On The Acquisition Of Attributive Clauses Of Tenth-year Students From The Perspective Of Error Analysis

As one of the key grammar rules of English in senior high school,the attributive clause gets much attention from English teachers.In the practical teaching process,the teaching time for the attributive clause is long,students have many exercises,and teachers also concentrate on it a lot.However,it is still difficult for students to master it,and they make various errors.Therefore,the error analysis of students' the attributive clause has great practical meaning for English teaching.This study is based on error analysis,and explores the following three research questions:(1)Are tenth-year students inclined to make errors in the attributive clause?What types of errors do they make?(2)Why do tenth-year students make such errors?(3)How do tenth-year students acquire the use of the attributive clause?In order to solve these problems,this study takes 96 tenth-year students,from two classes in a senior high school in Shenzhen,as subjects.They are asked to finish the test of the attributive clause and the questionnaire,and then two students are invited to have an interview.After organizing and analyzing data,the research finds the following conclusions:(1)Tenth-year students are inclined to make errors in the attributive clause.There are five error types,namely,incorrect use of the relative pronoun and adverb,omission of the relative pronoun and adverb,incorrect use of "Prep + relative pronoun" structure,disagreement between the antecedent and the subordinate verb,and pronoun retention;(2)There are five reasons for these errors:language transfer,over-generalization,non-systematic grammar knowledge,a small amount of language input and the influence of learning environment;(3)In order to acquire the attributive clause better,students ought to study basic knowledge of the attributive clause,take correct learning attitudes,and master proper learning strategies.This thesis firstly introduces the background,purpose and significance of the present research,the related conceptions of the attributive clause and the theoretical basis—error analysis,reviews the previous studies at home and abroad,then gives research methodology which consists of research questions,participants,instruments as well as research procedures.After analyzing and discussing the collected data,the author answers the three research questions in sequence.The research gives some pedagogical implications.Finally,some limitations of the research are listed,and also the author provides some suggestions for future studies.