An Error Analysis of Students’ Written Work Shanxi University of Finance & Economics

Research Background The Chinese government is conducting a national wide reform on the ELT (English language teaching), and there is never a subject like English which has been devoted into so much time and energy (Huang, 2004). In fact, “lack of efficiency in teaching and learning English language” (Liu 2002:403) Error analysis is regarded as an important key to obtaining a better understanding of the process of SLA. “people cannot learn language without first systematically committing errors” (Dulay, Burt, Krashen, 1982: 138).

Outline of the Paper Theme: This paper will shed a new light on the issue of error analysis of second language acquisition. 1. Analyze two main error patterns which are quite common in students’ writing. 2. Demonstrate the difficulties the Chinese students have in English language learning 3. Offer some practical suggestions.

Relevant Research Theories 1. Interlingual VS Intralingual Errors The significant role of errors in language teaching and learning: “A learner’s errors…are significant in that they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language” (Corder, 1967: 167, cited in Brown, 2000:217). Errors arise from several possible general sources, two of which are “interlingual errors of interference from the native language, intralingual errors within the target language, context of learning and communication strategies” (Brown, 2000:218).

1.1.Interlingual Errors Interlingual errors refer to the second language errors that reflect native language structure. Cook states that “the L1 is present in the L2 learners’ minds, whether the teacher wants it to be there or not. The L2 knowledge that is being created in them is connected in all sorts of ways with their L1 knowledge” (Cook, 1992: 589). As a result, he suggests that when working with L2 learners, teachers must not treat the L2 in isolation from the L1.

1.2.Intralingual Errors Rchards (1974) defines intralingual errors as those “which reflect the general characteristics of rule learning, such as faulty overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, and failure to learn conditions under which rules apply" (Richards, 1974:174 c).

2. An Error Analysis of students’ Compositions 2.1. Students’ Written Work 2.2. Transfer Errors 2.3. Overgeneralization Errors

2.1. Students’ written work In this paper, I have made an analysis of some students’ written work, and their writers are non-English-major freshmen in Shanxi Finance and Economics University. Essays were selected from 30 students’ written homework. After making an assessment of their writing, well-done and poorly-written essays were excluded, six of the average-written ones were selected, which shows the average level of their English competence. The findings stem from two methods of analysis, transfer error analysis and overgeneralization error analysis.

2.2. Transfer Errors According to behaviorist learning theory, L1 influence or transfer can play either a positive or a negative role in L2 learning. Transfer will be positive when the first and second languages habits are the same. E.g. Hong Kong is a busy and beautiful city. I can search many interesting and useful articles.

Transfer Errors George puts that “one-third of the deviant sentences from second language learners could be attributed to language transfer” (George, 1971, cited in Richards, 1984:5). Quite frequently, they write English sentences by translating directly from Chinese to English word by word or just put English word into Chinese syntax, because they think in Chinese rather than in English. E.g. 1. They thanked online learning was very ease and didn't spend too much time . 2. Your major thing is study and study .

2.3.Overgeneralization Errors Generalization is believed to be a crucially important and pervading strategy in human learning, and the meaningful learning is in fact generalization, so language learning is a process of generalization (Brown, 2000, Richards, 1974). However, “overgeneralization covers instances where the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of his experience of other structures in target language” (Richards, 1974:174). E.g. I can get a lot of informations. This way gives me natural feelings.

3. Teaching procedures in dealing with error patterns 3.1. Language input activity 3.2. Consciousness-raising activity

3.1. Language input activity Why: Transfer errors and overgeneralization errors discussed above can be in great part attributable to the lack of exposure to the English language. When it comes to the listening practice of the Chinese EFL students, they have only one class hour for it each week. Besides, they are short of the input of authentic materials. The language they contact is specially adopted, not only simplified in terms of syntax and limited in vocabulary, but also tidied up in terms of discourse structure

How to enlarge the exposure of authentic language Authentic materials should be put in listening class. Non-classroom input data should be supplied to increase the chances for students to contact English after class. After listening, students may be asked to write a review on the film they have seen or write an outline of a certain program they have listened to. Wide reading is a straightforward matter of getting input.

3.2. Consciousness-raising Activity Consciousness-raising means that “successful learning of whatever kind comes about only when what is to be learned can be meaningfully related to something that is already known” (Rutherford, 1987:16). It is better to conduct the C-R activity in the intensive reading class, since the EFL teachers in China usually focus on the explanation of the text while students spend a lot of time rote learning.

One Example of C-R activity After reading a text, students are asked to identify all the noun clauses in the text and list them all. They will be encouraged to make a useful comparison with that of the L1 and find out similarities and differences between patterns in the L1 and patterns in the L2. By being aware of the differences, teachers tend to help students to bridge the knowledge gap between the first and second language and ultimately to reduce the negative effect on the second language from the first language.

Conclusion The important implication of this error analysis is to guide the teaching and learning of English language in the Chinese EFL classroom. In sum, what I have done is extremely limited, and I hope it can offer some implication for the Chinese EFL teaching and learning in some way. In fact, this is only a starting point for my further research on second language acquisition and development.

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