The writing skills of an English student are expected to be polished and best as compared to a student enrolled in some other field of study. English students are, therefore, expected to use error-free language. Their writing should be perfect and unambiguous in the sense of correct sentences and paragraphs. Talking about grammatically correct content, we mean that the rules of language must be followed properly. Semantically correct information means that it should be unambiguous and more comprehensive. The students are supposed to fulfill these requirements and produce a cohesively and coherently correct text. On the contrary, we notice that English students still lack the competence of language rules and their proper implementation. The most repeated errors they commit are subject-verb agreement and the production of unstructured sentences. According to linguists, subject-verb agreement pattern plays a significant role in producing correct sentences (Al-Faki, 2023; Khan et al., 2021).

A simple subject-verb agreement definition implies that the subject of the sentence and the verb of the sentence must be in agreement in number and person.

Let's take an example to understand this concept. The boy is playing with his ball. So here the boy is the subject and is,' is the verb singular. So both the subject and verb are in agreement. In addition, for plurals like, the boys are playing with their ball. In this case, the subject of the sentence is ''boys, and the verb used is plural in nature their ball. So with a plural subject, there would be a plural verb in agreement. Errors are analyzed under the lens of error analysis, particularly concerning the errors that occurred in the S-V agreement. Troike (2006) has talked and explained error analysis to study SLA which focuses on the learner's ability to construct language.

His study also suggested some solutions to avoid these errors. Unfortunately, his research is quite extensive but has not eminently and entirely dealt with errors that occurred in the present tense. Similarly, Brown (2000) has examined the errors but did not provide applicable strategies to overcome these errors.

To examine the errors and their sources the researchers will collect data from undergraduate students of English and will analyze submitted assignments of all the selected students. After analysis, the data will be presented in tabular form with mentioning percentage for each error. In terms of error analysis at this level, this study will enhance the students' misperceptions of grammatical rules which are fossilized. This research will also provide an exclusive idea of correcting these errors and offer a few possible techniques for the teachers.

Error analysis, in applied linguistics, majorly deals with intricate structures of a language, the compilation of such errors, and its analysis. Undergraduate students are supposed to commit more errors than graduated students and this is because they are still in the learning stage. Many researchers like Chomsky (1965) and Anefnaf (2017) have found different types of errors at different levels, however, this research aims to investigate the errors of undergraduate students regarding subject-verb agreement and the possible reasons for it. This research offers a profound understanding of grammatical errors and their solutions which will help language teachers eliminate their students' errors.

The study of errors in academic writing is a vast field to be undertaken but this research is limited to the analysis of errors in S-V agreement. This research is particularly conducted on investigating the relationship of subject and verb in terms of their agreement. Because it is a common mistake that students do not bother with. To maintain the focus, this study is delimited to subject-verb agreement only and the data is collected from 30 students of BS English at Malakand University Chakdara.

According to researchers like Chomsky (1965), and Richard (2002) ESL learners in speaking and writing make many grammatical errors. The most common errors that learners commit are the misuse of subject-verb agreement and the production of unstructured sentences. These errors are mostly prominent in writings at all levels. Errors in writing affect the quality of the paper as well as give a bad impression to the readers. Similarly, the improper structure of sentences leads to incomprehensive and meaningless ideas (Khan, 2008; Usman & Fatima, 2022). As these errors are very prominent therefore researchers are trying to overcome these errors by giving solutions while finding out the reasons behind these errors. The researchers are conducting practical research in schools and colleges to find out the reasons.

Shami (2014) has discussed only two types of sources of errors namely; errors because of the transfer within a language and errors because of the language code switching and code mixing. According to Shami, inter-lingual errors occur due to the language transfer. By language transfer, he implies the mixing of indigenous language structures and expressions with that of the target language. Those elements are; phonological, morphological, grammatical, lexical-semantic.

Fauziati (2009) proposed some principles of error analysis that must be considered to analyze the S-V agreement errors by undergraduate students. The research is divided into different steps, firstly, data is collected, secondly categorized, and then analyzed according to the theory. Then areas of difficulty are identified and finally, sources of errors are identified.

