An Analysis Of Lexical Errors In Junior College English Majors’ Writing

The study of errors in English writing has been an important component of errorstudies. Lexical errors are the most common in English writings. The analysis of lexicalerrors committed by students is beneficial to teachers and students alike. On the onehand, it helps teachers learn about students’ linguistic competence and make sure howfar students’ have progressed towards the teaching goal, by which teachers make furtherlesson plans to help students master the target vocabulary. On the other hand, analysis oflexical errors and exploration of sources of lexical errors help students avoid thefrequently committed lexical errors to improve their writing skills.According to the collected data, most of the domestic researches conductedconcerning lexical errors took non-English majors in universities or senior high middleschool students as the subjects. However, there are few researches on lexical errorscommitted by junior college English majors. Therefore, the present study provides ananalysis of junior college English majors’ lexical errors in writings with Error Analysis(EA) as its theoretical guidance.The samples of the current study are collected from English Majors in Grade Fivein Shuozhou Normal College, Branch of Datong University. Fifty valid samples arerandomly selected from the200-word compositions which are finished within half anhour and with the same topic and a given outline. In accordance with the procedures oferror analysis, the lexical errors collected from the valid samples are subsumed intodifferent categories, calculated and analyzed. Subsequently, the sources of lexical errorsare explored, based on which the suggestions on lexical teaching and learning are putforward.The result of the study shows that among the four types of lexical errors, spellingerrors take up the highest proportion, followed by collocation errors and wrong choiceof words, while literal translation is comparatively not so common. The types ofspelling errors are mainly misformation, omission, addition, misordering, lettermisselection and blending, among which, omission is the most common. Concerningwrong choice of words consisting of formal misselection, confusion of sense ofrelationship and confusion of part of speech, confusion of part of speech makes up thelargest percentage. Verb-noun collocation errors and fixed collocation errors arefrequent with respect to collocation errors. The sources of lexical errors are complicated. Spelling errors are caused by mispronunciation, overgeneralization of the phonologicalrules and failure to tell the differences between words with similar pronunciation orspelling. Wrong choice of words is attributed to the negative transfer of the mothertongue, overextenion of analogy and inappropriate ways of word memorization.Collocation errors mainly result from the mother tongue interference and inadequateinput. The interference of the mother tongue is responsible for literal translation.On the basis of exploration of the sources of lexical errors, some correspondingsuggestions on how to avoid lexical errors are proposed, including teaching vocabularyin context, making distinction between words with similar spelling or similarpronunciation, comparing and contrasting synonyms and encouraging the students toconsult English-English dictionary, read extensively and write in English to cultivateEnglish thinking.