An Analysis on Errors in University Students＇ Compositions

科学研究An Analysis on Errors in University Students’Compositions呼媛玲(西安职业技术学院陕西西安710017)Abstract: Based on some rescarch and clltions of students' English compositions, the thesis mainly clarfies erors in students' compositions into diferenttypes. Then , it makes an analysis of the causes through many examples in detail. In the conclusion part the thesis tries to find the solutions to improve Chineseleamers' writing ability and foreign language teaching.Key Words: English writing; errors; problems; solutinsIntroductionder or the context. Transitive verbs and intransitive verbs are restricted by whatDuc to the process of globalization, English plays a vital role in the world kind of elements that follows. Because of the diferences, it is likely that stu-stage. Meanwhile, English writing, serving as a part of basic skills of university dents misuse the transitive verbs and intransitive verbs.students, has been greatly promoted along with listening, speaking, reading andC. Errors in Article, Preposition, and Pronountranslating sills. However, when it comes to English writing, most of the stu-Except noun and verb crrors, errors in article, preposition, and pronoundents who have studied English for years can not write an elegant essay. Theare also committed in students' written task frequently. Firstly, errors in articlemain problem may lie in the fact that English learners are too much influencedare discussed.by the mother tongue, thus unable to get rid of the fixed way of expression of(1) Therefore, it is also good means of solving the problem ofheavy taffic.their own culture. For example, they write inoret English“My studies are(2) Pllution is the biggest problem in the cities.quite busy.”The sentence should be“I am quite busy with my studies.”WhyIn (1), the necessary article is missing; On the contrary, the unnecessarydo students commit such mistakes? What types of mistakes are they frequcntlyarticle is used in (2), which cause the errors.making? In what way can errors be avoided? To find out the answers, the au-Errors in article may result from the fact that there is no article contrast inthor analyzes the errors in students' compositions in great details.Chinese nouns.I. Lexical ErrorsSecondly, errors in preposition are discussed.Lexis plays a very important role in language study. In this section, lexical(1)We can draw some conclusions according to the satistis.errors are analyzed from the following aspects: errors in noun, verb, article,(2)However, people have different atitudes t0 failure.preposition and pronoun.For the Chinese sentences“我们从这些数据中得出结论”and“但是,人A. Errors in Noun们对于失败持不同看法”，there is no need to use prepositions. However, inAccording to grammatical form, nouns can be divided into two classes:English there should be a“from" and a“towards" in the sentences (1) and (2)countable nouns and uncountable nouns. Errors in noun are selected from stu-respectively.dents' compositions:Students sometimes use wrong prepositions, because there are 286 prepo-(1) We can choose from an advertisement books.sitions in English, but only 30 in Chinese. The same preposition in Chinese can(2) And her mouth is very small with red lip.be used in various positions. However, in English, prepositions are used more(3) Sometimes, our parents brought us some foods and books.vigorously.In example (1), the suffix“-s”should be omitted after the article“an". InThrdly, the pronouns in English are various, including personal pronouns,example (2), the sufx“-s”should be added to“lip" in accordance to the Eng-possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns, reciprocal pronouns, dermonstratedlish plurality. Example (3) takes the uncountable nouns“ food”as countablepronouns, interrogative pronouns, relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns.under the influence ofChinese"很多食物”.English speakers use pronouns much more than Chinese so that Chinese learn-Compared with Chinese, English grammar appears to be more specificers tend to commit rrors of missing pronouns while writing English.and exact, such as countable plural nouns, which do not exist in Chinese gram-I . Combination of Different Types of Errorsmar. Therefore, Chinese students tend to ignore the plural form (-) while writIn this section, discussion will be concentated on erors in punctuation,ing English.capitalization and Chinglish way of expression.B. Errors in VerbA. Errors in PunctuationIn this section, transitive verb errors and intransitive verb errors made byPunctuation in English is a ltte difrent from that in Chinese. The authorstudents will be concentrated, Transitive verbs must be followed by an object,will not discuss errors of this type futher, since they are easy to identify andwhile intransitive verbs need not. Here are some errors:overcome for Chinese learners. However, the author only discusses some typi-(1) Just look the student around me.cal examples here: .(2) w aiting the end of the punishment.(1) She doesn't own the happiness that should belong to such itte gil,(3) Let's discuss right now.(2) As far as money is concermed, my opinion is,“ money is not every-In examples (1) and (2), the intransitive verbs“look" and“wait" are usedas transitive verbs，which may result from the fact that in Chineseand “ 等待某人"are transitive. The objects of the transitive verbs in exampleing difficulty for Chinese learners. In sentence (1),"“, "should be"." , as in Eng-(3) is wrongly omitted under the infuence of Chinese, for in Chinese it is saidlish, only“."can be used to end a sentence besides“?” and“!”. The error in“现在就讨论”, but the crreet pattem in English is“discuss somehing”.sentence (2) is“,"after“is" should be“:", which is used to introduce an expla-According to Cai Jjigang (2003), on the one hand, English is explicit,nation, to precede a quotation or a statement.which indicates that meaning is conveyed through different forms of words; onB. Errors in Capitalizationthe other hand, Chinese is implicit, which expresses meaning through word or-Capitalizations are used mainly at three places: the first words of sen-参考文献[3]陈蓉霞.从中国煤化工漫谈[M].上海:上海科学普[1][古希腊]亚里士多德天象论宇宙论[M.吴寿彭译北京:商务印书馆，及出版社, 2002007.[4]熊伟.大鱼YHCNMHG*文化评论, 2010,7(5).[2][美]JE●麦克莱伦第三,哈罗德●多恩.世界科学技术通史[M].王鸣阳[5][美]罗杰斯.天文学理论的发展[M].卢央,李文华译.北京:科学出版译.上海:上海世纪出版集团，2007.社, 1989. .3