Anefnaf (2017), has conducted research to trace the reason why students make S-V relational mistakes. He concluded that even students of postgraduate level commit errors in S-V agreement. It has been concluded that students commit subject-verb agreement practicing all types of subject-verb agreement errors. The researchers feel it necessary to find some solid solutions to overcome these errors.

Rodrigue (2015) also conducted a study to analyze this type of error. Resultantly, he concludes that mostly singular and plural verbs are mistaken and students have made some serious S-V relational mistakes. For him, it required some detailed explanations. He concluded that some learners are unable to identify the subject of the sentence and for them, it is difficult to know whether the subject is singular or plural, that's why they make errors in subject-verb agreement.

Tafida and Okunade (2016) analyzed the sentence-structure errors among English as Second Language Learners. Their study shows that students more often commit errors by producing unstructured sentences in their academic writing. The study shows that students mostly try to produce lengthy sentences by merging more than one idea in a single sentence which leads to unstructured sentences. Such type of sentences makes it difficult to comprehend the intended meaning of an author (Rahman & Zafar, 2023).

Researchers like Hendrickson, J.M. (1987) and Norrish, J. (1983), have researched the very topic of errors made by students and second language learners in particular and have proposed pertinent and possible solutions. According to Brown teachers must be aware of the techniques and whether they fit the materials to transfer them successfully or not.

Ibrahim (2017) in his study focuses on finding out the errors in S-V agreement of Language students. He has mainly aimed at the solution of the errors committed. Though the research is somehow similar to my research, such research has not dealt with the undergraduate students of BS, where students are supposed to have a strong grip on the second language. As mentioned there are many scholars who did research on this problem but none of them has dealt with the problem at this level (English BS level Students). Secondly, many researchers have provided reasons for subject-verb agreement errors, but no in-depth investigation has been carried out to date. Thus, this research will pinpoint the most prominent reason behind the subject-verb agreement errors.

Though there are many researchers like Hasim (1999), Fang and J, and Xeu-mei (2007), who tried to find out the reasons why students make errors in subject-verb agreement, still they are unable to explain it more explicitly. Moreover, some of them did not come up with a proper solution for these errors, instead, they just analyzed the errors and discussed the reasons with already existing traditional solutions. Also, in the Pakistani context, we noticed that work has been done on these problems up to the school and college level, but the BS level needed focus. So, I have oriented the research in this direction.

The purpose of the present study is to examine and analyze BS English students' academic writings and to find out the mistakes committed by the BS students in S-V agreement in their writings. It will examine to what extent these errors are repeated. The study will also trace the hidden reasons behind these errors and suggest some practical solutions that will help the learners in the future.

This study is considered a road to the language learners' minds. After knowing what error analysis is, to have a comprehensive understanding of the research, the reader must have a clear concept of the difference between a mistake and an error. A mistake is because of the lack of attention while an error is a more often use of the incorrect version. Mistakes can be because of fatigue or lack of attention while error is an accepted mistake out of ignorance of the real structure. For the very topic "error analysis of subject-verb agreement I have selected the Error analysis theory of Ellis (1997). According to Ellis (1997), error and mistake can be differentiated in multiple ways, firstly, by the comprehension of whether the anomaly has shown regularly or oftentimes. If the deviation from rules is shown often it would be considered a mistake, and if it is consistently done throughout the text it would be an error. The other way is to let the students correct themselves, if they could correct themselves, they might have committed mistakes and vice versa.

