An Analysis Of Writing Errors Made By Non-English Major Freshmen

Linguistics error analysis and researches on errors play a vital role in exploringand finding out the rules in language acquisition. Therefore, a careful study of writingerrors reveals the common features and problems shared by the second languagelearners and it is of importance for both language learning and teaching.Despite many empirical researches having been made on writing errors of thesecond language learners, comparatively, there are still limited empirical onesconducted in investigating errors made by Non-English major freshmen in writing.Thus, based on error analysis and some related error theories, according to theresearch methods and procedures of error analysis, this paper carries out an empiricalstudy on the errors made by Non-English major freshmen in writing with the help ofSPSS18.Errors for analysis are obtained from the freshmen of two classes with the samelanguage proficiency of different majors, which include three writing samples, one atthe beginning of the first academic semester, one at the middle and one at the end ofthe first academic semester. And the whole research extends one semester.30studentsare selected through random sampling and90copies in total are collected. It is foundout that (1) Grammatical, lexical and substance errors are the most frequent errors inwriting.(2) Grammatical errors are negative correlated with writing proficiency.(3)Errors of grammar and cohesion significantly distinguish high-mark writings fromlow-mark writings.(4) The overall errors have decreased after an academic semester’slearning but errors of cohesion are still increasing significantly.