Analysis On Lexical Errors In High School Students' English Writing

Error analysis theory came into being in the1960s. It treated the language learner as the center of theresearch. Through the comprehensive and systematic analysis of the errors that appeared in languagelearner's writings, people can explore the characteristics and the causes of these errors, and reduce orprevent the occurrence of such errors. In recent years, EA theory has been the key concern of linguisticsand psychologists, and also the indispensable means in foreign language teaching.With the development of linguistics, psychology and other related disciplines, there emerge differenttheories and methods of analyzing errors, and the literature review shows that quite a few researches havebeen done on the EFL learners' errors. The students in the senior high school will inevitably make more orless errors in their English writings. And it is, therefore, of significance to conduct a study of lexical errorsin the writings of the students in Senior High School.Based upon EA and interlanguage theory, the present research studies the common lexical errors thatare made by Chinese high school students in their English writings in an attempt to find out thecharacteristics of the lexical errors and moreover, the major causes which result in these lexical errors.This study selects totally104Senior High School students of Grade Two as the research object inAffiliated Middle School of Henan Normal University.With the aim to investigate the situation and features of the lexical errors in Senior High Schoolstudents' English writings, the present study designs a questionnaire. The study collects104students'monthly exam compositions, analyzes and classifies and discusses the lexical errors that the students makein their compositions. The study is conducted on the basis of the following research questions:1. What kinds of lexical errors are frequently made by the Chinese Senior High School students intheir writings?2. What are the main features of the lexical errors in the writings?3. What are the major causes of the lexical errors in their writings?The result shows that the main types of lexical errors in this study are formal errors, semantic errors,confusion of part of speech and conjunction errors, among which omission and overinclusion occur most frequently, and collocation errors make up high proportion of the semantic errors.The causes of lexical errors are complicated. They mainly result from negative transfer of mothertongue, overgeneralization and inadequate input of target language. Formal errors are caused bymispronunciation. Insufficient knowledge of word-formation, and incomplete knowledge of TL rules aremajor sources for collocation errors.This research includes five chapters. The first chapter introduces the background, significance andstructure of the present study. Chapter Two, literature review, mainly presents the theoretical basis of theresearch, including EA and IL, perspectives on the main concepts such as definition of errors anddifferences between errors and mistakes and besides, the previous studies at home and abroad on lexicalerrors are also reviewed. In Chapter Three, the research design is provided, in which three researchquestions, data selection, research methods and research procedures are stated respectively. Quantitativeand qualitative method is used to analyze the data, and a Vocabulary Investigation Questionnaire helps toget a main idea of the current situation in the students' English learning, the research instrument andmethods adopted in the study are also introduced. Chapter Four is the key part of the thesis, whichdiscusses the results obtained from the empirical study. The research also tries to explore the major causesof the lexical errors in the students' writings. Chapter Five is the conclusion of the research, in which themajor findings of the research are summarized and the limitations of the present study are pointed out.Based on the findings of the research, this study puts forward some suggestions for English teaching,including proper attitudes toward lexical errors in writing, context-based vocabulary teaching, necessity oferror correction, reinforcing L2learners' language knowledge and increasing vocabulary input and output.