Analysis On Interlingual Errors In College English Writing

Error Analysis in second language acquisition has experienced ups and downs in the past decades and reached its resurgence in recent years. This dissertation is to research on interlingual errors in college English writing.The paper contains six parts. The beginning part gives a review and overlook on English learning in China and adoption of Error Analysis (EA) in college English teaching. Chapter two is the literature review on both theories of Contrastive Analysis (CA) and EA. Starting in the mid-twentieth century, CA intended to solve problems in L2 learning and teaching by comparing the acquisition of L1 and L2. In 1960s and 1970s, SLA research focus was transferred to the analysis of language errors made by learners. Broadly speaking, these errors are made either by the influence of learners' L1 or not. Like any other theories, EA has its limitations. It is based on the errors in SLA instead of the whole process of language acquisition, including positive and negative. Chapter three introduces the experiment in my dissertation, which specializes in interlingual errors made by college students with low intermediate language level in their writing. Chapter four analyzes some types of interlingual errors and provides ways of modification. Chapter five gives theoretical explanation to them. In addition, it arouses some reflections upon the typical interlingual errors. In the last part, conclusions are drawn that some interlingual errors can be reduced through persistent reinforcement and some cannot. Some interlingual errors can be seen in students of all level while some are more often made by students with comparatively poorer language ability. Further research on this aspect is to be expected.The results and conclusions of my research are more for pedagogic purpose. However, they are just a corner of an iceberg. More of SLA is waiting to be explored.