Senior Students Discourse Errors Analysis

In this paper we use the methods of error analysis and contrastive analysis toanalyze the errors that emerged in the compositions of the intermediate and advancedforeign students which influence the textual cohesion and semantic coherence under theguidance of discourse theory and interlanguage theory, probe into the causes of theseerrors, and propose suggestions to improve the awareness of text and to enhance theability of arranging and organizing the paragraph and text.The textual errors that the foreign students make are mainly emerged in the aspectsof cohesion and semantic coherence. The cohesive errors are produced by the incorrectusage of the four means of cohesive, and the semantic coherent errors are caused by theincorrect choice of sentence patterns or/and the incorrect arrangement of the sentenceorders. The primary cause of the textual errors are the target language factor, mothertongue or interlanguage transfer, the ignorance of textual knowledge and ability, and theachievement of present research cannot be applied into the teaching books. To improvethe competence of the foreign students, to avoid or reduce the textual errors,theteachers must pay attention to cultivate the competence of textual awareness, and thestudents should increase the selective reading,last but not least important, to increasethe textual knowledge and practice items in the process of compiling the books for theforeign students.