Error Analysis Of University Art Students’ English Writing

Writing is one of the important skills in English learning. In writing learningprocess, the learners may make different kinds of errors. Although the learners’English writing errors have been studied many times, a large proportion of thestudies are about the writing errors of English or non-English majors, or vocationalcollege students. Researches on the English writing errors of art and physicaleducation university students (hereinafter referred to as Art students) are notcommon. Compared with other majors’ students in universities, Art students’English is relatively poor. There are many errors in Art students’ English writing,but they have great room to improve in English learning. Therefore, it is necessaryto study the Art students’ English writing errors.On the basis of the theories of Error Analysis, Interlanguage, and LanguageTransfer, the author attempts to analyze Art students’ English writing errorscomprehensively and systematically. The aim of this study is to analyze thecollege Art students’ English writing errors and to explore the causes of errors andthe solutions to reducing errors. This study is designed to answer three questions:(1) What are the common errors in Art students’ English writing?(2) What are thecauses of Art students’ English writing errors?(3) How to reduce the Art students’English writing errors?The research subjects of this study are the Art students from ShenyangNormal University. The author selected60Art students as the subjects. They arefrom two natural classes: one majors in physical education and the other majors insculpture. Either of the class consists of30students. The author assigned threewriting tasks to the Art students, collected their English compositions as researchtexts, summed up the Art students’ common writing errors and main manifestations of the errors. Meanwhile, the author designed questionnaire andinterviews with the purpose of getting more information about the Art students’writing situation. According to the analysis of the sample writings, questionnaireand interviews, the author obtains the following results.1) The Art students usually make five types of errors: lexical errors, syntaxerrors, discourse errors, cultural errors, and other errors.2) There are mainly four possible causes of Art students’ writing errors:students’ learning strategy; teachers’ teaching strategy; English language learningenvironment; Art students’ affective factors.3) A number of measures to reduce errors can be taken:①The Art studentsshould pay more attention to the differences between Chinese and English, and trytheir best to avoid the negative transfer of mother tongue; learn some writingstrategies and put them into practice.②Teachers should offer adequate andeffective writing guidance and teach more cultural knowledge.③Schools andteachers work together to create a favorable language learning environment.④Students enhance their motivation of English learning; teachers help studentsreduce and overcome anxiety, and give them positive evaluation, to strengthentheir confidence in English learning.In summary, the author analyzed the Art students’ English writing errors,found out the causes of errors and gave the solutions to reducing errors. The authorhopes that the study can give English teachers some pedagogical implications andpromote English writing teaching.