BE-COPULA AND PREPOSITION OMISSION IN SOMALI L2 ENGLISH COMPOSITIONS

As a prospective Minnesota-licensed English as a second language (ESL) teacher, I believe that it is very important that the writing patterns of Somali students are studied because they are a major portion of the population of ESL learners in the state. This study examined three essays that were written by Somali students as part of their writing placement test for college. A plethora of issues were found, but the focus is on orthographic matters, the missing lexical auxiliary and the preposition . The orthographic matters include problems with spelling and capitalization, which are common in all three essays. The omission of the lexical auxiliary occurred in two of the essays, while the omission of the preposition was found in one essay. The paper explains what these issues are, what factors might have contributed to the issues, and what the issues mean for ESL teachers.