An Analysis Of Verb Errors In English Writing Of Senior High School Students

English writing is not only the comprehensive embodiment of students’ language ability,but also an essential part of the College Entrance Examination.However,nowadays some senior high schools do not attach great importance to English writing teaching.From some students’ compositions,we can see that there are some mistakes in high school students’ language expression,especially verb errors.Therefore,this paper analyzes the verb errors in senior high school students’ English writing to have a better understanding of the current situation of their verb acquisition,and finds out the causes of students’ errors,so as to fundamentally enhance their skills of English writing.Based on the error analysis theory and language transfer theory,this study takes 120 senior high school sophomores in Linzi middle school as the research object,using the text analysis method to classify and analyze the verb errors in their compositions,and explores the causes of the errors combined with the questionnaire.This study will solve the following two problems:(1)What are the verb errors in senior high school students’ English writing? What kind of errors occur more frequently?(2)What are the reasons for these verb errors?The author sorts out and analyzes 240 composition samples and find 638 verb errors.Among them,subject-predicate inconsistency,non-finite verb errors and tense errors are the top three verb errors,accounting for 26.33%,25.39% and 19.44% of total verb errors respectively.What’s more,according to text analysis and questionnaire results,it is concluded that there are three main reasons for verb errors in senior high school students.First,interlanguage transfer is mainly caused by negative transfer of mother tongue language and negative transfer of language culture.Second,intralingual transfer,including ignoring the restriction of rules,over-generalization and incomplete application of rules.Moreover,there are some other reasons: learning strategies and environmental factors.According to the above findings,this paper proposes some strategies and advice for English writing teaching in senior high school: First,Strengthen students’ understanding of Chinese and English cultural background and promote positive cultural transfer.Second,stimulate students’ writing motivation,and cultivate English thinking mode as well as writing habits.Third,give proper guidance for students to compare the similarities and differences between English and Chinese verbs,reducing verb errors.Fourth,teachers should teach students the appropriate methods of error correction and help them hold a correct attitude towards mistakes.