Astudy Of Errors In Englishacademic Writing By Chinese Doctoral Students Of Science And Technology

With the increasingly important role of English as the international language, scholars all over the world are striving to publish papers in English so as to be involved in the international community of their research field. Nevertheless, international publication proves to be difficulty for those scholars who are Non-Native Speakers of English. China, a nation with the largest population of NNS, also boasts a large number of scholars who have made or will make contributions to the international academic community. Therefore, it's necessary to clear the barriers in the way of their international publication.The present study aims to analyze the errors in the English academic writing by Chinese doctoral students so as to smoothen their way towards international publication. Text analysis, interview and questionnaire are adopted in the study to identify the error types occurring in the manuscripts of doctoral students, the frequencies of those errors made by doctoral students as well as the underlying causes for those errors. Those errors are classified into two main categories, namely, structural errors and linguistic errors. Then, structural errors are classified according to the reviewer comments, while linguistic errors are classified by the tutors in the English Academic Writing Center at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). The specific errors are discussed in details by presenting examples or solutions.It is noted with interest that English literature plays a particularly significant role in their English academic writing. To begin with, most doctoral students find it difficult to review literature critically. Moreover, inadequate reading of English literature review proves to be the biggest cause for the errors made by them. Above all, most of them claim that they will turn to English literature when they encounter difficulties in their English academic writing. Implications are explained at the end of the thesis.