Stabilization Of Errors In Chinese Adult EFL Learners’ Written Interlanguage

It is observed that even advanced learners of high language proficiency will make varying degrees of errors in their practical use. And the errors of the same kind will reappear from time to time. Selinker refers to the phenomenon as "the stabilization of interlanguage". In his opinion, interlanguage is an intermediate state between native language and target language. The Interlanguage theory assumes that some individuals will, consciously or unconsciously, draw their own generalizations about target language in the learning process. The theory argues that errors or "negative feedback" that a learner makes can serve as a provisional and workable substitute which indicates active participation by learners in the learning process. In this paper, the author carries out a tentative longitudinal study and intends to test out whether there are "stabilized" errors in Chinese adult EFL learners’ academic papers. Altogether fifty-seven academic papers, written by ten English graduate students over two years as the final-examinations, are collected for error analyses.The corpus demonstrates that four subjects, including No.2, No.4, No.6, and No.10, are proficient in using appropriate language expressions in specific contexts and there are no signs of stabilization in their academic papers. The other six subjects, i.e. No.l, No.3, No.5, No.7, No.8, and No.9, are observed having different degrees of stabilization in their written papers. To be specific, the corpus shows that No.l has stabilized Catachresis problems and may have stabilized problems in terms of Overgeneralization and Voice. No.3 does have stabilized problems as to the appropriate use of fixed word collocation and may have stabilized problems in terms of Cross-association and Aspect. Stabilization regarding word collocations and catachresis can be detected in the academic papers written by No.5. As to No.7, stabilization may be found in terms of the problematic constructions with no predicate and catachresis. No.8 may be confronted with stabilization in terms of Overgeneralization and Tense while having stabilization as to the appropriate use of prepositions in the sentences. No.9 has had stabilized problems with prepositions and idiomatic expressions and may have stabilized problems in terms of Tense, Overgeneralization, and Word Collocation.Based on the findings of error analyses, the author further distinguishes the main stabilized errors between interlingual errors and intralingual errors and finds that the major interlanguage errors belong to interlingual errors, adding up to 10 compared with 8 intralingual errors. As far as the interlingual errors are concerned, the major errors are made at grammatical level. As to the intralingual errors, all errors are found at lexical level where the major errors are caused by catachresis in specific contexts. In view of these results, the author comes to the conclusion that the stabilized interlingual errors mainly result from LI transfer at grammatical level while the stabilized intralingual errors are mainly caused by different thinking mode under the influence of cultural differences and individual differences including different learning motivations and different learning strategies. Long-term and effective ways to deal with these stabilizations are to develop individual learners’self-awareness and to emphasize the teachers’ pedagogical roles in the EFL classrooms.