FACTORS OF SEMANTIC ERRORS IN THE ENGLISH OF ESL LEARNERS

Semantics is the study about the ''toolkit" for meaning; knowledge encoded in the vocabulary (words and phrases) of the language and in its patterns for building more elaborate meaning, up to the level of sentence meanings (Griffiths, 2006). In accordance with the definition, the sematic errors cannot be avoided from the learners of English for Speaker of Other Language (ESOL). Therefore, The objective of this paper is to describe the common semantic errors made by ESOL learners in Malaysia and to fmd some factors why the learners did the errors in English. Therefore, the qualitative data were randomly collected from 20 students by using the diary note and documentation techniques. Furthermore, Oxford Advanced Leamer's Dictionary International Student's Edition was used as a tool to investigate whether the languages (words or phrases) are correct or error. Mter that, two native speakers were asked to validate whether the words or phrases made by the ESOL learners are error or not. Then, semi structured interview would be used to get the reason from the participants on why they did the errors. As a result, there are 20 English vocabularies commonly used by the ESOL learners and considered as sematic error. Moreover, there are three main causes why the learners get used to do the semantic errors in their English. In conclusion, the semantic errors do exist in the learners' English language. In so doing, English teacher should take an action to correct the students' English.