A survey of 34 professors teaching English as a second language in 20 Japanese universities elicited information about common errors in student writing. In open-ended questions, respondents identified 40 student error types, which were grouped into 18 categories. The most common problem category was sentence development, and other high-frequency categories, in descending order of occurrence, included subject-verb and number agreement, paragraph development, use of articles, and verbs. Implications for classroom instruction are considered briefly. Contains 11 references. (MSE)