An Analysis Of Linguistic Errors In Uyghur College Students' English Writings

No one can learn a foreign language without committing errors in the process of second language learning. Error analysis, as a branch of Applied Linguistics, undoubtedly plays an important role in the study of second language teaching and learning. Based on the theory of Error Analysis (EA), the research makes an empirical study on linguistic errors in Uyghur students'English written production. The underlying objective of the present study has been to reveal different kinds of linguistic errors reflected in students'written production in an effort to understand some difficult points and provide some valuable information for English teaching and learning in Xinjiang minority areas.Most of the research of EA in China has been conducted on EFL learners'writing. My research on error analysis might be one of the initial attempts in China, which bring error analysis together with Uyghur and Chinese bilingual English learners. This thesis deals with the English written production of thirty Uyghur freshmen and sophomores of English majors from Foreign Languages Department of Xinjiang Ili Normal College. The students'writing and translation assignments are collected to identify, categorize, quantify the errors and make an analysis of these linguistic errors with interviews. The statistical analysis of the results indicates that (1) the most frequently occurring errors are the grammatical errors,followed by lexical errors. Discourse errors take the third place among all the four types of errors. Substance errors are the least. (2) Intralingual and interlingual errors are the main causes of errors. (3) We also find that the errors made by Uyghur students also have their own underlying characteristics in English learning in comparison with Han Chinese students. The particularity lies in the language interference in interlingual errors. The interlingual errors are caused by the two languages --- both Uyghur and Chinese. That's bilingual interference. Finally,the author puts forward implications from the perspective of writing class teaching,textbooks and teaching staff to better English teaching and learning for minority students .