Error Analysis In English Writing In Junior High Schools

Writing is one of the four English skills, and it is more and moreimportant both in teaching and learning. However, students havedifficulties in English writing. Teachers also have difficulties in teachingwriting, especially for a new group of students, known as migrantworkers’ children. It makes teachers so nerve-racking that some of themeven avoid teaching writing because of their low English levels. Thereare too many errors in their writings that teachers don’t have the faintestideas on how to deal with them. Therefore the writer hopes to find outthe reasons why there are so many mistakes in their writing and whatkind of errors they are, thus some handleable teaching methods can beprovided for the migrant workers’ children in teaching English writing.Error is not a new concept. It is always a part of languageteaching, which aims to find out, analyze and correct errors. From the1940s to the1960s, contractive analysis which focused on thedifferences between two languages was dominant. At that time, theresearchers wanted to prove that similarities and differences did exist intwo languages, and thought most of the language problems werecaused by the influence of the mother tongue. Until the1970s, thetheory of error analysis was introduced, which made the furtherdevelopment of applied linguistics. Linguists began to concentrate onthe error itself instead of the comparative analysis, which made it amore rational way to treat errors. Besides, error collection has become amuch more effective method for teaching English writing. Based oncontrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage theory, moreteaching strategies have been put forward in teaching English writing.On the basis of the study that linguists did on contrastive analysis,error analysis and interlanguage theory, there is more profoundawareness of the error made by learners. Based on the three theories, this article reviews different views on errors of different times anddifferent schools. It also speaks about the different sources of errors anderror classifications.This research has a collection of short passages of60migrantworkers’ children. Errors occured in their composition are classified in thisarticle. The writer also analyzes the reason why students made such kindof errors, which aims to give some advice on how to teach children ofmigrant workers in English writing in junior high schools. According to thestudy, errors on the vocabulary and sentences are the main problem,especially the errors of the verbs. Errors mainly come from the influenceof the mother tongue. Interlingual errors are much more than theintralingual errors. That is to say the impact of mother-tongue is thelargest problem for English beginners. Then, teachers attitudes towardserrors are also mentioned in this article. The writer also finds a solution tothe problem and puts forward four teaching strategies that teacherscan take to correct and reduce the occurrence of errors in writingaccording to writer’s own teaching experience...