A Corpus-based Study On Verb Errors In Senior High School Students’ English Writing

English writing is an essential part of high school class and one of the compulsory items of the college entrance examination,which occupies an important position in high school English teaching.However,writing skill is considered to be the most challenging skill to acquire,and writing errors are also one of the most important productive errors in English teaching.From the analysis of the current situation of high school students’ English writing,one of the most prominent problems is the wrong use of verbs.Verbs are one of the core components of English sentences,so studying the errors of high school students’ English verb writing is necessary to improve their English writing ability.Given this,this study is based on error analysis theory and conceptual transfer theory to answer two main questions by studying the verb errors of senior high school students:(1)What are the main types of verb errors in senior high school students’ English writing?(2)Based on the conceptual transfer theory,what are the reasons for the verb errors in senior high school students’ English writing?In order to answer the above questions,the author collects 300 writing samples from three grades of a senior middle school in Xinyang City,Henan Province,builds a small corpus on this basis,and analyzes them by using Ant Conc3.5.8 retrieval software.Combined with the data results,it can count the types and numbers of students’ verb writing errors,and explore the main reasons for students’ verb errors in English writing.The research shows that:(1)Through statistics and analysis of students’ writing texts,there are 11 types of errors in verbs,including non-finite verb errors,word meaning and part of speech errors,verb transitivity errors,subject-predicate agreement errors,modal auxiliary errors,auxiliary errors,voice errors,tense errors,verb missing or redundant errors,fixed collocation errors and mood errors.(2)The research shows that learners have significant conceptual transfer when writing due to different learning habits and expression purposes.Among all verb errors,non-finite verb errors have the highest misuse rate.Verb errors occur because students mistakenly construct concepts and incorrectly equate words and collocations in the first and second language concepts.(3)On the basis of this study,the author puts forward teaching suggestions.In teaching vocabulary and grammar,teachers should constantly strengthen students’ language awareness to make them aware of the essential differences between the attributes of Chinese and English verbs and English verbs.When teaching lexical meanings and collocation,teachers should help students form concepts in students’ minds from the basic meanings of words,collocation rules,and basic features of concept formation,thereby deepening their understanding of English vocabulary and sentence expression.At the same time,teachers should provide students with rich original English reading materials so that students can understand the actual use context of English verbs in specific reading.