A Study On Word-substitution Errors In Chinese English Majors’ Writings

Word-substitution errors in this study refer to the errors that EFL learners chooseimproper or incorrect words to express the meanings they intend to convey.According to the data retrieved from Chinese Learner English Corpus,word-substitution error is the most occurring type of lexical errors committed byChinese EFL learners. However, studies by mainland Chinese scholars of EFLlearners’ word-substitution errors are not exhaustive and most studies limit theirsubjects to non-English-major college students. In light of the limitations of previousstudies, with interlanguage and error analysis as the theoretical basis, this study isundertaken to describe, classify and analyze word-substitution errors in ChineseEnglish majors’ writings.1380word-substitution errors are retrieved from St5and St6, two sub-corpora inCLEC. Through examining all these word-substitution errors, this study finds thatthey are involved in nine word classes; that word-substitution errors occur most in theuse of noun and least in the use of numeral; and that the number of word-substitutionerrors in the nine word classes from the most to the least follows a sequence as noun﹥verb﹥preposition﹥adjective﹥adverb﹥pronoun﹥conjunction﹥article﹥numeral.Besides, literal translations, misuse of synonyms, misuse of synforms, misuse ofsuperonyms, improper lexical collocations and grammatical errors are found as theprimary manifestations of the word-substitution errors. Then, they are roughlyclassified into interlingual and intralingual word-substitution errors. Literaltranslations resulting mainly from mother tongue interference are sorted intointerlingual word-substitution errors, and other five types (i.e. misuse of synonyms,misuse of superonyms, misuse of synforms, improper lexical collocations andgrammatical errors) resulting mainly from learners’ inadequate knowledge ofEnglish vocabulary are categorized into intralingual word-substitution errors. Thedata show that intralingual word-substitution errors are far more than interlingualword-substitution errors. Moreover, intralingual word-substitution errors are foundmainly on three levels: the formal level, the semantical level and the grammatical level. The data show that they occur most on the semantical level and least on thegrammatical level. In addition, on the semantical level, the misuse of synonyms isfound to be most typical.Primary causes responsible for these errors are explored. They are mainlytriggered by learners’ incomplete lexical representation and the native languagetransfer (e.g. overgeneralization of English words and L1interference). Finally, basedon the research results of this study, two suggestions for English vocabulary teachingand learning are put forward. One is that English teachers can utilize the way ofdata-driven learning to teach vocabulary knowledge (e.g. synonyms, morphology,collocations, etc.), and the other is that English teachers should cultivate EFLlearners’ vocabulary learning strategies to improve their learning efficiency (e.g. theycan enlarge their English vocabulary storage through word formation and infer themeanings of unknown words through context clues instead of just resorting to rotememorization).