Error Analysis Of Attributive Clauses By Chinese College Non-English Majors

Along with the development of the linguistic theories, the focus of the foreign and second language teaching shifted from the view of the teacher centered to the learner centered. And it stresses the learners'creative role in second language learning. One major result of this shift has been the development and application of error analysis.In the process of teaching foreign language, teachers feel headache about the errors made by the students. No matter how many efforts they spare, the errors still seem to be inevitable. Virtually every student makes errors in one way or another. This has become a most thorny issue and a matter of utmost concern to teachers of English. Problems arise and press us to look into such fields. What kinds of errors are most frequently committed in learners'learning and using attributive clauses? What are the causes for these errors? How to prevent them in advance? What specific measures can teachers take? These are the problems probed and discussed in this thesis.This thesis is based on a careful analysis on the errors of 155 non-English majors'question papers (200 students took part in the experiment, within which 155 are valid) by way of authentic linguistic data analysis, especially that of error types. It lays particularly stress on the causes of errors in attributive clause due to grammar knowledge concerning to attributive clause. The goal of the thesis is to offer some inspirations and useful proposals for teaching attributive clause. This thesis is composed of the following 6 chapters:Chapter One examines the important role of error analysis in teaching attributive clauses by showing the significance, purpose and background of the present study. It is found that through error analysis, teachers can find problems existing in the process of learning and using attributive clause, so that they can guide learners'learning and using attributive clause activities with better prospects.Chapter Two reviews some theoretical terms relating to second language acquisition concerning the present study and offers some necessary illustrations, explanations and clarifications. This chapter also reviews some correlative theories such as error analysis, contrastive analysis, interlanguage and transfer.Chapter Three serves as an introduction and detailed narration of the methods of the experiment, specific processes and the subject matter being explored.Chapter Four lies the core of this thesis, which enquires into 5 typical error types in attributive clause and tracks down the causes of each type with a lot of examples.Chapter Five is a general discussion, followed by some practical and useful suggestions for teaching attributive clause.Chapter Six summarizes the thesis, yields some proposals for further study and provides some solutions while pointing out the limitations of the present study.