A Study Of Distributions Of Error Frequency In The Chinese EFL Learners' English Writings

This study was undertaken to find out the general features of the distributions of error frequency in Chinese EFL learners'English writings to explore the differences of such distributions between higher achievers and lower achievers and to investigate such differences between beginning learners and advanced learners.Materials analyzed in the present study were 50 compositions selected from the Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC). James'(2001) and Long et al's (2000) error classifications were both employed in the present study. Based on James'(2001) classification of errors, the errors identified in the present study are categorized into substance errors, text errors and discourse errors. The latter classifies errors into interlingual errors and intralingual errors. The data analysis generated the following findings:First, according to James'taxonomy (2001), the number of text errors found in the selected sample writings ranks first and that of substance errors takes the second place, followed by discourse errors. According to Long et al's taxonomy (2000), the proportion of interlingual errors to intralingual errors is about half to half, which is very close to the percentage obtained by Tran-Chi-Chau (1975), and this confirms his conclusion that about 50% of Chinese EFL learners'errors belong to interlingual errors. The large percentage of interlingual errors shows that the negative transfer of mother tongue is an important factor that influences the Chinese EFL learners'English learning.Second, the higher achievers are different from lower achievers in terms of the conjunctive errors at the significant level (p<.05). The mean of the conjunctive errors committed by the higher achievers is less than that of the lower achievers. This suggests that the higher achievers commit less conjunctive errors than the lower achievers significantly. This result confirms the assumption that there is a significant correlation between the use of connectives and the quality of writing (Deng Fei, 2003: 47).Third, the advanced learners are different from the beginning learners in terms of the intralingual errors at the significant level (p<.05). The mean of the intralingual errors committed by the advanced learners is more than that of the beginners in the sense that the advanced learners commit more intralingual errors than the beginners significantly. However, the result of the present study does not show that the advanced learners are different from the beginning learners in terms of interlingual errors at the significant level. It follows that the advanced learners still commit as many interlingual errors as the beginners. The result yielded in the present study confirms Taylor's (1975) assumption that advanced learners commit more intralingual errors than beginning learners. The phenomenon that the advanced learners persist in committing quite a few interlingual errors may be attributable to communication strategy and learning strategy.This study has the following pedagogical implications: typological parameter should be reset to accommodate new typological properties during foreign language learning; the Chinese language should be fully exploited to facilitate the positive transfer.