An Analysis Of Errors Committed By The Test-takers Of CET-SET And Its Implications

Error analysis as a branch of Applied Linguistics undoubtedly has made much contribution to the study on second language and foreign language learning. It not only throws some light on the process of second language and foreign language learning, but also helps us gain some insights into the strategies the learners employ in the learning process. A careful study of the errors will reveal the common characteristics shared by the language learners, which is believed to be of great help to both the language teachers and the language learners.Though much research has been done on the errors made by EFL learners, statistical analysis and studies of the errors of spoken English are still insufficient especially in the Chinese ESL context. In our research, with Contrastive Analysis (CA), Error Analysis (EA) and Interlanguage as the theoretical guidance, 1Q CDs of CET-SET containing 60 candidates' performance have been chosen as the sample from all the CDs collected from the NCETC. (The author narrows the subjects of analysis down to those candidates whose final scores are A+, A, B+, B, C+ and C because these scores show that the test-takers reach the syllabus requirement for spoken English.) Then, a research has been done by analyzing the spoken errors made by test-takers of CET-SET. From the analysis of the data gained from the 60 subjects, the errors in spoken English are first classified into three general types: linguistic errors, spoken discourse errors and pragmatic errors. With the help of Excel, the study finds out linguistic errors are the most distinctive ones among all the errors in spoken English. Then the study discovers the errors committed by the test-takers generally come from the following five main sources: interlingual transfer, intralingual interference, communicative strategies, training transfer and test anxiety. Among these five main sources, intralingual interference and interlingual transfer are clearly the major sources of difficulties in spoken English teaching and learning. Then with the help of SPSS the study finds out it is the interlingual errors that most significantly distinguish the high-score test-takers' oral performance from the low-score ones'. And...