| Writing is a cultural communication activity with language as its media. Writing is the most difficult skill to master among the four basic language learning skills. Teachers also find it hard to teach. Middle school students feel there is nothing to say once they are faced with writing assignments and most teachers give little instruction on writing(周金飞,2012). However, writing takes up high percentage in all kinds of English examinations in China. To improve students’English, we have to start with their writing. Therefore, improving the teaching of middle school English writing is extremely urgent.In the nine-year compulsory education in China, students start learning English when they are in third grade. However, English classes of the rural elementary school are mostly in a non-systematic state, in which situation students can hardly learn anything. Therefore, students start their middle school with poor English basis. The teaching of the four basic skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing does not have systematic teaching methods in rural primary school. Comparatively speaking, English teachers in rural middle school are more concerned with students’writing skill, but they train students’writing skill mostly by strengthening vocabulary memorization and grammar practices. Specialized writing training is relatively lacking, which is why students lose many marks due to writing errors. In middle school, most English examinations are with writing parts, so the author believes that the study of English writing in rural middle school is necessary.So what are the causes of the errors in the writings of rural middle school students? In order to find the answer, the author collected 180 test compositions in Class 7 Grade 7 Jiang Han Oilfield Guang Hua Middle School, studied all the errors and analyzed the causes of the errors based on Error Analysis Theory.Contrastive Analysis (CA) started linguistic studies on error in 1940s. Contrastive linguists believed that errors are caused by the differences between mother tongue and target language. The greater the differences are, the more difficult it will be for learners to master. CA holds that errors are intolerable and have to be eradicated. In 1960s, the focus of second language acquisition turned to pedagogy. Linguists’research direction also shifted, and that is when Error Analysis (EA) came into being. EA studied error itself instead of the comparison between two languages. EA believes that error is the production of learners’ active testing of their hypothesis for target language and that error has positive meaning for language learners, teachers and researchers. Interlanguage Theory (ILT) came into being in 1970s and was widely accepted. ILT believes that language learners’ language (interlanguage) is an independent language system, which is different from their mother tongue and the target language. In the process of language learning, the interlanguage system moves from mother language system to target language system.Summarizing the causes of error and modifying error are the main tasks of EA. There are plenty studies on errors in English writing, but the research subjects are mostly college students and high school students. Studies on middle school students are rare, let alone rural middle school students. The present study was conducted with EA as it theoretical framework. The author first collected 180 composition tests of Class 7 Grade 7 Jianghan Oilfield Guanghua Middle School, found all the errors and classified them into lexis errors, grammar errors and text errors according to Dulay, Burt and Krashen’s (1982) error classification based on linguistic category. The author then, conducted statistical analysis on the errors and calculated the frequencies of different types of errors. After that, some causes of the errors based on Brown’s (2001) viewpoint and some pedagogical suggestions were put forward. In this research, questionnaire is applied to help analyze the causes of errors and interview is conducted to help testify the causes. The author hopes that this research can make some contributions to the teaching of middle school English writing in rural area.This research finds out that grammar errors are much more than lexis errors and text errors. Misspelling, miscapitalization in sentence-initial, verb error, component error and punctuation error take up the most percentages in all three compositions. The author analyzed four causes based on Brown’s (2001) classification of error causes: interlanguage factor, intralanguage factor, students’ attitude factor and writing strategy factor. Respective pedagogical suggestions are:strengthening the teaching of basic language knowledge, stressing the difference between Chinese and English and conducting bilingual teaching, etc.The present thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One is the introductory part which introduces the background of the research, the significance and purpose of the research and the outline of the thesis. Chapter Two is literature review. This part first briefly presents some related theories on error study and then lists some related studies on errors in English writing at home and abroad. Chapter Three is the theoretical background of the research. This part introduces some major terms: definitions of error, classifications of error, causes of error and the procedure of Error Analysis. It also puts forward how the present research will be conducted. ChapterFour is research design. This part includes the basic elements to the research, which are research objectives, research questions, research subjects and research methodology. Chapter Five is results and discussions. This part first presents the research results, the statistical results and the questionnaire results, and then gives thorough analysis on the results and causes of the errors. Chapter Six is the conclusion part of the thesis. It presents the major findings of the study, some pedagogical implications, the limitations of the present research and suggestions for future research. |
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