A Corpus-based Study On The Errors Of College English Writing And Its Implications For Teaching

As a new research approach in applied linguistics, corpus approach is being employed more and more widely in language researches since the application of advanced computer and the emergence of enormous text corpus and well-designed concordance software. Applying this method, the researcher has conducted a qualitative study of college EFL learners' errors in their writing. The study not only uses the data from the corpus made by the author herself, but also refers to the data from Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). The concordance software Microconcordance is used in the study.Appeared in late 1960's and early 1970's, Error Analysis (EA) is based on cognitive psychology. Errors are regarded as a sign of progress in foreign language learning. As a branch of applied linguistics, EA plays an important role in second language teaching and learning. It helps researchers understand the process and strategies of second language learning, thus enriching theories of second language acquisition. It helps teachers realize the common characteristics shared by language learners, which can promote the progress in teaching. It also helps students gain some insights into the difficulties during the learning process, which can result in the improvement in their learning methods. Meanwhile, after decades of development, Corpus Linguistics is maturing either in the aspect of theory or in technology. And it is attracting people's attention in its application in language teaching. In China, the trend to integrate corpus into language teaching is becoming evident, which indicates more and more emphasis is being laid on the effect of applying corpus to language teaching.The present study is based on EA and Corpus Linguistics and the samples of it are compositions written by 90 students from Guilin University of Technology in Nanning. The students, whose majors are Economy Management and Accountancy respectively, came to this college in 2006. There are altogether 270 compositions selected from the students' writing test papers. The linguistic errors in them are recognized, analyzed and tagged. As learners at the intermediate stage, the Chinese college EFL learners are apt to make lexical errors under the effect of L1 concept. Therefore, lexical errors concerning words and word form are the key points in the present study. Through analysis of the results, we find the errors can be sub-categorized into ten types as spelling errors, word building errors, capitalization errors, errors in order, part of speech error, error of substitution, error of absence, error of redundancy, error of repetition, error of ambiguity. Through the statistical analysis of the results, the number of each error type and the most frequently occurring errors are identified. The causes of theses errors are analyzed and discussed. The analysis shows that interlingual and intralingual transfer are the two main reasons. There are also some induced factors. Though the analysis and discuss, some remedial methods are proposed in order to shed some lights on the teaching of writing.The thesis can be divided into six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction. It is about the purposes and significance of the study as well as the research methodology. Chapter two is about some relevant theories, including Error Analysis and Corpus Linguistics. Chapter three talks about the research design, It includes research questions, subjects, instruments, procedures of the present study as well as the relevant approach adopted-corpus approach, etc. Chapter four reports what we find in the research. A discussion of the results and factors behind the results is made. Spelling errors ranks the first in the rank distribution, afterwards is error of substitution, and then part of speech error. The least one is error of repetition. This chapter also discusses the causes of errors, including the internal causes, external causes and induced factors. Chapter five is the implication of the findings in actual English teaching and explains how to avoid errors in students' writing by applying corpus approach so as to improve teaching methodology, vocabulary teaching and learning. The last part is the conclusion of the thesis, which concerns the summary, limitations and suggestions of the study.The thesis is a trial of the application of corpus approach in applied linguistic research to direct and assist language teaching and learning. The study suggests that such approach do some help to the improvement of college English writing.