An Error Analysis On The English Practical Writing Of The Noil English-major Students

Although English practical writing is one of basic skills that theyshould master, the author found out the present situation of English practicalwriting is unsatisfactory and it is hard to meet the demand for BasicRequirement For College English. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to improveEnglish practical writing.The author analyzed students’ practical writings for the purpose offinding out how well they learn English practical writing, how the studentsstudy English practical writing, what difficulties they face in learningpractical writing. By classifying errors and researching the reason why theymake errors, the author tries to offer proofs and methods for the practicalwriting teaching.The author researched two questions:1. What are the main errors in thestudents’ practical writing in non-English major of vocational andprofessional colleges?2. Why do the students make these errors in theirpractical writing?In September，2013, the author designed a questionnaire for67freshmen from Pre-School Educational Department. In order to make datareliable, the author chose12students with different level from them. Theadvanced level(4students), the intermediate level (4students)and the lowlevel(4students) and asked them to write one essay each week in30minutes.(all compositions concerned various topics are from Practical English TestFor Colleges Level B), then the author corrected their essays facing thewriters and recorded the error types and reasons why they make errors. Inorder to further explore the students’ psychological process of committingerrors, the author interviewed12students chosen and record the wholeprocess. The results indicate that the order of the amount of errors in freshman’spractical writing (from the most to the least) are grammatical errors（25.69%）, Lexical errors（24.27%）, Substance errors(18.4%) Chinglish（17.24%）and Discourse errors（14.76%）.Tracing the causes, interlingualinterference （34.9%）is the first cause of students’ error and Intralingualinterference(33.2%) ranks the second, then pragmatic interference(31.8%)ranks the last.In the end of the thesis, the author offered some suggestion on how toimprove English practical writing in vocational and technical colleges forthe purpose of helping teachers and students who are in vocational andtechnical colleges.