Discourse Error Analysis: A Study Of Chinese Students' English Writing At Advanced Level

The paper aims to identify, from the perspective of discourse, what hinders Chinese students at advanced level from writing effective argumentative writings in English. Through a study of 20 English argumentative writings written by Chinese EFL learners attending a four-year state university, errors on discourse level are analyzed in light of the theories of error analysis and discourse analysis. The results show that writings of advanced learners, though contain a lower number of errors at word- or sentence-level, are abundant in errors of discourse-level properties such as thesis presentation, paragraph development which includes topic sentence statement, supporting information, inter-clause relations, specification of certain general ideas, etc. It is argued in this paper that such errors are major factors that degrade the quality of the Chinese students' English writings and are the ones that cause great difficulty for native speakers to comprehend what the writer writes.The results found in this paper are consistent with previous studies showing that language reflects thinking. The paper suggests that Chinese students' incapability in composing effective English discourse structure might be caused by their different ways in thinking and organizing texts. Thus it might be fair to say that different thinking patterns are the root to grow problems in writing. Discussion on different thinking patterns proves to be a promising field for discourse error analysis. In raising the students' discourse awareness, the paper argues, teachers should be responsible to help them pay attention to the thinking habit in English.