Error Analysis of College English Writing Based on the Cohesion and Coherence Theory

Although much has been discussed about error analysis around the world, it has been one of the least investigated learning/teaching writing in ELT in China. Cohesion and coherence are two important factors in the discourse analysis. The paper reports the results of a series of linguistic statistic methods, in which learners were invited to write a CET-4 composition, and two experienced teachers were asked to analyze errors based on Cohesion and Coherence Theory. The study reveals that students have difficulty in using conjunction and lexical cohesion and are weak in logical reasoning and argument. The paper argues that college students and teachers who teach English writing are supposed to focus more on how to improve cohesion and coherence in texts rather only on the linguistic level, which can be used for reference for the teaching of English writing.