How to Cope with Errors in Second—year Non—English Majors’English Writing

张雪

【Abstract】As for second-year non-English majors writing teaching， a realistic problem in the teaching practice is that most of the students can not avoid errors in second language writing because of their staying at stage of interlanguage（Nemser，1971Tarone，1983）.Here this paper focuses on describing what kind of errors the students make and analyzing the causes of errors based on error analysis theory.As a result， the students common learning difficulties are summarized so as to investigate the effective pedagogical methods in future teaching practice.

【Key words】a realistic problem； error analysis

An error is a deviation in learner language which results from lack of knowledge of the correct rule and it reflects the way in which target language surface structure is altered by learners（Corder，1974）.Therefore identifying， describing and analyzing errors in learner language are very important for both teachers in teaching practice and students in English writing.

Description and Analysis of Students Writing Errors in Real Practice

This study collects two composition samples of 36 second-year non-English majors.It summarizes what kinds of errors the students make and analyzes the causes of errors.

The errors the students make are categorized into grammatical， lexical and textual levels.different level has it own featured errors.In grammatical level， errors are shown in tense of verbs， preposition， predicate verbs， and patterns of subordinate clauses.As for lexical level， errors of spelling and phrases are predominant.Chin-English errors are ubiquitous on the textual level because of the misleading of Chinese thoughts.Above all， errors of patterns of subordinate clauses and Chin-English errors rank first.The following causes of errors are particularly representative in accordance with English students language output practice.

Firstly， overgeneralization： it means that learners often construct some new structures which do not exist in the target language because they take it for granted that these structures are analogues（Richards，2001）.It is caused by extension of target language rules beyond their accepted uses， generally by making words or structures follow a more regular pattern（Wen，2012）， which is presented on grammatical level.As students learn English， they are limited by the limited grasped knowledge.Ultimately， overgeneralization and consequent confusion of the grammatical rules of English cause errors.Secondly， the cause of Chin-English errors is the transfer of L1.Linguists have found that major obstacles of the second language acquisition are from the interference of mother tongue， namely interlingual transfer（Wen，2012； Zhao，2009； Wang，2000； Xiang，1994） Thirdly， it is not to be neglected that students language errors are related to the teachers teaching method.When teachers make a detailed comparison with two languages for students， sometimes they explain fuzzily and demonstrate wrongly， which confuses the students.Because of insufficient language input（Ellis，2013）， the students cant fully understand and apply the rules correctly.

Therefore， the teacher should give sufficient comprehensible input of rules and the student should get sufficient comprehensible input of rules into practice through training and reading.The teacher in the treatment of the learners errors must consider how to cope with students errors.Teacher correction and peer correction are considered.Focusing on what learners get wrong is useful for teachers to know what errors learners make and helpful for learners to learn.To be briefly， identifying and correcting students written errors are beneficial to both the teachers and students.

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