Error analysis has been used as lenses to analyze the errors of S-V agreement. Such errors are classified by different researchers and scholars. James (1998) and Fauziati (2009) have categorized different errors made by the student, their major categories are discussed as follows. Firstly, the errors are based on how learners change the surface structures of the target language when they use it in the wrong ways or use the incorrect structures. The first type of error is an omission of an item that must have been part of the regular traditional structures, for example, the omission of verb inflections in present simple tense and the use of plural suffixes, for instance, the absence of s or es, with singular subjects and with indefinite pronouns. Sometimes uncountable nouns are used with plural verbs and vice versa, for example, He speak English well. The second type of error is the error of additional affixation to the root words. Such errors disturb the traditional syntax, and structure of the sentence, for instance, the presence of different or incorrect auxiliary verbs, or main verbs with the respective subject. E.g. I will learns English. Mis-formation is the third type of error which is mostly noted by the students in their academic writings. This error consists of the regulation of archaic forms and the use of incorrect pronouns on the basis of gender. The best example of this error is when students use her for he, him for she, etc. Another type of error that is noted is misordering errors. When in an utterance, a morpheme is placed incorrectly.

It is a mixed-method research where both qualitative and quantitative methods are incorporated. It is qualitative in terms that the researchers will analyze the data and will explain it with possible arguments while in terms of quantitative, the researchers look forward to collecting the number of errors in each assignment, their ratio in overall assignments, and percentages of errors. Secondly, a questionnaire will be designed to know the sources of S-V agreement errors. The researchers look for the possible errors committed by the BS English students in their academic writings. The focus is all laid on S-V agreement errors. For error analysis, data would be collected from the students of BS English at Malakand University and their academic writing assignments would be analyzed for errors to find out the possible techniques to cope with these errors.

BS English fourth semester Malakand University students have committed different S-V agreement errors. It answers the first point of the research objectives. These errors were analysed on the model provided by Corder which is a 5-step model that is;

Selection of Sample: The sample as already discussed consists of assignments of 30 BS 4^TH semester, English students of Malakand University.

Types of Errors in S-V Agreement

SV1 -S-V Agreement of Person

SV2 - S-V Agreement of Number

SV3 - S-V Agreement of Subject

SV4 - S-V Agreement of Coordinated Subject

SV5 - S-V Agreement of Notional Agreement and Proximity

(Corder, 1974, as cited in Ellis, 1986).

Table 5.1 shows different types of errors in the papers by BS ENG students at Malakand University Chakdara. The analysis indicated that students committed subject-verb agreement errors in four types of S-V agreement. These are SV1, SV2, SV3 and SV4. SV5 is an exceptional case in which no specific error is not yet classified. S-V agreement of person (SV1) is the case where the speakers are supposed to use the correct form of verbs. Correct verbs are used to agree with the pronouns used as the subjects in sentences. Some examples of SV1 problems seen in the papers analyzed are shown below.

For instance:

S-V agreement of numbers (SV2), according to the number of subjects used in the sentence the students are supposed to apply the correct use of verbs. Some examples of SV2 errors identified in the students' papers are shown below.

For Example

The third type of subject-verb agreement; subject-verb agreement with the indefinite subject, (SV3) demands the correct use of verbs for indefinite pronouns which are used as the subjects in sentences. Examples of SV3 errors in students 'papers.

For example:

The fourth type of S-V agreement is the case of a coordinated subject (SV4), which states the appropriate use of verbs when a subject includes two or more noun phrases coordinated by and or some other connecting word. Examples are:

There is no error identified for (SV5) type of S-V agreement. In a nutshell, one can conclude that students do commit such errors in the use of SV1, SV2, SV3, and SV4 in writing. On the other hand, they did not commit any error for SV5 which implies that the students produce the least sentences of such type therefore, no errors are being recorded.

Moving to the second objective of the research that is to find the most dominant reason for S-V agreement errors. There are three possible reasons for making subject-verb agreement errors. James (1998) highlighted three major reasons for S-V agreement errors. They are induced errors, intralingual errors, and interlingual errors.

Induced errors are those when the teacher is less concerned about grammatical rules and does not bother to teach students about subject-verb agreement. In this case, the students have little sources of knowledge therefore, commit errors in writing. In this research, the researchers found through the questionnaire that students responded to questions regarding induced errors where 50.8% of the subject-verb agreement errors occur because of the teacher's carelessness.

For Example:

The students were asked to respond to the following statements in a questionnaire:

I get rare feedback on subject-verb agreement errors from my teacher therefore, I am not efficient in identifying subject-verb agreement errors while writing.

