Paragraph-level Errors in Chinese Undergraduate EFL Learners‘ Compositions: A Cohort Study

Abstract

The present study investigated the paragraph-level errors in 90 English compositions produced by 30 Chinese undergraduate non-English majors on three tasks during eight weeks. Analyses of these errors and the survey data yielded the following main findings: (1) Among the four categories of paragraph-level errors, errors in paragraph development accounted for the largest percentage, followed by errors in paragraph coherence, errors in paragraph unity, and inconsistency in point of view. This pattern was generally observed for the distribution of the errors in each individual task; (2) the errors generally tended to increase across tasks. Errors in paragraph development in particular increased statistically significantly in the last two tasks; (3) the errors of all categories were generally inversely correlated with the students’ writing performance, among which errors in paragraph development were significantly inversely related to the latter, and (4) several reasons were identified for the errors such as the lack of writing practice and the influence of Chinese. Thus, it can be concluded that paragraph-level errors are often persistent in students’ English writing and are closely related to the quality of the writing. They hence deserve further research.