Abstract:
Pastoralist education in Kenya is riddled with a myriad of problems, key among them being the harsh climatic
conditions that deter students from attending school regularly. Learners of English as a Second Language (ESL)
in Kenya are immersed into learning English alongside the first language and Kiswahili at primary school level.
However, despite the long exposure of approximately ten years on average, secondary school students do not
learn to accurately use English as a mode of communication. This study focused on establishing the difficulties
secondary school Maasai pastoralist learners in Kajiado County, Kenya face while learning English as a
second language. It focused on identifying learners’ errors, the frequency of occurrence and the sources of
errors. The study adopted a descriptive research approach. The target population consisted of secondary school
students aged between 13-20 years within the pastoralist Maasai community who often move in search of
pasture and water for their livestock and whose school attendance is quite unpredictable. A sample of 100
students was purposively selected from forms 1, 2, 3 and 4. They were then asked to write compositions on
selected topics. Content analysis and interviews were used to determine the errors and their sources in the
written compositions. Findings indicate that learners make errors which are prevalent in all levels of linguistic
analysis though the highest number of errors occur at the syntactic level. Findings further indicate that learners
make interlingual errors because of transfer from mother tongue and intralingual due to overgeneralization,
incomplete application of rules, ignorance of rule restrictions and false concepts.
Keywords: Error Analysis, English as a Second Language, Pastoralist Learners.
