Analysis Of Errors Made By High School Students In Argumentative Writings

Writing, as one of the four skills in English learning, is a difficult task for many language learners, thus many errors can be found in students’ English writings. In fact, the study of errors has drawn a widespread interest among researchers, whose studies were mostly on the analysis of error classification and error causes. Besides, most of their studies focused on college school students. Less attention was given to high school students, thus relevant empirical studies were rare.The present study applied quantitative method and was based on the theory of error analysis by means of collecting and analyzing errors in high school students’ writings. The study classified errors into four major types, including the substance errors, lexical errors, grammatical errors, and discourse errors according to James’ classification of errors. Substance errors were composed of spelling errors, punctuation errors and capitalization errors; lexical errors were classified into sense relation errors and collocation errors; grammatical errors consisted of word of class errors, morphological errors and syntax errors; discourse errors were categorized into coherence, pragmatic errors and receptive errors. This study, however, concentrated on errors at the levels of substance, lexicon and grammar committed by high school students, trying to find out the most frequent error for students, and see whether there were any differences in the number of errors among three grades and between two overall English proficiency levels of students.The valid number of participants was 278 students ranging from Grade One to Grade Three from two high schools including Xinan High School and Chengnan High School in the city of Luan in Anhui province. These two schools represented two overall English proficiency levels of students:higher English proficiency level and lower English proficiency level. Our analysis of 278 compositions, using SPSS 16.0 software and Microsoft Excel 2007, yielded the following findings. Firstly, participants tended to make some types of errors frequently than other types of errors, especially grammar errors and substance errors. Secondly, participants in three grades and in different English proficiency levels showed significant differences in the frequency of errors and error types. In general, most errors decreased as one’s grade level rose and the overall English proficiency level was higher, and the vice verse. Thirdly, some errors, however, did not decrease as one’s grade level rose and the overall English proficiency was higher, but increased on the contrary, especially the substance and morphological errors which were made most by the participants in Grade Two.In order to further investigate the causes of errors, the present researcher, based on Guo and Ou (2010)’s research on error causes, designed a questionnaire covering four major causes of error making, including writing habit, teaching method, self correction and Chinese influence. Through the analysis of 278 questionnaires, the study found that participants varied in the overall English proficiency did not have much difference in the cause of making errors and the main cause of errors was due to Chinese influence. Moreover, participants in different grades revealed large difference in the causes of errors. Due to the ignorance of both teachers and students on English writings, students in Grade Two showed the least interest for writing and self correction, which to some extent explained why some errors were more frequent in Grade Two.Through the analysis on writing errors of high schools students who are in the critical stage of learning English, the present researcher hopes that this study can improve students’ English writing skills and bring some enlightenment to middle school teachers in their English writing teaching as well.