An Interlanguage-Based Study Of The Application Of Non-finite Verbs In College English Writing

Non-finite verb has always been a tough issue for Chinese college students as EFL(English as a Foreign Language)learners.The study on learners' errors has long been focused by many scholars at home and abroad.And error analysis theory as a branch of applied linguistics to some extent can explain the problems arising from learners' learning process.Closely related to error analysis interlanguage is an essential process of learning language which is similar to errors but different from the simple errors in meaning.Learners will undergo the stages of interlanguage and finally they will succeed in the acquisition of target language.Furthermore reflection on teaching and material for study can be set forth.Thus teachers can take more effective and targeted strategy in their teaching methodology.Because of its complexity in using most students in China seldom apply non-finite verbs and even if they used non-finite verbs their writings turn out to be plagued with errors.Nevertheless by scanning and analyzing the previous studies concerning error analysis the author finds that researches on students' non-finite verb errors have not been given sufficient attention and not enough emphases have been laid on it.Besides previous studies on students' language errors were mainly concentrated on such general aspects as students' error correction like grammatical errors syntactic errors or discourse errors.There are few researches dedicated to the overall research of non-finite verbs.In a word it is necessary to put forward a research on the application of non-finite verbs.Based on interlanguage theory the author collected 471 pieces of compositions which were written by students from China University of Petroleum(UPC)investigated and analyzed their frequency of non-finite verb application classified the errors of the non-finite verbs and explored the factors contributing to those errors.With the research the author drew the conclusions as follows: firstly students' non-finite verb application in their compositions presents a low frequency.Secondly their errors in using non-finite verbs present a high frequency.The author calculated each error type among different student groups.Comparing class A with class B and class C the author found that students from class A are more capable of using non-finite verbs and have committed less error.They use non-finite verbs more consciously in contrast with those from class B and class C who tend to resort to avoidance strategy and they commit more complex errors than simple ones which is identical to different stages in process of a learner's language acquisition then we can manifest that learner's language is in an ongoing process which is also the characteristic of interlanguage.Thirdly most errors made by the participants in their compositions are the intralingual errors and this reveals that the learners have basically reached the state of learning English via English.Fourthly the author investigated factors leading to the low frequency of Chinese English learners' non-finite verb application and high frequency of errors in it with questionnaire and interview.The author found that among all these factors contributing to the low non-finite verb application and its high frequency of errors the most striking factor must be the differences between Chinese and English.Besides students' learning strategy communication strategy and the overgeneralization are also significant factors contributing to students' errors in non-finite verb application.Finally in light of the research findings suggestions for language teaching and learning as well as some pedagogical implications were given.In addition the author also pointed out that this study is only a preliminary study on the issue of the use of non-finite verbs and the limitation of the research is unavoidable and further research is expected.