An Analysis On Lexical Errors In Non-English Major's Writing

It is well known that one can not learn a language without committing errors. As a branch of applied linguistics,error analysis has undoubtedly made great contributions to the study of second language learning. It not only has enriched the research achievements of second language teaching methodology, but also helped the teacher know about the learner's linguistic competence and learn about how far towards the teaching goal the leaner has progressed.Besides the study helps both the teacher and the language learner locate the difficult points in the target language so they can get prepared to acquire the language in a more oriented way.Though much research has been done on the errors in college students'writing,studies on lexical errors in writing are still insufficient.As a result, the study collected 110 compositions written by non-English major students. And it focuses on the lexical errors and tries to discuss from the following three aspects:(a) What are the major types of lexical errors in the students'compositions;(b) What are the sources of the errors;(c) What is the implication to vocabulary teaching?The result of this study shows that the major errors in the students'compositions are spelling errors, assumed synonym and mix-up of parts of speech. The types of spelling errors are mainly misselection, omission, adding, overinclusion, blending and misordering. The reasons that students make spelling errors are the students'overgeneralization of the phonological rules they have mastered,and the students'failure to tell the difference between forms with similar pronunciations or similar spellings.Assumed synonymy is mainly caused by negative transfer from Chinese, communication strategies and overgeneralization. The errors of mix-up of parts of speech mainly happen when students misuse nouns as verbs, nouns as adjectives, adjectives as adverbs or vice versa. The causes of mix-up of parts include the following three points: firstly, students are influenced by Chinese which does not distinguish different parts of speech very strictly; secondly, students cannot use their knowledge of parts of speech correctly and proficiently; thirdly, students feel safer and more confident to use some parts of speech which they tend to use more even when it is wrong to do so.After the discussion of the data, this study finds some implication for vocabulary teaching. Teachers should help students to change the wrong ideas about vocabulary learning and try to avoid lexical errors. In the process of teaching vocabulary, the teacher should make some comparisons between the words which share similar spellings or similar meaning, provide more reading materials for the students. Furthermore teachers should encourage the students to use English-English dictionary instead of electronic dictionary, give up the teaching of a word list and help the students to memorize the words in an appropriate way.