| English writing, as one of the basic skills in the process of language learning, embodies the comprehensive language ability of students. However, for most senior high school students, English writing has always been a weak point. Hence, it is urgent and essential to improve their writing ability.Among the factors that influence students’ writing quality, the appearance of errors can not be ignored.For senior high students in China, they always make more grammatical errors than lexical and context errors in their English writing. In addition, among many grammatical errors, those related to the verb list a much higher place, which severely affects the meaning of sentences and the writing quality. Undoubtedly,as an English teacher, he can’t ignore these errors and it is essential to correct them so as to improve the quality of the writing product.Hence, this paper shifts to error correction, and adopts peer-correction strategy in light of the shortcoming of teacher-correction and self-correction to correct various verb errors in students’ English writing. As for peer-correction strategy, it is based on Cooperative Learning theory and Vygotsky’s theory of Zone of Proximal Development. By using quantitative and qualitative method, the author discusses three questions in this study:(1) What kinds of verb errors exist in senior high school students’ English writing?(2) Compared with teacher-correction, is peer-correction more effective in reducing verb errors in students’ writing?(3) What is the attitude of students toward peer-correction? It is hoped that the study could shed light on the improvement of senior high students’ English writing and provide some implications to English writing teaching.The subjects in this study were 111 first-year high school students from two natural classes in Lianfeng Middle School, Weiyuan, Gansu. The author randomly chose one class as the experimental class and the other as the control class. There were 56 students in the experimental class and 55 students in the control class. The entire experiment lasted two months, and research instruments included two tests(pre-test and post-test) as well as interview. In the two tests, the subjects in both classes were assigned with the same writing topic and requirement. After the tests, with the help of two experienced teachers, the author marked the paper, calculated all the verb errors and classified them according to a certain standard.Finally, the software SPSS 13.0 was used to conduct the independent samples T tests and paired samples T tests. During the experiment, both the experimental class and control class were required to write a weekly English composition and it lasted seven weeks. In the process of error correction, students in theexperimental class were asked to do peer-correction under teacher’s guidance. Specifically, according to the pre-test result, the author divided 56 students in the experimental class into 14 groups with four students of different English levels in a group. In each group, the student who had the highest English proficiency was chosen as the leader. The leader was responsible for the carrying out of peer-correction and helping group members to solve the problem arising in the process. On the contrary, students in the control class used traditional teacher-correction to check verb errors. When the experiment came to an end, in the experimental class, the author randomly chose nine students from different English levels to receive an interview, aiming to find their attitudes to peer-correction used in the class.The result shows that:(1) There exist eleven kinds of verb errors in senior high students’ English writing, which are related to the spelling, tense, voice, subject-verb agreement, auxiliary verb, non-finite verb, modal verb, collocation of verb, redundancy of verb, absence of verb and the choice of verb. Of all these errors, students make more ones in subject-verb disagreement, the misuse of auxiliary verb, the redundancy of verb and the misuse of non-finite verb. Considering reasons resulting in these errors, mother tongue interference and the incomplete master of the target language play a vital role.(2) Compared with control class, the verb errors in the writing of the experimental class decrease a lot.(3) Most students like and benefit a lot from peer-correction. Compared with teacher-correction, they are able to find out the verb errors actively and correct them timely through peer-correction; they are more responsible for their language output; their independent thinking ability and cooperative problem-solving skills are developed;they have more confidence and interest in English writing. At the same time, it is found in the study that teacher-correction is more suitable for students with low English proficiency to correct non-finite verb errors and the wrong choice of verb.In a word, peer-correction strategy is beneficial to senior high students’ English writing. On one hand,for students, it boosts the communication and cooperation between group members, encouraging them to find and to correct errors immediately. Hence, students can make much fewer verb errors in their English writing and improve the accuracy of the grammatical structure of sentence. They have more enthusiasm and confidence to English writing, the quality of which is greatly improved consequently. On the other hand,for teachers, the success of peer-correction adopted English writing teaching is indispensable to the following factors: the harmonious and pleasant class atmosphere, the detailed rule of peer-correction, the reasonable collocation of group members, the active interaction and individual responsibility among groupmembers as well as the guidance of teacher. A reasonable group should be made up of students with different cognitive level and interest. In addition, the correction task ought to be assigned according to the actual development of students. Only in this way, can peer-correction truly make up for the deficiency of teacher-correction and improve the effectiveness of English writing teaching. Therefore, it is suggested to exert the positive effect of peer-correction to reduce various errors in students’ writing so as to improve their writing ability. |
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