To this statement out of 30 BS English students, 13 responded in the affirmative and the rest of 16 responded in negative i.e. did not agree to the statement.

Teachers lay more focus on the content of writing and emphasize less on grammar rules such as subject-verb agreement.

Now for this statement out of 30 students, 16 students replied in the affirmative and the rest responded in negative. There were other such questions asked too, from the responses the researchers concluded that one reason for making errors in S-V agreement is the phenomenon of induced errors where the instructor or the teacher might be responsible for the student's poor performance in the subject-verb agreement area.

Intralingual errors are those errors that a student commits when he has little knowledge of the second language rules or may find the second language rules difficult to understand or differentiate. This leads to the misuse of rules of the target language, it's a common phenomenon found in Second Language Acquisition. Richard, et al. (2002) 57.5% of responses were made for the statements asking for the intralingual errors as the main cause of the subject-verb agreement errors. Some of the statements asked in the questionnaire are:

I have learned the rules of subject-verb agreement but I am still unable to use them correctly.

To this statement out of 30 BS English students, 16 agreed to the statement and 14 replied in disagreement.

Subject-verb agreement rules are difficult to understand therefore I get confused while writing English and do not apply the rules accurately.

Here 19 students out of thirty (30) total students confirmed the given statement and the rest did not agree.

Intralingual errors are categorized by Corder into the following categories;

Overgeneralization: linguistically, overgeneralization occurs when the speaker unintentionally applies an ungrammatical rule where it does not fit grammatically. Richard et al, (2002) have mentioned that such errors are the being occurred because of the influence of indigenous language structures. The research has analyzed a few subject-verb agreement errors that directly point toward the students making overgeneralizations in the target language. For instance:

In this example made by one of the students from the sample has overgeneralized the rule of grammar, and has thus made the incorrect use of the verb i.e. instead of has, the student has written is. This is how subject-verb agreement error has been made from intralingual ambiguity.

Simplifications: On the level of spelling and grammar, such errors are mostly occurred with the addition and omission of certain linguistic units. From the papers of BS English students, the researchers have analyzed many such instances where subject-verb agreement errors are caused because of the omission or addition of linguistic elements.

Example for Omission:

In the following sentence, the verb "mean" is incorrect because alphabet "s" is missing or omitted from the word mean thus causing a subject-verb agreement error. There were many such errors in the papers of BS English students that occurred because of omission.

Example for addition:

In this example, the verb "means" is incorrect because of the addition of "s" to it. This addition is causing subject-verb agreement errors and making the sentence grammatically incorrect.

Interlingual errorsare those errors that occur because of language transfer or when the learners apply the rules of their native language to the target language. In this research, 48% of the responses from the students were in favor of interlingua errors when asked about it through a questionnaire.

The statements were:

My native language and English have different sentence structures therefore, when I write in English, I produce grammatically incorrect sentences.

To this statement out of 30 students, 14 responded in affirmative and the rest of the students replied in negative. Thus, the ratios of all three reasons i.e. induced errors, intralingual errors, and interlingual errors primarily imply that these are hindering the performance of second language learners mainly when it comes to the correct use of subject-verb agreement.

Figure 1

Chart 6.1 illustrates the percentage of each type of subject-verb agreement error found in the papers of BS English students. SV1 i.e. S-V agreement of person had 45.09% errors recorded in the written papers of the students. SV1 type error, therefore, is the most frequent error being committed by the students. It is an intralingual error mainly because of overgeneralization and simplification. Freeman (1983) confirms the existence of S-V agreement errors in undergraduate students, where the third-person singular forms are inflected while others are not.

S-V agreement of number (SV2) has been recorded as the second most frequently erred by the students of BS ENG. The percentage accounted for this type of error is 27.45%. The reason for such kind of errors is primarily due to misinformation and addition which is again an intralingual source of error. Whereas, the percentage of errors of S-V agreement of subject (SV3) and subject-verb agreement of coordinated subject (SV4) is the same i.e. 13.72%. Misinformation of the target language is the main reason for such types of errors. Subject-verb agreement of Notional Agreement and Proximity (SV5) type of errors were not found in the paper when analyzed.

