An Error Analysis Of English Writing Of Uyghur College Preparatory Students

China is a unified multi-ethnic country.Apart from the Han ethnic group,55 ethnic minorities live in all parts of the country,while ethnic minorities make up about 8%of China’s total population.Since the reform and opening up,remarkable achievements have been made in English teaching in China.However,due to the long-term economic,geographical and cultural factors,the educational level of ethnic minorities,especially that of English,still lagged behind other regions.As English becomes an international language in the world,the importance of English is self-explanatory.English is also important for minority students,among ethnic minority English learners in China,Uyghur students living in Xinjiang have their own characteristics.First of all,Uyghur students have their own language,Uyghur language,and they have learned Chinese in the process of formal schooling.Among all the factors that influence Uyghur students’English learning,the Chinese language just like a bridge that links their mother tongue and English,its impact and role is far-reaching,so their English learning is greatly influenced by bilingual interference.Based on the error analysis,this study analyzes and explains the errors found in their writing tests as to provide useful suggestions and references for the English teaching of Uyghur students.The study is based on the theories of contrastive analysis,error analysis and interlanguage theory,the author chooses 30 Uyghur students from Xinjiang Preparatory Class in Northwest Normal University as the research subjects.And in a whole semester,they are given three English writing tests.The first writing test is distributed at the beginning of the semester,students were required to write an English composition of no less than 80 words;the second writing test is distributed in the middle of the semester,students were required to complete an English writing of no less than 100 words;The third writing test is scheduled at the end of the semester,they are required to write an English composition of no less than 120 words.All English writings should be accomplished within 30 minutes in class.Then,the author conducted the study on the basis of informal interviews and statistical description,and conduct error analysis of their English writings in order to answer the following research questions:(1)What are the main types of errors in Uyghur students’ English writings?(2)Are there any changes of the errors committed by Uyghur students in the process of their English learning?If so,what are the features and possible reasons of the changes?In this study,some preliminary results are obtained as follows:(1)Uyghur students often commit errors in English writing,such as intralingual errors and interlingual errors;the proportion of intralingual errors is higher than that of interlingual errors;among intralingual errors,most of which are committed because of ignorance of rule restriction,while most of interlingual errors are caused by interference from L2.In addition,grammatical errors are mostly committed among all the errors(2)After a semester of study and teaching,the number of Uyghur students’ writing errors,especially the number of intralingual errors has decreased gradually,the average score of writing gradually increased.With the advancement of students’English learning,the downward trend of intralingual errors is faster than that of interlingual errors.There are six parts in this study:The first part introduces the background,purpose and significance of the study,highlighting the particularity of Uyghur students’English learning.The second part is a review of the literature reviewing the development of the theory of TLA,with particular reference to the study of Uyghur students’ tri-linguistic learning,as well as a review of studies on the English-learning of minority students at home and abroad,especially in China.The third part is the theoretical basis,focusing on the theories that is related to the research:comparative analysis theory,error analysis theory and language transfer theory.The fourth part is the research design,focusing on the subjects of this study,research questions,instruments and research procedures.The fifth part is the result and discussion,mainly for statistical analysis of the relevant data.The sixth part is conclusion.In this part,the author mainly summarized the findings of the study,and put forward the pedagogical implications,pointed out the limitations of the research and provided some suggestions for the future research.