Capital mistakes : The analysis of mistakes in the written production of advanced Swedish ESL learners at university level with focus on the use of capital letters

Abstract: The purpose of this essay was to see what mistakes Swedish university students make when writing English essays and to focus on one specific mistake, namely the use of capital letters. Fifty essays written by students of Swedish origin were taken from the SWICLE (the Swedish Component of the International Corpus of Learner English), corrected and the mistakes were subsequently analysed. Furthermore, six Swedish school book series were examined in order to find examples of how Swedish pupils are taught how to use capital letters in English. The results showed that mistakes concerning capital letters were very common compared to other mistakes and that the students in the study seemed to have grasped some grammatical rules on the matter, but not all. Other common mistakes made in the essays were spelling mistakes and choice of words. Most common among the mistakes concerning capital letters were overuse of capital lettering and the lack of initial capital letters when writing weekdays, months and holidays. Only one out of the six school book series went deeper into the matter of when to use capital letters in English, which suggests that one of the reasons why capital letter mistakes are so common might be that the students are not extensively taught on the matter.