Analyzing the Factors and Corresponding Measures for English Majors’ Writing

【Abstract】As we know， English writing is an important part of communicative competence. But for many English majors， it is hard to express their thoughts clearly. In order to find out the main problems and corresponding measures， the author analyzes many compositions written by English majors. With some academic opinions and the author’s own analysis， some problems existing in students’ writing are listed. According to the problems， the author summarizes some influencing factors. Finally， the author gives some relevant solutions. Through analyzing those samples， the author hopes it has some help for English majors’ writing.

【Key words】Writing；English major；Influencing factors；Effective measures

0 Introduction

“English writing is a re-creation process where students use the knowledge of the language through thinking. So writing skills can reflect students’ language competence” （Bai 2009：99）. But for many English majors， English writing is a difficulty for them. So many reasons have led to this kind of phenomenon. The author summarizes several types of mistakes that English majors often make， such as vocabulary mistakes， grammar mistakes. According to these problems， the author analyzes the influencing factors and tries to find suitable ways to solve this problem.

1 Influencing Factors

1.1 Vocabulary Mistakes

Generally there are three kinds of vocabulary mistakes existing in English majors’ writing. They are spelling mistake， collocation mistake and part of speech problem. In the following part， they are discussed one by one.

First， the spelling mistakes are common in their compositions. “Vocabulary is the requisite element of English writing” （He 2008：141）. If students want to write a good composition to express their thoughts， they should grasp enough vocabulary and understand words correctly. However， most English majors do not learn vocabulary like that. For example， the words “indepadent” is not correct in spelling； the words “indepondance” and “independent” are not correct； the words “dapt”， “nowdays” are not spelled correctly. This is because students neglect the spelling when they learn the word at the beginning. What’s more， many students recite the word in accordance with pronunciation.

Second， collocation mistakes occur frequently. Collocation is the key point of vocabulary learning. It plays a vital role in expressing the author’s intention. As we all know， the English collocation is very different from Chinese. Some students are used to thinking in Chinese and then directly translate Chinese into English literally. Such literal translations will definitely lead to mistakes. Generally speaking， the words do not appear isolated from others. That is to say， there are fixed about collocation between adjective and noun， verb and object noun etc. However， students often do not pay attention to this collocation and accumulate the words mechanically， leading to inappropriate expression in English. For example， “look dinner” and “leave earth” are not appropriate.