An Error Analysis of StudentsWritten Work.ppt

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 Theories1. 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 wi