Error Analysis On English Writings Of Miao Nationality Area Students In Junior Middle School

The21st century is an information age. English as a communication tool has becomemore and more important. Many fields have something to do with English. Due to financialand policy reasons, English teaching in western area has far lagged behind the coastal cities.Few experts pay attention to the English teaching and learning in Miao nationality area.Many Miao nationality students are minority in a lot of cities of Guizhou province and theyhave formed the unique characteristics which the students have in English learning. Basedon the theory of Error Analysis, the thesis is proposed to find it out by analyzing theEnglish writings of Miao nationality students. Specifically, three research questions of thisthesis are presented below:(1) What kinds of errors are Miao Nationality area students likely to make in theirEnglish writings?(2) What are the possible reasons of the errors?(3) How do Miao Language and Chinese influence their English writings?The author applied two types of instrument, questionnaire and the English writings ofMiao nationality students to solve those problems. On June5th,2014, the author did aquestionnaire to figure out what problems exist in Miao nationality students’ Englishcompositions. Most importantly the author collected975compositions from the final exampapers during the first semester of the2013-2014school year. In order to carry out theresearch conveniently, all the compositions of the students were taken photos.According to the classification of Burt and Kispachky’s classification and Cal James’stheory, the author analyzed the errors from two aspects, that is, micro level (local errors,global errors and the other errors) and macro level (Intralingual and interlingual errors). Tothe micro level, the author tries to find out what the distribution of the errors exist and thepossible causes of these errors. From the macro level, the author analyzes the errors withthree parts: interlingual errors, intralingual errors and induced errors. The interlingual errorsinclude the inference from Miao language (L1) and Chinese (L2). The intralingual errorsare analyzed from4parts:(1) overgeneralization,(2) ignorance of rule restriction,(3)incomplete application of rules and (4) false concepts hypothesized. Besides, the induced errors show the errors are caused by teaching method, teaching materials and teachers.The research shows that (1) from micro level, local errors are in the first place, whichtake41.71%in all the errors. Global errors take37.91%in all the error in the second placeand the other errors take20.38%in all the errors in the last place. From the macro level,intralingual errors take49.53%in all the errors in the first place. Interlingual errors take35.14%in all the errors in the second place and induced errors take15.32%in all the errorsin the last place.(2) Interlingual transfer from Chinese and Miao language, intralingualtransfer, induced factors and Miao nationality students’ heavy learning burden are thepossible reasons of the errors that Miao nationality students made.(3) Miao language andChinese influence Miao nationality students’ English learning by interlingual transfer andinduced factors.At last, four implications are proposed to improve the teaching and learning in writingby the author.