Abstract：Tense is of very importance in English grammar, and the acquisition of tense is one of the most difficult and significant parts in English learning. This paper aims to analyze tense errors of non-English majors in our school, and the cause of the error, so as to provide feasibility for improving our English teaching level and the students’ English writing ability.
This study adopts 200 English compositions of non-English major students in our school in the 2011-2012 final English exam papers as the main source of data and uses the sixteen-tense system by Bo Bing and the theory of Error Analysis (EA) as supported in theory to analyze the main distribution and major problematic tense errors. This study has found that non-English major college students in our school have made many tense errors; among them, the Present simple, the present perfect and the past tense present are more occurrences; Tense choice errors are the most often seen errors among those four main error types.
The study provides references for the teachers’ future teaching in our school and it can be helpful to the improvement of the teaching level. At the same time, it reveals the tense error types which students usually made in English writings , which is of great help to avoid in the future.
Key words: tense errors error types distribution error analysis
摘要：时态在英语语法中是很重要也是很困难的部分，因此时态错误分析在英语学习中显得尤为重要。本论文旨在分析我校非英语专业大学生英语写作中的时态错误，以及错误发生的原因，并为改进我校英语教学水平提供可行性建议，同时有助于提高学生的英语写作水平。
论文以我校非英语专业二年级学生2011-2012年学期期末考试中的英语作文作为研究语料，从中抽取200篇进行分析；以薄冰先生的16个时态类型划分为框架，对其中所出现的主要错误类型进行数据分析，归纳出四种错误类型，揭示各个错误类型在作文中的分布。研究发现，我校非英语专业大学生的时态错误较多；一般现在时、现在完成时和一般过去时是十六种时态中出错频率最高的时态；时态选择错误是时态错误类型中比重最大的错误类型。
该研究为我校老师教学提供了参考，有利于教学水平的提高，同时揭示学生英语写作中常犯的时态错误类型，有利于同学在今后写作中避免再出现同类错误。
关键词: 时态错误;错误类型;分布;误差分析
