The Application Of The Error Analysis Theory In Oral English Teaching Of Junior Middle School

The process of learning language is the cultivating process of four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Speaking is the performance of communicative competence. Oral English teaching is an important part of English teaching. Making errors in the process of spoken English learning seems a natural phenomenon. To reduce and avoid the students’ errors is one of the challenges faced by language teachers. The study of errors can help the teacher find the causes of errors and facilitate them to comply with the laws of students’ learning in the process of teaching. This can avoid students’ errors effectively and help improve the communicative ability of the students.The study centers on the following four questions:1. What kinds of typical errors are often made by the junior middle school students?2. What are the main sources of the errors?3. What kinds of error-correcting strategies are appropriate to the students’ preference?4. Can the students’ English oral ability be improved by applying the Error Analysis Theory in the process of English teaching?An experiment was carried out on applying the Error Analysis Theory to oral English teaching in the junior middle school in Xuchang No.3 Middle School. At the beginning of the experiment, the students were asked to have a pretest. The writer collected the errors made by the students during the pretest and classified the errors into four types: the phonetic errors, lexical errors, grammar errors and pragmatic errors. According to the analysis of the data obtained from the pretest, the main sources of errors are found out: intralingual transfer, interlingual transfer and teaching introducing. Because of the insufficient language input, the lexical errors and grammar errors are the typical errors made by the junior middle school students. The writer carried out the corresponding methods which were whether to correct the errors, when to correct the errors and how to correct the errors according to the causes of the errors. The writer applied the three error-correcting strategies: directing correcting strategy, suggesting strategy and praising and correcting strategy which were preferred by the students. After three months of English teaching practice, a post-test was taken by both the experimental class(EC) and the controlled class(CC). The data and results of the experiment show that the students’ oral English ability in the experimental class is significantly improved. So the application of the Error Analysis Theory in oral English teaching of the junior middle school is effective.