| Since English has established its well-accepted status as a global language, mostnon-English-speaking countries take it as the most important target language of theirforeign language education. By the year of2010, it is estimated that there are over350million English learners in China. English education in China, especially collegeEnglish education, has gradually developed into an integral and independent branch ofthe undergraduate curriculum. The sustaining reform on college English teaching andlearning gives rise to publication of various new-version textbooks, application ofmodern teaching technologies and overall promotion on teaching faculty’ competence.However, many problems of college English teaching still remain unsolved. As one ofthe fundamental skills to cultivate students’ English proficiency, writing isconsentaneously considered to be the thorniest aspect. College students keep makingthe same language errors despite the considerable time and energy that both teachersand students have invested in it.The present study focuses on the language errors in Chinese students’ Englishwriting in lexical and syntactic aspects. On the basis of Error Analysis (EA) as atheoretical framework, the patterns of language errors in students’ writing andcorrelation between these errors are examined. The following three questions areaddressed:1. What are the most frequently-occurred types of errors in students’ Englishwriting?2. Are these errors related to the quality of writing?3. Is there a significant difference in the types of errors made by students withwriting competence?The research methodology is to combine the quantitative and the qualitativeapproaches by referring to the previous studies which also focus on the error analysisof Chinese EFL writing. The research procedure consists of three phases:1) Datacollection. To guarantee the most credibility and validity of the subsequent analysis,eighty-two sophomores form three colleges are selected as participants and77validwriting samples from them are finally collected. Three English teachers who have theexpertise of grading CET-4compositions are invited to grade these samples accordingto the grading scheme (CET-4);2) Data analysis. The study identifies and marks each type of errors by referring to the approaches by Chinese English Learners’ Corpus(CLEC). Relevant data are recorded and input into the statistical package for socialsciences (SPSS17.0) to answer three research questions;3) Discussion on the resultsof data analysis.Data analysis are conducted including Descriptive Analysis on the frequency ofeach error type, Correlation Test (Pearson, two-tailed) between error quantity andscores of writing samples and Independent Sample T-test on correlation in students’error quantity between the two different English writing-competence groups. Majorfindings are listed as follows:Firstly, the present study finds that the most frequently-occurred lexical errortypes are misuse of verb, errors in wording and misuse of noun. Among the syntacticerrors, run-on sentences, fragments, coordination, structural deficiency andpunctuation errors take place most frequently. It is revealed that these mostfrequently-occurred error types represent the most prominent divergence between thetwo languages. In other words, it is the great difference between Chinese languageand English that might account for most errors made by Chinese English learners.Therefore, the great discrepancy lying in such aspects as word building, collocationusage and sentence structures give rise to the language errors that possess evidentChinese features of the mother tongue interference. In addition, the root of theproblem lies in the significant discrepancy between the two thought patterns. Chineseusually possess an indirect spiral thought pattern which lacks of logic relatively; whileWesterners are endowed with a direct linear one due to their respect for science andreason. Consequentially, Chinese students tend to make certain errors reflecting thetypical features of their thought patterns, and these errors can not be remedied merelyby grammatical correction.Secondly, all the errors bear negative correlation with the quality of writingsamples which is reflected by the scores. Among the types investigated, six typesexert the greatest influence on the scores of compositions. In addition, the mostsignificantly relevant error types are expected to indicate the raters’ preference andtendency in judgment in the meantime. But it is revealed that actually there are certainerror types, such as mismatch in collocation, misuse of conjunctives and topicprominence, proved to bear nearly no correlation with scores. Therefore, there mustbe other factors which also influence the writing quality except for the quantity ofthese errors. By referring to relevant studies and the results of the data analysis, the present study finds that three factors are not taken into consideration during the dataanalysis, namely, the requirement on compositions (CET-4), the criteria of grading inthe Syllabus for CET-4compositions and the insufficient attention on certain errortypes in both language teaching and composition grading.Thirdly, though there are much fewer errors found in the writing samples of highwriting-competence group, it is found that the most significant discrepancy lies inmisuse of adjectives, run-on sentences, sentence fragments and dangling modifiersbetween the students of different English writing competence. And most of these errortypes are found at syntactic level. It can be concluded that one of prominent featuresin a high quality composition is that it contains relatively much fewer syntactic errorsas well as lexical errors in comparison with a low quality composition. Therefore, asfor the English learners, the finding indicates that to make improvement in Englishwriting, they are supposed to have an excellent command of vocabulary and lexicalrules, which will promote their competence at syntactic level in return. In terms ofEnglish writing teaching, this very feature might help an EFL writing teacher todistinguish the quality of their students’ work.Two pedagogical implications are revealed in the present study. First, foreignlanguage teachers should adopt different strategies towards students of differentEnglish proficiency. Since interlanguage itself is a continuous continuum whichdevelops in each phase of a language learner’s SLA before he achieves the ultimategoal, teachers should encourage their students of low English proficiency to getacquainted with grammatical rules at lexical level and gradually enhance their abilityin building various sentence structures by continuous and repetitive drills and practice;students of relatively high competence correspondingly should be encouraged to makefurther progress in other aspects, such as idiomatic expression, coherence in discourseand rhetoric strategies. In the meantime, peer correction and feedback can be adoptedto create the opportunity for students of different writing competence to learnstrengths and weakness from their classmates. Second, the EFL writing teachersshould instruct their students to intentionally cultivate their critical thinking and logicby helping them to construct a complete framework of cognitive knowledge inEnglish writing. The framework is expected to consist of three interactional aspects,objects, tasks and strategies. Writing is involved in a rigorous and ordered thinkingprocess. Consequentially, students can only produce idiomatic English articles withboth abundant content and, more importantly, logic on the indispensible condition of both feasible and sensible curriculums and systematic training and learning. |
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