A Study Of Errors In Senior High School Students’English Argumentative Writings

This study was undertaken to investigate the errors in senior high school students’ English argumentative writings. The theoretical bases of this study are Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis and Interlanguage. The significance of the study is to develop students’ good English thinking ability and reduce the amount of errors in their English writings, as well as help teachers improve English writing teaching methods and strategies. The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follows:1. What types of errors are there in senior high school students’ English argumentative writings?2. What are the lexical errors made by senior high school students in their English argumentative writings?3. What are the syntax errors made by senior high school students in their English argumentative writings?4. What are the discourse errors made by senior high school students in their English argumentative writings?The participants involved in the research were102senior two students in Yangzhou middle school. The instruments of this study were a writing test and a questionnaire. After the writing test, a questionnaire was conducted to investigate the writing situation of the students and try to find out the causes of errors. All the data in this study, including errors in the writings and results of the questionnaire, were collected by the author. Data collection included two parts:one was sorting out all the errors in students’ writings and inputting the results into computer; another one was sorting out the amount of each choice in the questionnaire and inputting the results into computer. Data analysis involved calculating the amount of each type of errors in the writings and the percentage of each choice in the questionnaire.The major findings from this study are as follows:Firstly, the number of lexical errors is178, which accounts for28.6%in the total number of errors, ranking the second among the three types of errors. Lexical errors were classified into three parts in this research:word spelling, word collocation and word class, among which word spelling errors have the largest amount which take up13.3%. Besides, the numbers of word collocation errors and word class errors are53and42, occupying8.6%and6.7%in all the lexical errors respectively. The reasons of lexical errors may be attributed to two factors. One is inter-lingual interference, that means knowledge or experience of learners’mother tongue has great impact on their foreign language learning. The other is students’ bad writing habits. They do not form the habit of checking and modifying their compositions after writing.Secondly, the number of syntax errors is397, which accounts for63.8%in the total number of errors, ranking the first among the three types of errors. Syntax errors were classified into three parts in this research:function words, clause and sentence structure, among which clause errors have the largest amount which take up26.2%. Besides, the numbers of sentence structure errors and function words errors are142and92, occupying22.8%and14.8%in all the syntax errors respectively. The sources of the syntax errors are concluded into two main kinds. One is intra-lingual interference. The most obvious is that in the process of learning, students always make some wrong hypotheses because of their limited knowledge of the target language. The other is teachers’ignorance of effective feedback to students’compositions.Thirdly, the number of discourse errors is47, which accounts for7.6%in the total number of errors, ranking the third among the three types of errors. Discourse errors were classified into two parts in this research:cohesion and coherence and clarity. The numbers of cohesion and coherence errors and clarity errors are34and13, occupying5.5%and2.1%in all the discourse errors respectively. The most important reason for discourse error is the difference between Chinese and English in thinking modes.This study provides some implications.First, the high percentage of lexical errors shows the weak English foundation of senior high school students. Teachers should teach new words in a relatively real context. Also, teachers can help students change their traditional methods of reciting words. Moreover, teachers should encourage students to improve their writing levels through reading and reciting.Second, to reduce syntax errors, teachers should give students enough exercises which can consolidate students’ knowledge after teaching the new grammar. In addition, it’s important for teachers to cultivate students’ grammar awareness. What’s more, teachers should make effective comments on students’writings to make students know how they can improve their writings well.Third, though the number of discourse errors is not large, this type of errors is very typical. Teachers should encourage students to use various kinds of conjunctions. Besides, teachers can train students to integrate two and more independent sentences into one sentence by using conjunctions often. In future teaching, teachers should also adopt various methods to help students contrast and analyze the differences between English and Chinese.This study has three limitations. Firstly, the number of samples employed in this study may be not large enough to represent the whole population. Secondly, writing samples in the research are collected in one writing test, thus the errors detected in this research are only related to the writing test. Finally, limited by the academic level of the researcher, classifications of errors may not be so precise. There may be some overlapping of error categories which can influence the result of the study.