A Study On Lexical Errors In Senior High School Students' English Writing

Vocabulary is an important part of language knowledge. It is also the foundation of communication. Vocabulary, to senior high school students, is very important in their English learning process. Vocabulary also takes up the larger proportions in various English tests at the stage of middle school. What's more, vocabulary itself is rich and diverse, it is the most difficult part for many senior high students and foreign language learners to acquire. Therefore, lexical errors subsequently account for the larger proportions compared with other types of errors. There are so many studies concerning vocabulary, but most studies set college or university students as subjects and rarely involve in senior high school students. This thesis regards 200 senior high school students from Grade Two of No.2 senior high school in Wu Chang city as research subjects and makes an analysis of students'compositions and questionnaire.In this thesis, the author made a study based on the compositions and questionnaires collected from 200 senior high school students to explore the following questions:? (1) What kind of errors takes up the highest proportion in senior high school students'writing? (2) What are the main types of lexical errors in senior high school students'writing? (3) What are the causes of lexical errors in senior high school students'writing? The analysis presents that the current situation of lexical use among senior high school students is not optimistic. The accuracy of lexical use is still a big problem in students'learning process. Lexical errors make up the higher proportion than other types of errors in students'compositions. The major types of lexical errors in the collected compositions are formal errors, misuse of parts of speech and collocational errors. Formal errors are the most frequent, followed by collocational errors and misuse of parts of speech. Among formal errors, distortions are the most common. The type of verbs misused as nouns is more frequent than other types in misuse of parts of speech. Erroneous collocations of verbs and nouns take up the higher proportion in collocational errors.There are many factors leading to lexical errors. The causes of formal errors are mainly due to mispronunciation, overgeneralization of phonological rules, confusion of similarity between target words and words learners chose. The causes of misuse of parts of speech result from negative influence of parts of speech of mother tongue and poor command of parts of speech. The causes of collocational errors are mainly caused by negative transfer and incomplete storage of vocabulary and lexical collocation.From the analysis of questionnaires, the author also found that the causes for students'lexical errors also result from improper strategies and habits for vocabulary learning, negative attitudes towards errors and lack of writing practice.Through the analysis of lexical errors committed by students, this study can provide some pedagogical implications for future vocabulary teaching in senior high school. In real teaching practice, teachers can improve efficiency of vocabulary teaching through cultivating students'positive attitudes towards errors, helping students conclude pronunciation rules, teaching vocabulary in context, encouraging students to read extensively and use proper dictionaries...