Research On Error And Its Correction In English Compositions Of College Students

In English learning, writing is always difficult for Chinese teachers of English and students, so errors appearing in students' written works arc their focus. English and Chinese belong to two different language families, between which a great difference in grammar, syntax, culture etc. exists. Thus, Chinese students feel hard to avoid committing errors in their English writing works. With the guidance of Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis, the paper carries out an analysis of English compositions of Chinese college students, and puts forward some methods of error correction. The author first reviews the development of Error Analysis, Intel-language Theory and Contrastive Rhetoric, and then analyzes errors on the level of lexicon, grammar and discourse in the compositions of college students, using questionnaire study etc.. The research findings show that "Mother tongue interference is the main cause of errors in the foreign language learning of intermediate learners."and "Grammatical errors are not as prevalent as errors involving usage, lexical choice, and various sorts of discourse errors". Following this, the author puts forward specific ways of eliminating errors caused by interference and discourse errors, as well as approaches to correcting compositions of different genres. The author hopes that these methods of eliminating and correcting compositions are of great help to English writing teaching in China. Finally, suggestions are given on further research.