2.1.1 Confusion of Sense Relation
The semantic error found in this paper coincides with Tuaychareon (2003) in that the restrictions at the L1
semantic level reflects the writer’s semantic competence when writing in English as highlighted in the following
examples.
I *play the internet. (*surf)
There is no *day on this mail. (*date)
I will *keep money for a house. (*save)
The first example above reflects the L1 lexical interference, which is normally found when Thai students use the
word “play” for all contexts. It can be seen that instead of the word “play”, English has specific words to convey
the meaning of doing something for pleasure, acting in a play or film, surfing the internet or tricking somebody
for fun. On the other hand, the word “play” (Len in Thai) is frequently used by Thai student writers to refer to all
pleasurable activities. Likewise, as found in the words “day” and “keep” which are used in all contexts of Thai
student writing, these lexical errors result from their L1 interference and limited semantic competence in
English.
2.1.2 Collocational Error
This type of error interfered by L1 is found when the writers use direct translation to form the collocation as
shown in the following examples.
He described *about his house.” *[Ø]
The example of error found here is the unnecessary preposition “about”. It is shown that the student writer
encountered a problem with the unnecessary insertion of a word. This error results from L1 lexical interference
when the learner employs a direct translation from Thai (Keaw Kub in Thai) to English (about). It can be
assumed from this error that it is caused from the direct translation of Thai collocation into English because it
sounds correct.
However, the sources of errors committed by EFL writer are complex and some of them don’t reflect an isolated
factor. When taking into account intralingual error, this unnecessary insertion “about” may result from false
analogy (James, 1998). This is because some writers may learn that it is correct when the word “about” is
collocated with the word “talk” and “think” to form the collocations “talk about” and “think about”.
Consequently, it may be wrongly assumed that the word “describe” also needs this preposition. This unnecessary
insertion is also found in the word “discuss”.