A Corpus-based Study Of The Passive Construction Errors Made By Chinese EFL Learners

Error analysis is crucial for foreign language research and teaching. The present study focuses on the passive constructions errors in the interlanguag of Chinese EFL learners, specifically under-used passive error, over-used passive error and malformed passive error.Unlike the previous researches which are primarily conducted by experimental method, the present study is a corpus-based study of the errors committed by Chinese EFL learners on English passive construction. Based on data obtained from Chinese Learners English Corpus (CLEC) by computer and on the manual data-analysis, the present study puts foreword the following research questions:1. What is the overall presentation of the three types of passive construction errors committed by Chinese EFL learners?2. What are the typical patterns of errors in terms of under-used, over-used and malformed passives characterized by Chinese EFL learners from the description of three types of passive errors?3. What might be the causes for these different types of errors committed by Chinese EFL learners?The present thesis consists of six chapters: Chapter One is a brief introduction of the significance of the current study and the research orientation. Chapter Two gives a general literature review related to the present study, including Interlanguage (IL), Error Analysis (EA), SLA studies on English passive construction, and Corpus Linguistics. Chapter Three demonstrates the theoretical framework for the present study. In addition, three types of passive construction errors we are to investigate will be introduced and the specific research questions are advanced. Chapter Four is devoted to the introductions of the research methods for the present study, which includes subject selection, data selection, and data classification. Besides, by data observation and data analysis this chapter presents the results of the study, which covers general and specific findings of the three types of passive construction errors made by Chinese EFL learners. Chapter Five focuses on the discussion of the findings from the results in the present study, which aims to explore the possible causes for the occurrenceof these passive construction errors characterized by Chinese EFL learners. Finally, in Chapter Six, we present a conclusion of the present study, and in addition, pedagogical implications and limitations of the current study are proposed.The major findings on the results are: l)Under-used passive error is prominent in the three types of passive errors committed by Chinese EFL learners; 2) Chinese EFL learners often make over-used passive errors; 3) the error of the malformed passive just take a small proportion in the three types of passive errors. And the main causes for the emergence of these errors are :1) the error of under-used passive construction is attributed to incomplete knowledge of the English verbs and the negative transfer of the native language; 2) the error of over-used passive is closely related with the confusion between the unaccusative structure and the passive construction, insufficient knowledge of verb classifications, and the ignorance of the rules and constrains of active-passive transformation; 3) the error of malformed passive construction is due to the different morphological features of English and Chinese passive constructions.The present study is significant in a number of ways. First, the learning patterns shown in this study are reliable because they are generalizations based on the data obtained from a large-scale learner corpus. Second, pedagogical remedies proposed in the light of the patterns shown in corpus analysis are more effective because they present a realistic picture of how an English construction is represented and develops in the Chinese-speaking learners. It is believed that the findings in this study are helpful for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying passive construction learning and for the teaching of the construction under investigation.