An Error Analysis Of Lexical Cohesion In The TEM-4 Writing By English Major Students

Among the four skills listening, speaking, reading and writing, writing is a significant output ability. For English major students in China, the good writing ability is also very important. However, English writing is always a weak point of English major students. Their compositions tend to lack lexical cohesion and coherence. According to Haliday and Hasan(2001), cohesion is the basis of coherence, and coherence is an important premise of cohesion. Many researchers abroad and at home have analyzed the writings of non-English major college students and have gained certain valuable results. However, little research is conducted on the writings of English majors, based on the theory of cohesion and error analysis.This study chose 30 compositions of the second year English major students in An Shan Normal University. The researcher identified the types of lexical cohesive devices misused, calculated the frequency of errors in lexical cohesive devices appeared in their compositions. Through the analysis of questionnaires, the reasons for the errors were discussed.The research findings show that students tend to use different types of lexical cohesion in their compositions. The most frequent errors appeared in lexical cohesion is repetition, and its error rate is relatively high. Meanwhile, the reasons for the wrong use of the lexical cohesive devices are also analysed. Some suggestions for the English writing based on the theory of cohesion and error analysis are proposed.