A Corpus-based Error Analysis In English Summary Writing Of Senior One Students

With the implementation of the new college entrance examination reform and the new English curriculum standard,English summary writing,as an integrated writing task that promotes writing through reading,has become a new area in secondary English teaching and learning.In the previous studies,most scholars were less likely to explore errors in integrated writing in high school and their analysis of the causes of errors lacked objective tests.Following the basic steps of error analysis,this study focuses on analyzing and discussing the errors and the causes of errors in English summary writing of senior one students.It seeks to provide some suggestions for teaching and learning English summary writing in senior one.In this research,180 written materials of English summary writing of senior one students in a high school in Ganzhou City are used as the primary vehicle.It aims to address two research questions:(1)What kind of errors do senior one students make when writing English summaries?(2)What are the causes of errors in English summary writing of senior one students?On the basis of the contrastive analysis theory,error analysis theory,and interlanguage theory,“Senior One English Summary Writing Corpus” was built.With the help of corpus retrieval tools,a total of 2976 errors were identified.They were divided into four types: substance errors,lexical errors,grammar errors,and discourse errors.Among them,discourse errors were the most frequent errors.They appeared1293 times in the compositions,accounting for 43.4% of the total errors.In response to the errors made by senior one students in English summary writing,the author integrated theoretical research and practical exploration,conducted questionnaires and interviews with teachers and students in senior one,and found the causes of errors:(1)Linguistic factors: errors in English summary writing arise from the negative transfer of the mother tongue and interference of the target language.(2)Non-linguistic factors:(1)Students’ dimension: students’ emotion and behavior towards errors,students’ writing thinking,students’ ability to summarize,the textual properties of the original text,and the lack of writing strategies.(2)Teachers’ dimension: the lack of instruction in reading for writing,teacher-centered writing feedback.At last,based on the errors and causes of errors in English summary writing,the author put forward suggestions for teachers’ teaching and students’ learning.For the students,they can improve their ability to summarize,build a solid language foundation,train their thinking for writing after reading,check and correct errors in a timely manner.And there are four suggestions for teachers.They should clarify their teaching concept of English summary writing,focus on the original texts and implement strategies for teaching English summary writing,guide students to paraphrase the topic sentences in different ways,give timely feedback on English summary writing.