A Study On The Errors In English Writing In Junior Middle School Based On Error Analysis Theory

English writing is a written form of English language communication,which can reflect the language learners’ ability to use the language comprehensively.However,for most students,English writing is a quite difficult part of English tests.It’s hard for English teachers to achieve results in teaching as well.There are various errors made by students in English writing.According to Error Analysis Theory,these errors should not be ignored,but should be regarded as important teaching and learning resources.And as we all known,there is a huge gap in English scores among urban and rural junior middle school students.But if their English writing levels have the same gap as well? Although there were many researches on students’ errors in their English writings,there were little deeply analysis on junior middle school students’ English writing errors as that of senior high school and college students,especially the comparison of English writing errors between rural junior middle schools and urban junior middle school.Therefore,the main aim of this study is to solve the following two problems based on Error Analysis Theory.1.What are the similarities and differences between the types of errors occur in students’ writings of urban and rural junior middle schools? 2.What caused these errors?The test,questionnaire,interviews and text analysis are used as the research instruments in this study.And 220 students in Grade 8 from a rural and an urban junior middle school in Anyang,Henan Province are chosen to be the research subjects.The questionnaires are used to know students’ attitudes towards English writing,errors made in their writings and error correcting.The writing test is used to get the types and distribution of errors made in students’ English writings.As for the interviews,they are used for analyzing the causes of errors and some suggestions for future English writing learning and teaching.After the research,this study found that:Rural junior middle school students have more errors in English writing than those in urban junior middle school students.The most common problems in junior middle school students’ English writings,whether in rural or urban schools,are errors in lexical.And other errors made by students are grammar errors,errors in discourse,and technical errors.Besides,nearly a third of rural junior middle school students performed negtively in the English writing test in the study.This deserves our much attention.The findings suggest that interference from the students’ mother tongue,overgeneralization of grammatical rules and lacking enough practice are the main causes of these errors.In addition,the lack of teachers and teaching management are also important reasons for the errors of English writing among rural junior middle school students.For rural junior middle school teachers,it is more important to help their students to stimulate students’ motivation to learn and build their confidence,at least help them to express their views in writing instead of expressing nothing.