Comparative Study On Error Analysis In The English Writings Of Yi And Han Nationality College Students

In China, English is consciously learned in classes with the unnatural environment. As the students come from different language families, and the target language, English, is quite different from Chinese so that errors are inevitable for foreign language learners in China, especially for the minority English language learners. As one of the major minorities in China, Yi people speak their own mother tongue and develop their own culture. Yi students start learning both their native language formally and Chinese from primary school, and then begin learning the third language: English, from junior middle school. The language learning burden for them is so heavy that their learning motive force is not enough and learning progress is unsatisfactory. Therefore, because of their previous weak English learning basis, most Yi college students can not make advances, neither can they develop positive attitude toward target language compared with students from developed cities. College English,as an auxiliary discipline for non-English major students, results in more awkward English learning situation for Yi college students at present.Writing is one of the key outputs in foreign language learning, and also the most difficult and complicated task in the five skills of language competence for most college students, especially Yi college students. Under such situation, the writer carried out a comparative study on error analysis in the English writings of Yi and Han nationality students. Previously, researchers in both western countries and China have employed Error Analysis(EA) to investigate learners'language learning to discover how learners acquire a second language. For example, Polizer and Ramirez (1973) provided a comprehensive way of EA on the second language learners from three aspects: morphology, vocabulary and syntax, while Burt and Kiparskey(1978) investigated word coinage in English learning process. Some Chinese researchers, such as Lou Baocui (2001) and Gui Shichun(2003) also have made some relative studies on EA for the second language acquisition. Moreover, some postgraduates in Xihua University have done research on the English learning of Yi students: Chen Mei(2006) discussed the feasibility of the multicultural curriculum English for cultural tourism, Cao, Younan(2006) and Huang Jing(2006) have done a contrastive study of English and YI on lexical and syntactic structures respectively, Wang Gangyi(2009) has done EA of Yi students in using prepositions,etc. This thesis is a continuing exploration based on the previous studies of Yi students'English learning. The subjects of this study are Han and Yi college students, and the focus is the EA in their English compositions. The same writing task is given separately to Yi students in Southwest University for Nationalities and Han students in Xihua University. After collecting the writing samples, the writer, firstly, indentifies and collects the errors in the writing samples; and then does the error analysis and a comparative study. The thesis aims to discuss three points: 1. to find out some similar characteristics of the writing errors of Han and Yi college students; 2. to find out whether Yi students are affected by the language transfer; 3. to make sure, if the transfer does exist, which language plays greater role in the Yi students'language transfer.Through the comparative study of error analysis, the writer found some similarities and also some differences in Yi and Han college students' English writings. The language transfer of Yi students comes not only from Chinese language, but also from Yi language-their mother tongue. However, the effect of Chinese language transfer is far greater than Yi language transfer. Based on the error characteristics in Yi college students' writings, the writer puts forward some suggestions for teaching and research: the best way to improve Yi students'English learning is to train or cultivate some English teachers of Yi nationality, who also speak fluent Chinese; another efficient way is to make contrast and comparison of the three languages in the teaching process; finally, teachers try to take advantages of positive language transfer while avoid negative transfer when guiding the learners to move on.