Th e main objective of this study is to examinernsome of the causes and occurrences of the spelli ng errorsrnof the freshmen Ethiollian students and thereby accoun' forrnthese 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' acquisiti on of Englishrnlanguage showing adherence to "learner- ge nerated' or 'builtinrn' syllabus" (see Corder 1981) i.e , the stages of develop mentrnin learning English.rnTo verify the claims of EA and IL studies with regardrnt o the occurrences of the learners' spelling .. a total ofrn140 freshmen Ethiorian students with differing mother-tonguern(~T) and backgrounds were given two tests i,e, dict ation andrnoomposition writing. The same composition t ests were alsorngi ven to 24 multilingual. grour of ohildren at the EnglishrnCommunity School (ECS).rnThe spelling errors obtained from each test written byrnthe Ethiopian group were superficially cl a ssified intorncategories induced by the err or types. Th ese errors werernthen furth er classified into the clea rest error patternsrnthat emerged and were given psycholinguist i c exp l an ations .These patterns we r e cross- ch ec ked with the nature o frnthe s pe llin g e rrors obt a ined from the ECS Vr o up of children.rnMor eo ve r , spelling e rror patt erns ~ f th e Ethi op ian g rou prnwere comp a r ed t o the s t afes in the de ve l opme nt al spellingrnerrors of the native (En g li sh) children th a t Marr,n Woodrnhas e st a ~lish e d .rnThe r es ult of this study, th e r e f ore , revealed thatrnthe sp e llin g e rrors of th e fres hmen Ethi opian studentsrncould be ac count od f o r by three f actors namely: (a) thosernerrors directly r e l a t ed to Ll interference upo n TL (En glish)rn(b) those e rrors cf intra lin gual confusions (c) thosernerrors caused by Ll int e rfe r e nc e but a lso r e inforced byrnintralin ~ ual confusi on .rnMoreover, the soe llin? Grrors of the fre s hmen grouprnmatch ed s i ~ nific a ntl y, with th e phonetic a nd transitionalrnstages of deve l opme nt a l spellin ~ e rrors estab li shed by Wood.rnThe majority of the err o r patterns we r e also found out t ornbe similar to the nature of th e ECS group of children. Inrnadditi o n , it was found that stud ents are like l y to makernless sp e lling errors in composition th a n in dictationrnwritin~ tests wh en th e e rror perc e nta ge s are computedrna~ainst words co rrectly spe lt in these tests.