Colloquialism In Written English Of Chinese English Majors

In recent years, much emphasis has been placed on how to improve the ability of spoken English in foreign language teaching, while written English has been deemphasized. Oral English yields certain expressions, often called colloquialism, which are considered inappropriate in written form for its informal features. Influenced by this trend, EFL learners in China have colloquial tendency in their writings. The literature study indicates that colloquialism in written English has become one of the distinctive features of interlanguage of advanced English learners.This thesis paper is intended to make a data-based analysis of sample writings of Chinese English majors collected from eight universities at different levels to scrutinize and identify colloquialism manifested at lexical, syntactic, and discourse level, as well as describing and analyzing the relationship between colloquial and written English. The study also aims to shed light on English language teaching in China.Specifically, Chapter One is the introduction of the present study which provides background information of the thesis, as well as presenting the objectives and significance of the study. Chapter Two is followed by background study which presents a critical review of related prior studies. Chapter Three deals with study method, and it includes procedures, data collection and classification. Chapter Four mainly focuses on the specific analysis of the colloquial features in collected data from different perspectives. Chapter Five is the results and discussion, and Chapter Six is the concluding part in which findings and suggestions of the study are presented.The results show that colloquial tendency exists and is manifested in the writings of Chinese English majors no matter how different their proficiency seems in English, and generally speaking, the students with higher proficiency of English demonstrate a relatively small number of colloquial features compared to the students with lower proficiency of English despite few exceptions. Colloquialism at morphological and syntactic levels is manifested with the highest frequency, especially in use of the make+ object+ object complement pattern and there + be structure. Finally, the lack of exposure to the practical knowledge, neglected writing instructions before writing, and inadequate positive feedback after writing are the main reasons which prevent English majors in China from producing qualified academic writings.