A Comparative Study On Errors In English Compositions By Freshmen, Sophomores And Juniors Majoring In English In SWNU

IL (interlanguage) is a concept of discussion with a history of over 20 years in SLA (second language acquisition) research. It regards language learner as the focus of research; reveals the general regularity of language learning; and enriches the theories of SLA and ELT. IL is a dynamic developmental process of EFL learning. According to Nemser (1971) and Tarone (1983), most L2 learners will always be somewhere along the IL continuum in which L2 learners' errors are inevitable in both oral and written productions.In the 1950s and 1960s, Contrastive Analysis (CA), which was theoretically based upon behaviorism and structuralist linguistics, was widely employed to analyze language learners' errors.In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Error Analysis (EA), which was theoretically based upon cognitive psychology and interlanguage (IL) theory, categorized and scrutinized the sources of the actual errors produced by language learners in the target language(TL).Committing errors is a universal phenomenon in language learning, let alone foreign language learners. As for EFL learners in China, the enormous diversity between the two...