An Analysis Of Grammatical Errors In Yi College Students' English Writing

It is unavoidable for learners to make errors in the process of second language acquisition. Error Analysis (EA), as the name suggests, is the systematic analysis of errors made by the second language learners. It not only throws some light on the process of the second language learning but also helps teachers gain some insight into the strategies employed by learners in the process, which can help the teachers find out learners'deficiency in language learning and organize the teaching with a clear purpose. Hence, EA plays an important role in the study of the second language teaching and learning.Based on the theory of EA, the research made an identification, description, classification and explanation of errors collected from Yi college students'English writing with the purpose of finding out the reasons for error making and locating their difficulties in grammar learning. Despite abundant research concerning error analysis of the second language learners'English written productions, there are few systematic investigations into errors made by Yi college students in their English writing. Thus, English compositions written by Yi students from English department in Yi College affiliated to Southwest University for Nationalities have been collected and then errors on morphological and syntactic levels were described and explained with the help of questionnaire and interview. Based on the types of errors occurred in Yi students'English writing, an error correction test was designed to classify error types into different categories to locate pre-systematic errors, which is the difficult point in Yi students'grammar learning.The research attempts to make an investigation into the major type of grammatical errors in Yi college students'English writing,the sources of the errors as well as the significant difference between Chinese-Yi -English trilingual learners and Chinese-English bilingual learners included in the subjects. The major findings of the research are as follows. The errors at the syntactic level have a higher percentage than those at the morphological level. Errors occurred in Yi students'English writing can be classified into interlingual errors and intralingual errors. It should be pointed out that interlingual errors made by Yi students have their particularity, which lies in the interference from both Chinese and the Yi. After statistical analysis, it is found there is no significant difference between Chinese-Yi-English trilingual learners'and Chinese-English bilingual learners'scores in grammatical test. In the end, suggestions for grammar instruction and writing instruction are made and it is hoped that they can be helpful for Yi students'English teaching and learning.