An Analysis Of Errors Committed By Chinese Senior Students In Their English Writing

Language is the most important tool of communication. The ultimate target oflanguage teaching is to develop the learners' verbal and nonverbal communicationabilities. As an authentic reflection on the learner's English acquisition, theimportance of English writing is embodied not only in English teaching but also invarious exams, job hunting as well as in other occasions. However, it is generallyaccepted that learning to write in a foreign language is a much more difficult andslower process than learning other language skills such as learning to listen, to speak,and to read. In our country, most EFL teachers in middle schools on the one hand areaccustomed to teaching individual components such as vocabulary, grammar orstructural items;on the other hand, most middle-school students are reluctant to writebecause they are afraid of making mistakes in their writings. As a result, these factorsimpair the improvement of their writing abilities greatly and writing skill becomes theweak points of the most of the learners. Therefore, we are much obliged to clarify theelements which affect English writing, among which the analysis of errors is of greatimportance.Before the 1960s, the traditional Contrastive Analysis was prevailing. InContrastive Analysis, the theoretical base was behaviorism which regarded errors as"bad habits" that had been formed. It was assumed that the interference of the mothertongue (MT or L1) was responsible for the errors made during the transitional periodof learning the target language. However, this theory overstated the significance of L1transfer and ignored the complexity of the language itself as well. It was not until1970s that Error Analysis, owned much to the work of Corder, was acknowledged as asubordinate branch of the applied linguistics. This cognitive approach changed theattitudes towards the errors, and considered them essential to the learning process. EAprovides both the teachers and the learners a new device to know how far towards thegoal the learners have progressed and consequently what remains for the learners tolearn and for the teachers to teach. Guided by the study on the current writingsituation in Chinese middle schools and the analysis of the compositions of Chinesesenior students, this thesis aims to explore the students' problems in English writing—the errors and their causes, and suggests some solutions to these problems.vBased on the analysis of errors committed by senior students in their Englishwriting, this thesis attempts to find out the important and difficult points in EFT,especially those in English writing, so that the teachers can help the students to learnEFL more effectively. As a result of the study, it shows that it is necessary to layemphasis on the teaching of lexical collocation, preposition, coherence anddeveloping the cultural thinking patterns of Chinese senior students.The thesis consists of seven sections.The first section serves as an introduction, which indicates the objective of EFTin middle school and the current English writing situation in China. It highlights theimportance of Error Analysis (EA) in EFT, especially in the English writing teachingin Chinese middle schools.Chapter 1 outlines the literature review of the study of EA at home and abroad.And then it goes to present the status of Error Analysis in English writing teachingand the current writing situation of EFL in Chinese senior middle schools.The purpose of Chapter 2 is to outline a theoretical framework that can serve as ameans to examine the key issues. The author puts stress on the error classification andthe distinction between errors and mistakes. It mainly includes Brown's discussion ofintralingual and interlingual transfer, Richards' explanation to intralingual errors,Dulay, Burt and Krashen's notion of error classification, and the development of theconcept of Stenson's induced errors. In Addition, the definitions and the significancesof errors are further discussed in this section.To investigate what types of errors Chinese senior students are prone to make intheir English writing, Chapter 3, therefore, focuses on the description and explanationof the errors by collecting and analyzing the compositions of the students. The resultsshow that the principal problems lie in the following three fields: lexical collocation,preposition and coherence.Chapter 4 further exemplifies the potential reasons that these three types of errorsoccur. In this thesis, the sources of the lexical collocation errors, preposition errorsand incoherence are mainly illustrated in detail from the aspects of intralingual andinterlingual transfer. In terms of these three types of errors, the interlingual errorsoutnumber the intralingual ones.In the light of the study on the description and explanation of errors in thecompositions, this thesis not only gives further details about the proper treatment oferrors but also offers some tentative suggestions in Chapter 5. Its aims are to providesome implications for English learners and teachers as well as for language learningand teaching researchers.The final conclusive section summarizes the main idea of the whole thesis. Itdeclares the importance of our learning and teaching on lexical collocation,preposition and coherence as well as developing cultural thinking patterns of theChinese senior students. The author also raises some puzzling questions in regards tothe procedures and techniques used in the concrete analysis of errors in thesecompositions and her expectation of better work of others in this field.Nevertheless, the suggestions and theories put forward by the author in this thesiscan hardly be more than tentative due to the restricted time and especially her finiteknowledge on this subject. Since this is only a preliminary study on the errors inEnglish writing of senior students, more research is needed and further investigationshould be made in the future.