researcher administered the instrument to a random sample of university students' essays that were majoring in TEFL, Literature and translation in Islamic Azad University, Roudehen Branch. The analysis of the sample obtained 13 types of errors and the researcher applied the obtained checklist to categorize the errors committed by all 300 subjects of the research. To do this the researcher used descriptive and qualitative method to gather the research data without manipulating the research context. Based on the occurrences of errors, the researcher presented a hierarchy of error types and suggested some strategies in the process of pre-writing, writing and post-writing.