A Study On The Errors In English Writing Of High School Students Based On Error Analysis Theory

As one of the most important means studying the second language acquisition,Error Analysis plays an essential role in the English teaching.Writing is regarded as a skill that can reflect the learner's comprehensive competence to use English knowledge.This study exams the errors existing in English writing of high school students based on the Error Analysis Theory,finds out the factors causing these errors and provides effective methods and suggestions for the English teachers to teach English writing as well as for the students to level up their ability of English writing.In this thesis,both quantitative and qualitative research methods are employed,involving tests and questionnaires.The research subjects are 120 junior students in Jian Qiao High School,Chifeng city of Inner Mongolia,who have almost approximate English proficiency between elementary level and intermediate level.Drawing upon the data collected from English writing materials in their final term examination,this study reveals various errors made by the students.On the whole,the errors occurring in the English writing made by the students are generally divided into lexical errors,sentence errors,textual errors,and grammatical errors.Later on,questionnaires were carried out among random 260 students from 26 classes in this school.Based on figures collected from the way of questionnaires,distinctive reasons are found to exert an important influence on causing these errors,which can be classified into interlingual transfer,intralingual transfer,the overuse of cognitive means and certain external contextual factors and the internal factors of the learners.Based on the following findings: 1)Among the four major types of errors,grammatical errors take up the largest proportion and the most amount;students fail to master and use English grammar solidly and proficiently.2)Interlingual transfer,especially the negative transfer of mother tongue is the prominent factor causing errors.Finally,some pedagogical implications and suggestions are given to the teachers to solve the problems existing in the English writing,to the students to release the current situation of English writing and to the researchers to conduct the further study on this topic.