| The errors made by foreign language learner are always the focus of linguists and foreign language teachers. Experts and scholars made deep research on the errors committed by the learners in their language study in terms of theory and practice from different perspectives such as lexical errors, phonological errors, syntactic errors, grammatical errors, etc. English clause, either in the input of L2 knowledge (discourse analysis, reading comprehension, etc.) or in the output of L2 knowledge (oral language, writing etc.), is considered to be the difficult point for Chinese learner in the L2 acquisition.Though many linguists and experts conducted many experiments on the errors committed by second language learners, the number of the experiments is not enough and the experiments have some limitations. Firstly, it's very difficult to find enough proper participants. Secondly, the research results are affected by the participants' attitude. Thirdly, the research method may be subjective. Fourthly, it is very time-consuming. Accordingly a new method on the research of errors is necessary.In this study, corpus approach is adopted, which, as a new research method, has many characteristics: (1) It is empirical, analyzing the actual patterns of use in natural texts. (2) It utilizes a large and principled collection of natural texts, known as a corpus as the basis for analysis. (3) It makes extensive use of computers for analysis, using both automatic and interactive techniques (4) It depends on both quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques. These characteristics result in a scope and reliability of analysis not otherwise possible.This study investigates the patterns of clausal errors characterized by Chinese EFL learners. Corpus approach is adopted in the present study. CLEC is the corpus we used. From the corpus, five groups of EFL learners at different EFL proficiency are chosen as our subjects. After being counted and analyzed, the following findings are obtained in the present study:1. English proficiency level is inversely proportional to the commitment of clausal errors. The higher the learner's English level, the less errors they made, and vice versa. In the advanced proficiency level of acquisition, clausal errors are inclined to vanish by and large for the continuous advance.2. The difficult point in the clausal acquisition for learners in different proficiency level is similar. Among the 3 types of errors, errors of introductory connectives stand in the first place, followed by errors in the clausal structure and errors in the relation between subordinating clause and main clause. It shows that even to learner in different proficiency level, the use of introductory connectives is the part most likely to commit errors.3. The errors committed by the learners in different proficiency levels have their owncharacteristics. (1) The errors made by high school students and non-major college students in the intermediate level focus on errors of introductory connectives and errors in the clausal structure, and errors in the relation between subordinate clause and main clause are rare. (2) The frequency of errors on introductory connectives made by non-major college students in advanced proficiency level is similar to that of errors in the relation between subordinate clause and main clause. (3) College English majors in intermediate proficiency level center their errors on errors in the clausal structure. (4) College English majors in advanced proficiency level commit fewest errors in the three types of errors.On the other hand, the present study also investigates the factors behind clausal errors, including internal sources and external sources.Based on the findings obtained in the study of CLEC, considered the present situation in China's EFL teaching, the reflections of the findings for EFL teaching in China are also discussed in the study. Teachers and educators should readjust the contents, focus and method to the need of students from these perspectives: (1) Cultivating language competence (2) Cultivating writing skills (3) Intervening in the writing process (4) Evaluating the writing (5) Combination of reading and writing... |