Figure 2

The 6.2 chart illustrates the results of the percentage of sources of subject-verb agreement errors. The first source that induced errors had 50.8% affirmative responses from the students of BS English when asked through a questionnaire. From this result, it is obvious that it is the second most important source of producing subject-verb agreement errors. This is so because teachers often neglect to pinpoint the grammatical errors of students and therefore, students are unable to identify their errors. The first and most important source of subject-verb agreement error recorded from the analyzed data is intralingual errors. The percentage recorded for intralingual error sources is 57.5%. The result shows that the students usually have partial knowledge of the language they are learning and when it comes to the use of language, students mix up different grammatical and language rules either through omission, addition, miss-ordering, or misinformation. This little knowledge of a second language ultimately becomes the cause of subject-verb agreement errors. Then the third source for subject-verb agreement error is the interlingual error source which is the interference of native language. The affirmative responses for this source are the least as compared to induced and intralingual errors. The percentage recorded for this source is 48%. Thus, students commit S-V agreement errors not mainly because of an induced or intralingual phenomenon but also due to the interference of the first language.

This section answers the third objective of the research paper.

To reduce the harmful effects of induced errors source on students' second language acquisition it is necessary to indulge teachers in teacher assessment and evaluation. It's a criterion to evaluate and observe the current level of students' progress and revisits their teaching strategies by asking students opinion as well. Afterwards teacher should design the content and determine the best teaching strategies accordingly. This is the best way of providing feedback to the students and considering students' opinions on various difficulties and problems. Teachers can also assist the students in making their errors correct by providing a grammatical setting where activities are organized for the students regarding S-V agreement. This way the students can reduce errors in language for they would get feedback for their work.

To avoid subject-verb agreement errors the students should have engaged themselves in productive activity of reading and writing. Writing activities should be encouraged so to help students learn the rules of grammar including subject-verb agreement and its correct use in writing. Many students are used to plagiarizing the existing material from the web or other sources which results in making their writing skills poor and thus committing common errors like subject-verb agreement.

Another remedy to overcome subject-verb agreement errors is to make groups in the class. The group should be made in such a manner wherein each group one student who has good writing skills should be selected and assigned to each group. Then the team can work together on one topic where the student who is good at writing will mentor the rest of the students by pointing out their errors and then showing them the right way of writing sentences. This is the best way to tackle the issue of subject-verb agreement errors.

Interference of native language is said to be posing an issue for students in producing error-free sentences. From the very start, the teacher should employ such a strategy where a second language should be taught separately from the native language. The teacher should not give examples based on native language. This way the students start comparing the two languages and their structures. This later proves fatal for the learners because they cannot produce sentences separately from the native language and thus leads to general errors like subject-verb agreement errors.

Some students know the rules of English, but their knowledge and understanding are limited and partial. They get confused while writing and mix up the rules of grammar and other language rules of English. It is important to focus on the full understanding of the rules of English grammar so as to apply them accurately in writing.

At the BS English level, the students are expected to write error-free English and one cannot expect common errors like subject-verb agreement errors from these students. After conducting this research, it is found that students commit these common and simple errors of subject-verb agreement. They are not fully proficient in applying the rules of English language structures and grammatical rules and, therefore, face difficulty in this area. Apart from focusing solely on the content of writing the teacher or instructor should also stress the correct use of grammar such as subject-verb agreement. As Siddique (2007) rightly concluded teachers' attitudes can contribute to the solution of such errors, a teacher should give positive and appreciative feedback to encourage students to participate in the grammatical activities. The teacher should make regular assessments and identify the errors of the students regarding subject-verb agreement and design such activities in the classroom where students can easily overcome the problem of subject-verb agreement. Thus, it is both the teachers' and students' responsibility to play their part in knowing the errors and then finding ways to correct those errors. This way the students can learn to write efficiently and can get mastery in English language.