An Interlanguage-Based Error Analysis Of College Students' Use Of Non-Finite Verbs

As a difficulty of second language acquisition (SLA), the use of non-finite verbs has not been adequately valued and fully analyzed. Therefore, it has become a gap which Chinese English learners cannot step across for a long time. The most striking performance is:Firstly, in the compositions of Chinese English Learners, the frequency of using non-finite verbs is very low because Chinese English Learners are afraid of making errors. They are used to using simple sentence structures to express complicated meanings. In this case, English learners frequently avoid using them and tend to seek other patterns instead of non-finite verbs. Secondly, even though English Learners utilize non-finite verbs in English writing, they cannot use them correctly. This phenomenon fully illustrates the influence of Chinese as the native language on English as the target language. Chinese pays particular attention to parataxis and does not emphasize the inflexions of verbs'morphs, while English focuses on hypotaxis. The wide use of non-finite verbs in English makes English sentences changeful.The present thesis aims at carrying out the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis towards Chinese English Learners'errors in the use of non-finite verbs on the basis of the interlanguage theory, error analysis (EA) and language transfer in order to investigate the types of errors and their typical characteristics as the interlanguage, various causes of errors. As a result, the thesis draws conclusions and applies the research findings to English teaching and learning. In the present thesis, 2 problems should be solved: 1) What is the most striking type among all the usual types of non-finite verbs'errors? 2) What are the major causes of these errors and what is the most leading cause? The answers will be illustrated in the part of conclusion: 1) The most striking type is the redundancy of predicates; 2) There are all together 4 causes of errors concerning non-finite verbs'errors: the syntactic negative transfer, the overgeneralization of L2 rules, context of learning and communication strategies; among them, the most apparent one should be the syntactic negative transfer. Together with them, one hypothesis should be proved: there is the inevitable correlation between non-finite verbs'errors and different proficiency level of Chinese college learners. The necessity and significance of the study are illustrated in introduction. The second chapter is about the interlanguage theory, error analysis and transfer theory. The third chapter is about research questions, research methodology, research procedures and data collection. Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are both conducted in Chapter four. In chapter five, major findings and implications for English language teaching and learning are summed up.