A Study Of The Interlanguage Error Analysis In Business English Writing

In Selinker's (1972) view, the languages used by second language learners should be seen as an internal language system, not mere linguistic errors. This language system is called by Selinker "interlanguage", which structurally features both native language and target language. Interlanguage is always in its development and is approaching to the target language. However, the errors are inevitable between native language and target language, the process of foreign language learning is a process of creating interlanguage, developing interlanguage and inherently correcting errors,therefore, in accordance with error analysis, which is based on interlanguage theory, language teachers should regard errors as the guide on the road to target language and make them transfer to standard and decent target language, then improve the cross-cultural communication competence of the second language learners.This thesis provides an overview of interlanguage concepts and related researches, taking the errors made by college students majoring in business English in Chinese language environment as the starting point. During the process of the study, the thesis adopts the qualitative and quantitative research method to analyze and classify the errors made by students in the business English writing, such as lexical errors, syntactic errors and discourse structure errors. By means of applying the theory of interlanguage and error analysis into foreign language writing teaching,this thesis focuses on generalizing and analyzing the common errors in college students' business English writing. Through applying the error correction routine teaching, the students are guided properly to find and correct the mistakes by themselves and the teachers are given suggestions on designing accurate and effective business English teaching to reform teaching methods and improve the students'business English writing ability.The thesis consists of four chapters except introduction and conclusion. The first part presents a brief introduction to the whole study. Chapter One is a literature review of Interlanguage theory and some related error analysis researches, which includes definitions of Interlanguage and error analysis,and the related researches at home and abroad. Chapter Two illustrates the interlanguage theory,error analysis theory,their development and the necessity of this research. Chapter Three introduces the methodology of the study, and gives a detailed description and statistical analysis from the aspects of lexical, syntactic and discourse structure, which are based on the collected materials from the daily writing assignments by college students. And the results are discussed and compared in detail, with the help of which, the author finds out the reasons and sources of errors made by Chinese English learners in the business English writing. Chapter Four analyzes its implications for teaching and learning business English writing in vocational and technical colleges. According to students' poor foundation in writing, we should strengthen the basic knowledge in business English teaching. Vocabulary, syntax and discourse are three key elements, and they are the most important means of communicating and writing. The Conclusion part concludes the major findings, limitations of this study and the need for future research in this field.