Error Analysis Of Junior Students' Writing

English writing, as a kind of language output, can most reflect foreign language learners' comprehensive language ability. Above all, it has great communicative functions both in English teaching and future life or work. Nevertheless, the current situation of English writing is far from satisfaction since there are always a lot of errors in students' English writing and the questionnaire result shows that there are also some problems about students' attitudes towards English writing and written errors as well as their learning strategies in English writing. What is more, during junior high period, students begin to receive formal and systematic education and training in English, such as systematical grammar learning or writing training, which is true especially for Chinese students. Therefore, junior high period, to some degree, is a critical period for students to improve their linguistic accuracy. As a consequence, the author believes that it is very necessary to do error analysis towards junior high students' English writing.This thesis belongs to a small-sized corpus research based on the relevant theories like Error Analysis (known as EA) and Transfer Analysis (known as TA). The author gives an investigation to eighty-five written samples that are collected from junior three students'mock exam in Zhuhai No.10 Middle School in order to find out the specific types of errors and the main sources for these errors. In addition, during the process of research, the author mainly parallels Corder's five-step procedure for Error Analysis (Corder,1974):error collection, error identification, error description, error explanation and error evaluation.The result, on the one hand, shows that there are three types of errors in junior three students' English writing:lexis-level errors, sentence-level errors and other expressive errors in date and book title. Furthermore, lexis-level errors account for the largest proportion including errors in verb usage, noun usage, preposition usage, word-class confusion, article usage and pronoun usage, among which verb usage errors are the most grievous. Besides, sentence-level errors consist of clause errors, incomplete sentences, chinglish, run-on sentences, word order errors and errors in "there be". On the other hand, the discussion shows that there are three sources resulting in those errors: MT (mother tongue) interference, intralingual interference and induced reasons, among which MT interference is a major reason. MT interference includes lexis-level interference and sentence-level interference because of differences between English and Chinese; intralingual interference includes over-generalization of target language (TL) rules, and false analogy; induced reasons include teaching technique and materials or exercises. In addition, there are some other factors including acquisition order, difficult grammar points and psychological factors leading to students' errors.In the end, this study presents some pedagogical implications for English teachers and students. Considering the error types and sources, the author puts forward contrastive rhetoric method, lexical approach, effective grammar teaching and effective written corrective feedback for English teachers. Meanwhile, according to the questionnaire result, the author puts forward some suggestions for students concerning their attitudes towards English writing, their learning strategies in writing and their attitudes towards written errors in order to improve junior students' English writing.