An Analysis Of The Linguistic Errors In Non-English Majors' Writing

Error analysis as a branch of Applied Linguistics, undoubtedly has made much contribution to the study on second language learning. It not only throws some light on the process of second language learning, but also helps us gain some insights into the strategies the learner employs in the learning process. A careful study of the errors will reveal the common characteristics shared by the language learners, which is believed to be of great help to both the language teachers and the language learners.Though much research has been done on the errors in EFL learners' writings, statistical studies of the errors are still insufficient especially in the Chinese ESL context. With the help of SPSS, the present study explored the common linguistic errors of the Chinese college non-English majors' writings. Seventy-one students' compositions were first collected, and then the linguistic errors in them were recognized and then put into five categorizes. The statistical analysis of the results indicates that (1) the most frequently occurring errors were the lexical errors including wrong choice of words and wrong collocation, (2) the highest correlation between the five groups of errors was that between cohesion and Chinglish expressions, and (3) Chinglish expressions most significantly distinguished the high-score compositions from the low-score ones. Finally, causes of the above findings were analyzed and some remedial teaching methods were suggested.