A Data-based Analysis Of Errors In Chinese English-majors' Thesis Papers

Different from research conducted to analyze college written discourses, which mainly center on test compositions or after-class assignments, the present study is carried out to analyze senior English-majors'thesis papers. Adopting Error Analysis as the research method, this study is designed to examine the errors manifested in 46 thesis papers written by English-majors for graduation from 5 universities or institutions.The results of this study reveal the general impression that the Chinese English-majors are not supposedly proficient enough to write qualified thesis papers for graduation. On one hand, they have not developed an awareness of the features in formal writing; on the other hand, they have not laid a solid foundation for writing in English. The Chinese English-majors havenot performed well in the following aspects:(1) Chinese English-majors fail to understand the essential differences between Chinese and English. This poses harder obstacles for them to write English formal discourses.(2) Grammatical errors are what occur most frequently. The improperness of wording and the invalid structures of sentences are the two most serious problems with their thesis-paper writing.(3) Relational errors (such as misuse of discourse markers) are the most serious discoursal problem. What is more, the formal style of thesis papers is not paid sufficient attention to. Some of the thesis papers seem to be composed directly via the translation from Chinese, giving a'Chinglish'impression.However, more qualified thesis papers do share some similarities such as rare occurrence of article errors and prepositional errors; they contain relatively few discoursal and stylistic errors. In contrast, the less qualified thesis papers are discovered to contain a larger proportion of grammatical errors, less logically composed, and seem rather Chinglish.The essential reasons for the errors discovered in this study can be attributed to mother tongue interference and cultural differences in thinking patterns; it is also due to the improper teaching models in Chinese foreign language education as well as learners'lack of autonomous cognitive strategies to aid their foreign language learning...