A Study Of Vocational Students’ Writing Based On Error Analysis

It is inevitable for language leaners to make errors in their language learning process. Inthe1950s and1960s, Contrastive Analysis (CA) based on behaviorism and structuralism wasgenerally employed in analyzing learnings’errors. It is believed that learners make errors whentheir mother tongue and target language are different. Learners’ errors can be predicted duringthe learning process. However, later studies show that these kinds of errors only account for alittle and most of the errors are intralingual ones. CA soon lost its popularity. Error Analysis(EA),a branch of Applied Linguistics, has made great contributions to the study of second languagelearning and throws some light on the process of second language learning. Careful study of theerrors reveals the common problems shared by the language learners, which is believed to be ofgreat help to both language teachers and language learners.Writing is important in language learning process. Under Chinese context, English writingis always a different question for Chinese teachers and students, so errors in students’ writtenworks are unavoidable. English and Chinese belong to two different language families, betweenwhich there exit differences in grammar and culture etc. thus, Chinese students feel hard to avoidcommitting errors in their English writing.English writing teaching has always been a hard point in the process of English learning.Currently, there exist many problems on English writing. And things become harder in case ofvocational and technical college students with weak English foundation. One of the reasons isthat they seem so worried about writing errors that they have great unwilling writingcompositions. In this way, what the most urgent problems to solve are how to treat thesemistakes, guide college students to analyze, correct and lessen mistakes, improve English writinglevel.The participants involved in this research are sophomores majoring in BusinessAdministration from two separate classes of Jinan Vocational College. The study adoptsContrastive Analysis approach, quantitative and qualitative approaches, with the help of SPSS17.0, to deal with the questions in this study. The questions put forward in this study are asfollows: (1) What are the main types and causes of errors students make in English compositions?(2) How should students’ composition errors be corrected?(3) What do students think of the Error Analysis?(4) What is the effect of Error Analysis on students’ writing habit and ability?Based on the collected data, the following findings are made:(1) The description and explanation of errors lead students to know the types, sourcesand classifications of errors in their compositions.(2) Through the output of the questionnaire and interview, it is found that students’attitudes towards errors have changed gradually, and they have recognized theimportance of errors and got into the good habit of writing.(3) The statistic analysis has proved that error analysis does lead to improvements instudents’ writing of college.All in all, error analysis has been proved popular with most students and effective inpromoting English writing learning in this research. However, its shortcomings and limitationscan not be neglected. The pedagogical implications and recommendations for further researchare also discussed in this thesis.