The main objective of this study is to examinernsome of the causes and occurrences of the spelling errorsrnof the freshmen Ethiopian students and thereby accounfforrnthese errors.rnAccording to Error Analysis (EA) theories and interlanguagern(IL) studies, the learners' errors are developmentalrnand systematic by nature. The systematicity inrnthe error data indicates a more or less natural progressionrn(development) in the learners' acquisition of Englishrnlanguage showing adherence to "learner-generated' or 'builtin'rnsyllabus" (see Cord8r 1981) i.e. the stages of developmentrnin learning English.rnTo verify the claims of EA and IL studies with rega~rnto the occurrences of the learners' spelling, a total ofrn140 freshmen Ethiorian students with differing mother-tonguern(MT) and backgrounds were given two tests i,e, dictation andrncomposition writing. The same composition tests were alsorngiven to 24 multilingual group of children at the EnglishrnCommunity School (ECS).rnThe spelling errors obtainerl from each test written byrnthe Ethiopian group were superficially classified intorncategories induced by the error types, These errors werernthen further classified into the clearest error patternsrnthat emerged and were given psycholinguistic explanations.rn!! -rn- ii -rnThese patterns were cross-checked with the nature ofrnthe spelling errors obtained from the ECS group of children.rnMoreover, spelling error patterns ~f the Ethiopian grouprnwere compared to the sta~es in the developmental spellingrnerrors of the native (English) children thAt Marr,o Woodrnhas 8sta~lished.rnThe result of this study, therefore, revealed thatrnthe spelling errors of the freshmen Ethiopian studentsrncould be accounted for by three factors namely: (a) thosernerrors directly related to LI interference upon TL (English)rn(b) those errors of intralingual confusions (c) thosernerrors caused by LI interference but also reinforced byrnintralin~ual confusion.rnMoreover. the soellins errors of the freshmen grouprnmatched si~nificantly, with the phonetic and transitionalrnstages of developmental spellin~ errors established by Wood.rnThe majority of the error patterns were also found out tornbe similar to the nature of the ECS group of children. Inrnaddition. it was found that stud3nts are likely to makernless spelling errors in composition than in dictationrnwritin~ tests when the error percentages are computedrna~ainst words correctly spelt in these tssts.