An Analysis Of Predicate Verb Errors In Senior High School Students' English Writing

As one of four basic skills of English,writing plays an important role in the second language acquisition.But it has been proved that it is difficult to improve writing competence,which to some extent is due to the errors in writing.In senior high schools,students are still troubled by errors in writing,especially predicate verb errors which are diversified and complicated.Errors seem troublesome to students but they are indispensable.Therefore,this study attempts to analyze the predicate verb errors in senior high school students' English writing.The present study adopts Error Analysis Theory to conduct this research.Guided by the theory,the author follows the steps of Error Analysis to sample,identify,describe,explain,and evaluate errors.By the means of quantitative and qualitative analysis,the present study tries to answer the following three questions.(1)What types of predicate verb errors are committed in senior high school students' English writing? Which one occurs most frequently?(2)What are the causes for these errors?(3)What suggestions can be given to improve the proficiency of using predicate verbs based on the research?The author collected 123 compositions from a final examination in Grade 11 in a senior high school in Changchun and identified 592 errors,among which verb errors ranked the first,appearing 292 times,accounting for 49.3% of the total errors.In these verb errors,241 errors belong to predicate verb errors.The study classifies them into errors of tense,errors of voice,errors of agreement,errors of verb transitivity,errors of figurative verbs,errors of verbal phrases,errors of mood,errors of auxiliary/modal verbs,errors of omission/redundancy.Among these errors,three types constitute the major part.They are errors of tense,with 61 errors,accounting for 25.4% of the all the predicate verb errors;followed by errors of agreement,occupying 23.8% and errors of transitivity,17.9% of the total predicate verb errors.Besides collecting compositions,the study also made a survey by questionnaires and conducted an interview,both of which were used to discover the frequency of predicate verb errors,the causes of errors and accordingly to provide suggestions to improve the proficiency in using predicate verbs.After analyzing the results of questionnaires and interview and referring to the results from the analysis of compositions,the study diagnoses three types of causes which are interlingual,intralingual,and induced errors,and also proposes three suggestions: holding a correct attitude towards errors,adopting proper teaching strategies and conducting appropriatewriting strategy training to foster good writing habits.The paper includes five chapters.Chapter One accounts the background,objective and organization of the study.Chapter Two makes a literature review,including Error Analysis theory,interlanguage theory,and relevant studies on the analysis of errors in writing abroad and at home.In Chapter Three,the paper introduces the methodology,containing research questions,subjects,instruments and research procedures.Chapter Four focuses on the results of the analysis of data and discussion.First,the paper conducts the data analysis from the perspective of the analysis of errors in compositions,the analysis of questionnaires and the analysis of the interview.Following it,the paper presents the types of predicate verb errors,the causes of predicate verb errors and suggestions.Finally,in Chapter Five the paper comes to the conclusion with the summary of findings,significance and limitations of the study.To conclude,the study attempts to analyze predicate verb errors in senior high school students' English writing hopefully to be helpful for teachers,researchers and learners.