Errors And Error Analysis: A Special Study Of Errors Frequently Made By Chinese Learners Of English As A Foreign Language

Along with the Chomskyan revolution and the birth of psycholinguistics, the focus in foreign and second language teaching shifted from the view of the teacher as the controller of language learning towards a more learner-centered view which stresses learners' creative role in second language learning. One major result of this shift has been the development and application of error analysis.Error analysis is a comparison between learners' interlanguage and the target language. It is a methodology of describing second or foreign language learners' language systems and consequently helps to understand the process of second language acquisition or foreign language learning.With an increasing awareness of the importance of the learning process in second language acquisition and foreign language learning, more and more researchers and linguists have shown great interest in the study of the learner's errors. It is believed that the learner's errors are indicative both of the state of the learner's interlanguage and thus throw light on the learning process of the second or foreign language learners which might lead to a deeper understanding andinsight into second and foreign language teaching.Based on the above beliefs, my thesis is intended to present a general framework for studying and analyzing errors frequently made by Chinese learners of English. It consists of four chapters. The first two chapters serve as a brief survey of the significance of errors, interlanguage and error analysis theory. The third chapter, which is the main part of this thesis, describes and analyzes errors made by Chinese learners of English and the sources of these errors. The forth chapter is concerned with how to deal with these errors.In short, a study of Chinese learners' errors in English will help the teacher find out how well the Chinese learner knows the English language as well as how the Chinese learner learns the English language. At the same time, the error analysis of Chinese learners of English will surely benefit English teaching and learning.