Investigating Interlanguage Errors In Verbs In The Writings Of Chinese EFL Learners

Error Analysis is one of the primary methods used to investigate learner language, i.e. interlanguage. Presently with the development of computer technology and corpus linguistics, corpus-based error analysis has become an important approach to second language acquisition research within applied linguistics. In 2003, the. largest learner corpus in China, Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) was published, which is of great significance to corpus-based linguistic research in China. On the basis of CLEC, the present study focuses on investigating the verb errors in the compositions of Chinese EFL learners ranging from senior high school students to university and college English majors and non-English majors. It aims to find the problems and difficulties of Chinese learners in the process of learning English verbs. All the language data involved in this study are all from the search results of CLEC with the help of CLEC search program.In CLEC, verb errors in Chinese EFL learners' compositions are divided into nine categories. Through analyzing and investigating the nine types of verb errors in Chinese EFL learners' writings extracted from CLEC, it can be found that each type of verb errors has its own characteristics. Furthermore, some causes of verb errors are inferred in this study: differences between English and Chinese verbs, interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer and inappropriate use of learning strategies.From the data analysis, it is discovered that tense, subject-verb agreement and transitivity are the most prominent difficulties in Chinese EFL learners' process of learning English verbs. The learners tend to commit verb errors where English and Chinese languages differ greatly. The development and the distribution of each type of verb errors made by Chinese EFL learners at different learning stages are inconsistent, which reveals the development of interlanguage is unstableness. In addition, correlation analysis in this study gives no hint that the quantity of verb errors in compositions is a good indicator of learners' proficiency levels. Finally, based on the investigation, this thesis provides some suggestions for English language teaching and learning in China from different aspects including contrastive approach in English language teaching, translation in language teaching and learning, enlargement of vocabulary and error correction.