High School Students In English Derivational Affixes Learning Research

After decades of neglect, lexis is now recognized as central to language learning. As an important component of lexical competence, knowledge of English derivational affixes is indispensable to Chinese EFL learners to tackle the task of learning large numbers of English words. Although somewhat rule-governed, the system of derivational affixes is a complex one which often causes learners' lexical errors. Affixation errors are frequently occurring in Chinese English learners' learning process, especially in writing. However, till now research related to this area has been attached very little attention which might be a neglected issue.This study is intended to investigate Senior High School learners' learning of English derivational affixes by analyzing the derivational errors in their writings based on the theory of Error Analysis. This thesis uses SPSS to get the necessary statistics and analyze them. The first step is to locate all the word building errors in learners'writing. Then the errors related to derivational affixes are scrutinized. After listed the raw statistics of these error types, further analysis of the statistics is made to see if there are some rules and characteristics. Then, the possible causes of errors are discussed.The results show that errors of English derivational affixes are widespread in Chinese Senior High learners' writings. Among all the affixation errors, overuse of affixes and underuse of affixes occur most frequently while confusion of affixes is not obvious. The causes of errors in derivational affix acquisition include complexity of derivational affix rules, imbalance of lexis learning, lack of language input, inappropriate usage of learning strategies, transfer of training, etc. Meanwhile, this study has explored some features of derivational affix learning, namely suffix knowledge superiority over prefix knowledge and receptive affix knowledge superiority over productive affix knowledge. And also this thesis has certified that there is a certain order in the EFL learners'English affix learning.At last, the thesis gives implications to the learning and teaching of English derivational affixes.