A Study Of Copula BE Acquisition By EFL Beginners In The Countryside Based On Error Analysis

Copula BE is one of the most commonly used linking verbs in English, which has been a headache for most of the Chinese EFL beginners for its multi forms and complicated functions. However, most of the studies overseas have been focused on children and most of the domestic studies focus on the description and summary of its grammatical items.Based on the analysis of the errors made by Chinese EFL beginners, the research attempts to (1) find out major error types,(2) make clear the differences between high achievers and low achievers, and (3) explore the sources of copula BE errors. To answer the three research questions, an empirical study is conducted, in which three tasks are designed:writing, sentence correction, and translation.99Grade Eight students in Wen Tuan Middle School take part in the study and60pieces of paper are selected for data analysis.The research result reveals that:(1) there are mainly five kinds of errors students commonly make, i.e. agreement error, redundant error, omission, incorrect use and misordering, among which omission is the most prevalent one and agreement error is the least prevalent one;(2) the frequency of copula BE errors generally decreases with the increase of students’English proficiency;(3) significant influences of L1and L2as well as UG have been found, and improper classroom instructions as well as chunk learning of rules are also factors which make negative language transfer worse.The current study is of both theoretical and pedagogical significance. Theoretically, the empirical statistics will offer evidence for Intralingual transfer, Interlingual transfer as well as Universal Grammar Accessibility in L2acquisition study. Pedagogically, this research can help English teachers know more about the students’ difficulties in learning copula BE so as to improve classroom instruction to avoid rote learning and reduce negative transfer.However, there are still some limitations. For example, the amount of subjects is not big enough to represent all the EFL beginners in the countryside and individual differences are not taken into consideration. Hopefully, further researches can take these into consideration and make relevant researches more comprehensive and scientific.