A Study Of Discourse Errors In English Writing Of Junior Middle School Students

As one of the fundamental skills in the process of English learning,English writing,on the one hand,is an essential part of the process of ameliorating English level and cross-cultural communication capacity.On the other hand,as an output method of English learning,it can not only effectively monitor the input efficiency of students’ English learning,but also consolidate students’ understanding and use of the language.At present,due to the influence of students’ writing ability,teachers’ writing teaching level,the way and focus of correcting feedback,students’ psychological factors in writing,teachers’ attitude towards writing and other aspects,there are still many problems waiting to be solved in English writing teaching in junior middle schools.Discourse analysis is an important and complex subject,which is based on linguistics and semiotics,and also absorbs literature,psychology,sociology and other disciplines.Error analysis theory is a discipline that analyzes learners’ mistakes in second language acquisition and summarizes them into regular contents for reflection and optimization of teaching methods.At present,domestic scholars’ studies on errors in English writing mostly focus on grammar,sentence and part of speech in terms of content,and pay more attention to the selection of college students and senior middle school students in terms of research objects.There are few researches on choosing students who are receiving compulsory education as research objects and analyzing errors from the perspective of discourse.Therefore,the researcher holds the opinion that this study is of great significance to the improvement of English writing in junior middle schools.First of all,through literature analysis,the researcher investigates and summarizes the development and application of discourse theory,the current situation of junior middle school English writing teaching and the application of discourse error analysis in domestic English writing,and determines the research direction and feasibility of this study.This study selects three English teachers from the four classes of Grade 8 of S Junior Middle School in Shihezi and 205 students in the class taught by them as the research objects.Taking the collected English writing test answer papers in the eighth grade midterm test of Shihezi S Junior Middle School in the first half of the 2020-2021 school year as the corpus,the corpus analysis method,questionnaire survey method and interview method are used.The specific questions of the research are as follows: 1.What are the types and distribution characteristics of writing discourse errors? 2.What are the main reasons for the discourse errors of junior middle school students in English writing? 3.How can students in the junior middle school improve their English writing skills based on the reasons for discourse errors?Through quantitative and qualitative description and analysis,the researcher draws the following conclusions: 1.The types and distribution characteristics of discourse errors in English writing of the students in the junior middle school are mainly manifested as:(1)The methods with the highest total number of errors in cohesion are reference and connection,and the methods with the highest rate of errors are omission and substitution;(2)The prominent problem in the structure of the discourse is the absence of background introduction and summary;(3)In terms of discourse semantics,the most common errors are general generalization,followed by logical confusion and irrelevant information.2.The main causes of discourse errors in the junior middle school are: at the students level:(1)The influence of Chinese thinking on cohesion,discourse semantics and discourse structure;(2)Writing without outlines,using translation and simplification as writing strategies;(3)Students have negative motivation for writing.At the teachers level:(1)Lack of writing teaching,systematic writing teaching methods and single teaching objectives;(2)Lack of discourse awareness in reading class and practice;(3)Lack of feedback at the discourse level.3.Methods for students in the junior class to improve their English writing skills based on the causes of discourse errors: at the students level:(1)Overcome Chinese thinking;(2)Optimize writing strategies;(3)Stimulate writing motivation.At the teachers level:(1)Change the attitude of writing teaching;(2)Enhance the awareness of writing teaching;(3)Improve the feedback mode of writing.