A Computer-Aided Analysis on Word Form Errors in College English Writing — A　Corpus-based Study

Abstract

Based on contrastive analysis and computer-aided error analysis, this paper uses qualitative and quantitative methods to explore word form errors committed by Chinese non-English majors in their writing, collected in Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). The aim is to offer English learners some help in the methods to improve their English writing proficiency and yield some suggestions on English language teaching. The main findings are as follows: (1) the word form errors account for 29.42% of the total language errors; (2) there is a negative correlation between word form errors and writing quality; (3) there is a significant difference in word form errors committed by college learners of different writing ability. In the end, the reasons for word form errors are analyzed and some pedagogical suggestions are put forward.