Distribution Of Interlanguage Errors From English Composition In ECSE And Its Implication

To err is human. Errors are in every native's productions, let alone language learners'.In China, English should be regarded as a foreign language, but not second language. Therefore, most English learners in China will always be somewhere along the interlanguage (IL) continuum, which refers to an in-between and inherently variable system between first language (Chinese) and target language (English). In the continuum of IL development, L2 learners' errors are inevitable both in oral and written IL productions. Error analysis (EA), contrastive analysis (CA) and IL study have been closely related to errors.Literature reviews of the previous studies on IL studies in terms of CA and EA have been illustrated in the second chapter. And then, a databased analysis of IL has been made in this dissertation. All the data came from compositions in English Comprehensive Skill Examination (ECSE) for English majors in self-taught sector om JiLin province. By the use of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, IL errors from three perspectives - language knowledge, linguistic category and error source have been scrutinized in this dissertation. Several statistical means, percentage of errors and histogram, for example, have been utilized in this dissertation. Therefore, this dissertation is an empiricist - descriptive analysis in nature. My purposes are to find the regularity of distribution and frequency of IL errors from compositions in ECSE, to gain some insights into the English language instruction and learning by means of EA.Reported in chapter IV are the quantitative analysis of IL errors from English compositions in the perspective of language knowledge, linguistic category and error source. Various sub-categories have been divided. From the analysis, it has been clearly demonstrated that IL errors at syntactic level take the highest percentage in each perspective. Moreover, most of IL errors are fundamentally linguistic rule violation, especially, the violation of targetlanguage rules.Based on the quantitative analysis of composition data in this dissertation,my findings could be summarized as follows:a. Target language (English) interference, not mother tongue (Chinese) interference, affects L2 learners' (self-taught students here) IL in their English compositions in ECSE. Intralingual errors take 53.2%, which takes the highest percentage in terms of error source.b. Semantically based IL errors should be regarded as the main characteristic made by L2 learners in the English composition. IL errors at each sub-category illustrated in chapter IV, have shown that there is a close relation between lexical choice and semantic meanings.c. Transitional stage should be concerned as the stage where L2 learners stay in the continuum of IL development. Some features of transitional stage have dealt with in this section. It is quite different from primary stage and intermediate stage.d. Implication for English language teaching (ELT) in China has also been summarized in this dissertation. Language knowledge and language skill, discourse teaching and suggestions for language teaching have been mentioned in this dissertation.In all, the analysis of IL errors can bring to light the general regularity of learners' language in L2 teaching and learning, enrich second/foreign language teaching and learning theory.