An Error Analysis On Grammar In Senior High School Students’ English Writing

Since the reformation of the New Curriculum, many English teachers in senior high schools have misunderstood the idea of the New Curriculum. They think that grammar teaching is no longer emphasized in English teaching, so they do not teach English grammar systematically in class any more. The weakening of the status of English grammar causes directly the incorrectness and informality of the language students put out, which can be seen easily in students’ English compositions. Therefore, this research based on Error Analysis analyzes the grammatical errors in senior high school students’ English compositions.The author selects 132 Grade 11 students’ English compositions as samples in monthly exams in Xinglong NO.1 Middle School in Hebei Province, and classifies and analyzes the 793 grammatical errors in the samples. Some implications on English teaching are also explored by the author.This research finds that the morphological errors are the outstanding grammatical errors in senor high school students’ English compositions, and the errors of verbs are the main errors in morphology. Although the syntactic errors are relatively fewer than morphological errors, which may be because the students use more simple sentences, the syntactic errors cannot be ignored. The main causes of these grammatical errors are the lack of grammatical knowledge, overgeneralization, the interference of mother tongue, and so on.According to the above causes and the practical situation of English teaching, the author gets the following implications. Firstly, teachers should emphasize grammar teaching. A good command of grammatical knowledge is the basis of using the language for students. Only by improving the students’ poor grammatical knowledge can teachers help students reduce their grammatical errors in their English compositions. Secondly, teachers need to choose correct ways to teach and learn grammar. Avoid misleading students with incorrect ways of teaching. Thirdly, compare mother tongue and the target language to help students find out the similarities and differences between them. Make full use of the advantages and avoid the disadvantages. Last but not least, treat students’ grammatical errors correctly. Teachers should treat students’ grammatical errors neither too loosely nor too seriously, and help students understand why they make such errors and how to avoid these errors in the future. The author hopes that this research can provide some implications for English teaching.