Error Analysis On The English Practical Writings Of Non-English Major Students At VTC And The Countermeasures

The English teaching in vocational and technical colleges (VTC) pays more attention to cultivate students’applications and the communicative competence. However, students in VTC are not good at English. Most of them do not take English courses seriously. Therefore, their writing abilities are very poor. English practical writings, as the main content of English writings in VTC, draw more attention from both teachers and the students. Of course, because of the internal factors in VTC students and some external factors, they make many errors in their English practical writings. And most of them even don’t know how to write English compositions. Under these circumstances, trying to find the characteristics of errors in the students’writings and finding out an effective way to correct errors are two most important things in English writing teaching.This thesis is based on the contrastive analysis theory, interlanguage theory and error analysis theory. The author takes342compositions of the two classes students in Jilin Communications Polytechnic as the subjects. By analyzing the errors in the samples, the author finds that the three most frequent errors are respectively lexical errors, grammar errors and Chinglish. After analyzing different kinds of language errors, the author discusses the causes of these errors and find out the negative transfer in native language and their lack of grammar knowledge are the main causes of errors. At the same time, the author does a comparative experiment on the two classes. Error analysis is introduced to the teaching process of the experimental class11302. At the end of the term, the students’performances in Class11301and Class11302are quite different. In the experimental class11302, there are fewer errors occurs in students’ writings and students themselves are willing to learn English. But in Class11301, there is no obvious change. Therefore, error analysis can promote the English teaching actively.Finally, according to the errors in VTC students’writings and the causes of them, the author gives some useful suggestions on her English writing teaching. First, the author should make students interested in English and pay more attention to the common errors. She should spend more time on the basic knowledge of English and encourage students to learn English by different means themselves. Then the students can improve their English practical writings actively.