Error Analysis Of Be Usage In Mongolian Students' English Compositions

The verb be has complex forms and various functions in English. Because of its complexity and multiple functions learners of English as the second language and as the third language have great difficulties in mastering the usage of verb be. Especially, the students of Mongolian Ethnic Minority who can speak both Mongolian and Chinese at different levels face different kinds of difficulties.Previous research has analyzed various errors made by the students of Mongolian Ethnic Minority in their study of English, such as errors in sentence structure, word choice and phonetic comparisons. The main purpose of this study is to focus on the errors of be made by Mongolian students in their English compositions.This thesis, on the basis of the theories of Error Analysis, contrastive analysis, language transfer, undertakes a case study of the errors of be made by Mongolian students in their English compositions, for the purpose of finding out the regular patterns of these errors and the causes. In addition, the author has paid particular attention to the language transfer phenomenon in verb be used by the Mongolian students.The research samples are collected from 218 English compositions written by Mongolian students. The subjects of this study are 91 Mongolian students (76 female and 15 male) from the Foreign Language College of Hulunbeier University. They are all English majors, ranging from freshmen to sophomores. Besides, more information is obtained through questionnaires and interviews.The study results revealed that 557 errors of verb be are found in Mongolian students writings. Among them, the omission errors are the biggest type, accounting for 31.42 percent. Errors in voice are the smallest type, accounting for 5.21 percent. The phenomena of two types of errors could be influenced by negative transfer of mother tongue.In summary, this thesis has classified and analyzed the errors of verb be made by Mongolian students in their compositions. The author hopes to offer some suggestions for the further study on this issue. It may be useful for our English teachers to develop effective teaching methodology for the English learning of Mongolian students.