A Study On Errors In English Writings By Senior High School Students Reasons And Countermeasures

The four basic skills of language learning are listening, speaking, reading and writing, ofwhich writing plays a more and more important role in the teaching process and occupies anextremely fundamental position in the National College Entrance Examination andvarious English exams. English Language Standards for Senior High School points out,students should achieve the eight objectives of the writing skills in Senior High School. Englishwriting is the embodiment of the comprehensive ability of the students, which not onlyrequires students to grasp solid basic knowledge of language, but also requires students to havethe ability of accurate analysis, the ability of comprehensively and flexibly using the language,the ability of the reasonable choice of words and words organization and the ability ofmaking judgment and evaluation. However, the writing skill is a skill students find difficultto master, and a skill the teacher find difficult to teach in the teaching process. Especially forrural high school students, English writing teaching is a headache for the teacher, which resultsin many teachers’ avoiding it deliberately. Because of the students’ weak English writingfoundation, even if they master many vocabularies, with other skills having a balanceddevelopment, writing skill is obviously lagged behind several other skills. Teachers often meetvarious mistakes committed by students in the process of correcting errors in students Englishwritings, and no matter how hard both teachers and students try, mistakes can hardly beavoided. The teachers are at a loss what to do with the English writing teaching and the studentsfind it a tough task to write a wonderful English composition. However, the emergenceof language errors in students’ language output process is inevitable. The traditional Englishwriting teaching method of "correcting mistakes whenever discovered" in the long teachingpractice did not achieve the expected teaching goal, and adopting new teaching methods will beimperative.More and more researchers pay attention to and research English writings of senior highschool students, but they are still losing a lot of points in examinations. The author hopesthat through analyzing the errors in English compositions of senior high school students, thecauses of the errors can be found out, which can provide some feasible teaching strategies or methods of English writing teaching for rural senior high school students.Based on the theory of error analysis and interlanguage theory, this study collects andanalyzes the students’ compositions using the methods of literature research, data statistics,questionnaire investigation and interview. In addition, the author completes a questionnaire ofstudents and interviews teachers and students. According to the statistical results, on the basis ofprevious classification, the author divides the errors into four categories, includingtechnical errors, lexical errors, grammatical errors and discourse errors. In the technical errors,the author mainly discusses capitalization errors and punctuation errors; in the lexical errors,the improper collocation, lexical choice errors and spelling mistakes are mainly discussed;in grammatical mistakes, the author mainly discusses the verbs usage errors, nouns usage errors,articles usage errors, adjectives and adverbs usage errors, pronouns usage errors and sentencestructure errors; in the discourse errors, the author mainly deals with the cohesion betweensentences and the cohesion between sections. And on the basis of error analysis andinterlanguage theory, the author also analyzes the causes of the errors and find out that thecauses lie in two aspects. On the one hand, errors result from the learners which includeinterlingual transfer and intralingual transfer. Interlingual transfer includes lexical transfer,grammatical transfer and culture transfer. Intralingual transfer includes overgeneralization,ignorance of rule restrictions, imperfect use of the rules of the language and false concepthypothesis. On the other hand, the environmental and teaching factors also contribute to theerrors including induced errors, the negative effects of finished product center method andenvironmental impact.In view of the problems that exist in the students’ compositions, on the basis of theresearch results, the author puts forward some effective English writing strategies to improvethe writing level of Senior High School students. To begin with, teachers should solve theproblem of a lack of interest for students which shows in the questionnaire, arouse the students’interest in English writing and enhance students’ writing confidence. Second, according tothe errors committed by students in vocabulary and grammar, English writing teaching shouldfocus on the teaching effect of the two aspects, preparing a solid foundation for languagelearning. Third, the teachers should encourage students to have extensive reading, paying moreattention to the function of reading to improve students writing. Fourth, aiming at the problem of bad habits and lack of daily training presented in the students questionnaire and thecompositions, teachers should strengthen the training of writing in the teaching process andcultivate the good habit of writing. What’s more, the authentic English expression in students’composition is relatively small, which the teachers should pay attention to and strengthen theinput of students’ English language culture and background knowledge. Sixth, manyexpressions in Chinglish appear in students’ compositions, which is obviously the result of thenegative transfer of students’ mother tongue Chinese. To solve this problem, teachers shouldpay attention to this and teach English writing from the perspective of differences betweenChinese and English and try to reduce the negative transfer of Chinese. Seventh, thediscourse error is not a major problem in students’ writing, but it indeed affects the expressionof students’ ideas. Therefore, teachers should strengthen the teaching of discourse in the dailyteaching so that students can create a composition with reasonable structure. In addition,teachers should cultivate the habit of thinking in English, help students finish idiomaticEnglish articles. At last, teachers should change the traditional English writing teaching methodof "correcting mistakes whenever discovered", correctly treat the errors in students’compositions, and change the error correction mode. In addition, teachers should cultivate theerror correcting ability of students, so that students can correct the mistakes themselves in thecomposition.