Abstract:
This study aims to investigate the most frequent punctuation and
capitalization errors made by EFL learners and to find out whether there
were significant differences in the frequency of such errors due to the
learners’ academic level, major, and / or gender. The sample consisted of
157 students from the English Department of Hebron University/ Palestine
in the academic year 2014/2015. Specially designed test was administered
whereby the students were asked to fill in necessary punctuation marks and
to correct capitalization errors. The results revealed that the most frequent
errors were made in capitalization, comma, semicolon, period, quotation,
hyphen, apostrophe, and the question mark respectively from the highest to
the lowest occurrence. Unexpectedly, there were no significant differences in
the frequency of the punctuation and capitalization errors made by the
students due to their academic level, major, or gender.
