An Analysis On Errors Made By Ordos High-school Students In English Writing

Language teachers will confront with kinds of production errors made bystudents in the course of teaching. Among them, writing error is a major sort.Though much research has been done on the errors in EFL learners’ writings,studies of the errors made by senior high school students are still insufficientespecially in the Chinese ESL context. This thesis tries to explore thecommon linguistic errors of the senior high school students’ writings inOrdos.This thesis, with Error Analysis (EA), Contrastive Analysis (CA), andInterlingua (IL) as its theoretical guidance, analyzes90compositions writtenin the same period of time and of the same topic by Year12students in OrdosHigh School. Altogether696errors are identified. Then, a classification of theerrors is made first, followed by a discussion of the factors leading to theerrors.The analysis shows that Interlingual and Intralingual errors are twomajor types, with the former playing a more prominent role than the latter.Interlingua error refers to the error due to transferring rules from mothertongue, including linguistic transfer, cultural transfer, and thought patterntransfer. While Intralingual error is caused by the faulty or partial learning ofone item of the TL upon another. And in this thesis, the sources of theIntralingual error are usually discussed in the categories of overgeneralization,ignorance of rule restrictions, and incomplete application of rules and falseconcept hypothesized.Following the analysis and discussion, relevant error correction methodsand some pedagogical suggestions are put forward. Hopefully, the study willbe of help to both language teachers and language learners in senior highschools.