An Oral English Error Analysis

Second language or foreign language learners' errors have been a general concern of applied linguists and foreign language teachers. Error analysis provides us with an important method and breakthrough in the study of L2 acquisition. It shifts linguistic study from the empheisis on the external environment of language learning and the neglect of language learners to the observation and the study of the learners themselves, and also provides language researchers with a dynamic and systematic study of learners' errors.Historically, the errors that students make during the process of learning second foreign language have always been a cause of much concern to teachers and textbook writers as well. This concern is reflected not only the way that the writers of pedagogical grammars draw attention to the potential pitfalls in the target language, but also in many list of common errors prepared by experienced researchers and teachers of English. However, a systematic approach to account for regularity, predictability, variability of errors is relatively absent from linguistic and psychological origin.Based on the theory of contractive analysis, error analysis and the theory of interlanguage, this thesis is dedicated to the study and analysis to Oral English learning process of the freshmen of 2003 in Xiangfan Polytechnic through an experiment. The focus is on the description and discussion of the freshmen's oral English error. The error analysis in thesis presents an attempt to facilitate the process of target language learning and teaching by presenting the phenomenon of errors within a scientific framework that is closely related to both linguistic theory and learning theory. The thesis explores how to recognize the errors, how to classify the errors and explain what they exists during the course of L2 learning. Error correction is also discussed here for the purpose of guiding teaching and learning practice in the classroom. In addition, we should payattention to the relationship among fluency, accuracy and appropriateness in oral English. The problems with error analysis, its limitations and restrictions, are pointed out so that the other teachers and researchers who are interested error analysis could pay more attention to them.