Application Of The Error Analysis Theory To Middle School Students’ English Writing Teaching

Writing as one of the fundamental skills in English learning and using,which is an intergrated embodiment of all English skills. The survey says, thirty-five percentage students think writing skills is the most difficult one among the four skills. Therefore, it is an emphasis and difficulty in English teaching and learning.Error Analysis Theory was developed from the Comparative Analysis Approach flourished in 1970. The biggest contribution was that it changed people’s attitude to “errors”. It says that errors are natural phenomena in the process of language learning, and we shouldn’t hate them, because errors can guide us to learn and make more progess. So we should observe the laws errors appear and use them to direct our English teaching and learning. Interlanguage Analysis discovers the independent, dynamic and systemic characters of the target language system, which makes up the deficiency of the Error Analysis Theory, and provide more information to help language learners to make progress.Based on the Error Analysis Theory, according to the Corder’s Error Analysis steps, the author takes the way of quantitative analysis and the qualitative analysis to study the students’ writing errors and identify the causes of them in Suide No.1 Middle School Senior Three students’ English writing, finding the way to guide the English writing teaching. Because they have finished learning all the basic English language knowledge and they need this experimental research badly. According to the purposes above, the author puts forward four questions. First, which kinds of errors exist in the students’ English Writing? Second, what causes these errors? Third, through this experiment, can we help students to resolve their English writing errors, improving their English writing level by the direction of the theoretical system of the Error Analysis? Fourth, what can we get from this application experiment.This experiment shows us the causes leading to errors as follows. First, students’ basic English knowledge is not solid, characterized by the lack of vocabulary and grammar. Second,students fail to develop good habits of English Writing. They don’t often write and their preparation work before writing are insufficient, their language organization abilities are insufficient during writing and they are lack of inspection and reflection after writing. Third, teachers’ attention to the English writing are inadequate, in the system of writing teaching and the timely feedback. Students intend to choose a more positive and initiative method in the feedback mode, like “group work”and “pair work”. Forth, English vocabulary and grammar are two major factors which restricts the students’ English writing. Among them, “nouns” ”articles” “verbs” in vocabulary level and “complex sentences” “ Chinglish” and “basic sentences patterns” are the high frequency error projects in students compositions. Fifth, negative transfers of the interlanguage and intralanguage are two important causes leading to the students’ English writing errors. Sixth, students ignore some details of English writing knowledge, such as scoring rules. So the author adopts some teaching strategies as follows.(1) The author arrange the teaching content through the combination of the New Standard Curriculum Standards demands, social hot spots and text books’ topics to ignite the students enthusiasm of English learning.(2) Adopt the “group work” “pair work” and “self assessment”ways to finish the error correction action, making students the masters of English writing.(3) The teacher should go on teaching English basic knowledge and writing skills through topics systematically.Based on the findings above, this paper put forward the following suggestions in English writing teaching. Firstly, pay attention to the basic English knowledge. Secondly, help students improve their English writing levels and language knowledge by stimulating students’ interest in learning English. Thirdly, guide students to know the tiny differences between English and Chinese writing are important too. Fourthly, train students’ English writing habits, making them do well in every procedure of English writing. Fifthly, encourage them to read more, accumulate more, do full preparation for their English writing.