An Analysis Of Errors In College Students’ English Writings: A Case Study Of 3 Universities In Guilin

Writing is an important part of the four skills in English teaching. It is an important form of language output. Through writing students can use the language knowledge and language skills comprehensively. So the writing of English teaching and learning are of great significance. Though many researches have been done on errors in EFL learners’writings, studies of the errors made by college students are still insufficient especially in the Chinese ESL context.This thesis tries to explore the common linguistic errors of the college students’ writings in 3 universities in Guilin. The subjects are the students’151 English writing samples of Guangxi Normal University, Guilin University of Electronic Technology and Guilin University of Technology. The author analyzes the students’English writing through their samples. This paper attempts to analyze the following two important questions:1) What are the error phenomena of college students in English writing in Guilin? 2) What are the teaching implications of the analysis? The analysis shows that interlingual and intralingual errors are two major types, with the former playing a more Prominent role than the latter. Interlingual error refers to the error due to transferring rules from mother tongue, including linguistic transfer, cultural transfer, and thought pattern transfer. While intralingual error is caused by the faulty or partial learning of one item of the TL upon another. In the last stage, this thesis supplies some implications for improvements of English writing:l)Renewing concept of English writing to reduce native language’s negative influence; 2)Laying emphasis on the contrast between Chinese and English to reduce native language’s negative transfer; 3)Strengthening the basis training of English-taking wider reading and consulting English-English dictionary foe example; 4) Changing the way of correcting student’s English composition.