Analysis Of Writing Errors And Its Pedagogical Implications For Activities-Based Teaching Of College English Writing

In EFL situation, the college English teaching has been criticized for being"time-consuming and low-in-proficiency". In the case of writing, the problem is not only concerned with efficiency, but the long-lasting poor performance on the students'part. However, writing as a output skill is becoming a more and more urgent need for college students to improve on their own. Since it has been regarded as perfectly justified for the teacher to correct errors in students'compositions, many teachers have taken great pains in correcting their compositions so that the exercise paper is often covered with corrections in red ink, without doubting whether their pains will be duly rewarded.In this thesis, one hundred and twenty sophomores of Jilin XX University were selected as the subjects in that they were different in English proficiency, their errors covering a wide range of types, which can make the result of the present study more valid and reliable. The writer takes advantage of error statistics in analyzing students'writing and an open questionnaire to classify their writing errors into different categories and analyze the reasons, then propose some effective writing strategies on correcting the errors at English class. We can alter the teacher-do-all-the-correcting method and adopt many alternative methods to face up to errors in English compositions in order to cultivate students'interest in autonomic learning, as well as to enhance their writing capabilities.The first chapter gives a brief introduction to the thesis. The second chapter lists some literature review about error analysis, process-oriented approach, and activity theory. The third chapter mentions the methods the writer intends to use in the research process, including sample collection, questionnaire, data analysis. The fourth chapter is the main body of the thesis. It describes in details the errors in students'composition and analyzes the main types and causes of errors in students'writing, then is concerned with the general principles for activities-based college English writing courses on basis of error analysis.The fifth chapter is the pedagogical implication for EFL writing. First, it is involved in appropriate attitudes as to error and error correction of student's writing; in addition, some activities as to effectively correct errors in students'essays designed by the writer are presented in this chapter, which can reinforce their interest and confidence in the writing process. Main research questions:1. What are the classifications of errors appeared in college English students'writing?2. How to use class activities to facilitate students'writing effectively?...