A Corpus-Based Study Of Noun Errors In The Writing By Chinese EFL Learners

Error analysis is one of the primary methods used to investigate learner language, i.e., interlanguage. Recently with the development of computer technology and corpus linguistics, corpus-based error analysis has become an important approach to second language acquisition research in the field of applied linguistics. In 2003, the largest learner corpus in China, Chinese Learner English Corpus (CLEC) was published, which is of great significance to corpus-based linguistics research in China. On the basis of error analysis, this study focuses on the noun errors in the compositions of Chinese EFL learners ranging from senior high school students to university English majors and non-English majors. It aims to find the problems and difficulties of Chinese learners in the process of learning English nouns.Though mach research has been done on the errors in EFL learners' writing, studies on noun errors in writing are still insufficient. A study was conducted to explore the common noun errors in Chinese EFL learners' writing in following perspectives: (1) What are the characteristics of noun errors in the compositions of the Chinese EFL learners; (2) What are the causes of various noun errors in the writing of Chinese EFL learners; (3) Can we judge the proficiency levels of Chinese EFL learners from the quantity of noun errors?Findings of the present study are as following: (1) The highest percentages of noun error occurrences are shown as the category of errors in number, agreement and article. All the problems have much to do with the grammatical category of noun inflection, which is a great difference between Chinese and English. So it is safe to say that mother tongue influence is strong where English and Chinese differ greatly. (2) The causes of the noun errors are complex. Although error analysis can not clearly identify the unitary causes of an error, it is not impossible to find out the underlying factors behind the errors. Chinese EFL learners' mother tongue negative transfer, intralingual transfer, induced errors and compound and ambiguous factors all contribute to these errors. (3) We cannot judge the learners' proficiency level simply from the number of noun errors made in their writing. From the analysis, we can see that the distribution of noun errors is identical. With regard to some types of errors, learners even at a higher proficiency level make more than those at a lower level. This study is of pedagogical significance in that it helps the teachers and learners to know the common noun errors in students' compositions, and provides some suggestions to the teachers and learners in the process of noun teaching and learning by exploring the potential sources of these errors. In the process of teaching nouns, the teacher should raise students' awareness of nouns, teach nouns in comparison with Chinese, employ corpus and error analysis to facilitate noun learning and correct noun errors in the writing.