An Error Analysis Of Lexical Cohesion In Non-English Majors' Translation

Based on the previous studies, the present thesis employs Error Analysis Theory by S.P. Corder as the basic theoretical framework and conducts both a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the use of lexical cohesive devices in non-English majors'translation. The thesis aims to shed light on college English teaching and learning through the analysis on use of lexical cohesion, error analysis of lexical cohesion and strategies for it.The thesis tries to find answers to the following three research questions: 1) What are the error rates for each lexical cohesive device and which is in the highest rank in students'translations? 2) What are the main reasons for these errors? 3) How to avoid making lexical cohesive errors in second language acquisition?Through the analysis of the data collected, the present study comes to the following conclusions: among all the lexical cohesive devices tested, collocation error ranks the first, and the super-ordinate and hyponym is next to it. The error rate of simple repetition has a relatively low occurrence; the use of some simple synonyms and antonyms is better, while for some difficult ones, they are still in high error rates. The reasons why learners make errors are roughly concluded as inter-lingual errors and intra-lingual errors, for which, the author has put forward corresponding solutions to those errors considering different teaching objects, different learning stages and learners with different English levels.With the findings obtained in the present study, the author hopes that college English learners and teachers can fully understand the knowledge of lexical cohesion so as to improve both students'learning and teachers' teaching for college English, provide more efficient and beneficial study strategies and offer some more valuable thoughts for further study in this field.