A Contrastive Analysis between English and Chinese Syntax in English Writing of Chinese Undergraduate Students

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to identify and analyze the error patterns in English written texts of Chinese undergraduate learners who were taking EFL courses. Their grammatical errors were used to compare with those of the Chinese language in order to devise teaching procedures to improve the students’ writing skills. Fifty-two students were selected purposively to participate as sample group in their study. All of their writings collected were corrected to identify major grammatical errors, then were categorized and calculated for a contrastively analysis between Chinese and English. The results of this study showed that there were 11 categories of grammatical errors that students made in their English writings at a syntactic level. Five top grammatical errors were: tense; SOV (Sentence structure); Chinglish; articles and agreement of subject and its predicates. These major errors were obviously different between Chinese and English. Recommendations were made in several ways for Chinese students in writing English and for teachers to improve their attitudes, strategies and methods of teaching English writing.

Keywords : Contrastive analysis, Error analysis, English Writing, Chinese undergraduate students