An Analysis Of Chinese College English Learners' Misuse Of English Participles

Error analysis is an important approach to understanding second language acquisition. As a major branch of applied linguistics, error analysis plays a very important role in the study of second language acquisition. The analysis of the errors learners make can not only reveal some universal rules in the students' learning process but also help to find out difficult areas in second language learning and thus improve teaching accordingly.Much research was done to study the errors committed by second language learners. However, the study on certain specific grammatical items through error analysis is still insufficient. This paper reports the results of an empirical study based on the acquisition of English participles by the advanced Chinese English learners of Dalian Maritime University (DMU). The subjects are selected from the third-year undergraduate students of the Law School and the Engineering School of DMU and the second-year graduate students of the School of Computer Science and the School of Business Management. The results of the study show that (1) there is no significant difference in the acquisition of the use of English participles between the undergraduate and graduate groups of non-English majors, and this rejects the hypothesis that more years of learning leads to better acquisition of English participles;(2) three major types of errors, the literal-translation-based interlingual error, the intralingual error, and the teacher-talk induced error were identified and further analyzed;(3) the learning strategies of the two groups are similar. Based on the analysis of the findings, the paper puts forward some remedial teaching methods and suggestions for future research.