Error Types In English Cloze Tests By Junior High School Students And Countermeasures In Teaching From An Error Analysis Perspective

The general goal of English Curriculum Standards(2011)states clearly,“Through continuous constant learning,students can form the preliminary ability of comprehensive language usage.” The cloze is a test which focuses on testing students’ comprehensive abilities in grammar,logical reasoning and analytic induction.The full score on the Junior High School English Entrance Examination in Jilin Province is 120 points,of which the cloze score is 10 points.The cloze has become an important type in all kinds of English tests,but it is the type of exercises on which the junior high students often lose a lot of points.Therefore,this paper studies English cloze in junior high school from the perspective of error analysis,considering two questions.1.What are the types of errors in English cloze of the junior high students and what factors contribute to these errors?2.What countermeasures can junior high teachers take to reduce the number of English cloze errors made by their students?The study lasted from November 2016 to June 2017.Four class students of Grade Three in City C in Jilin Province had five comprehensive examinations during eight months.Basing on the error analysis theory,the study classified the errors that occurred in the cloze of test paper as samples and analyzed the reasons of errors.Interviews,questionnaires and text analysis were involved in the investigation.The author interviewed both teachers and students,and handed out the questionnaires to the students as two research forms.The text analysis papers were sampled from five cloze parts of English papers of the junior high school students of Grade Three in Jilin Province.After the first and the second exam,the author calculated the types and quantities of errors in the cloze,and then guided students through doing more special contextual training before the third and fourth exams.Finally,the author compared the results of the fifth exam with those of the first two exams.Here are the author’s findings which are based on some research of cloze error.First,in terms of the cloze error classification,the author found the types of error could be classified in further detail.As a result,the research scope is expended.In 2008 Guo Ping referred to the linguist,Corder(1973)who divided language errors into three types,Guo Ping,however,divided them into four types,pre-systematic error,systematic error,post-systematic error and systematic/post-systematic error.During this study,the author tried to give a fully summarized name according to the fourth type of error which covered systematic error and post-systematic error at the same time.This type of error also comprised the largest proportion of all the errors,so the author called such the error “hybrid error” and did a more detailed classification study.The author found two kinds of refinements error of "hybrid error",they are pre-systematic error and systematic error combined with contextual-understanding error of post-systematic error respectively.Next,using the interviews of the teachers and the students,as well as the student questionnaires,the author identified a number of the causes of error that caused the errors in the cloze.These factors included a lack of cloze error analysis in advance training,the students’ ignorance of the context and a lack of background cultural knowledge,a lack of awareness of speculating meaning from the context,a lack of the effective methods for performing well on a cloze and so on.Then,during their interviews with the teachers,many teachers also described their corresponding teaching strategies,such as giving specialized ability to guess training before the test,paying attention to the context teaching and enriching the cultural background knowledge of the students,using the contextual analysis to speculate on the main ideas of a passage and so on.Finally,it is worth noting that the number of post-systematic errors made by students in the English test paper decreased after they received the special context training.Therefore,this countermeasure type of teaching special training has a certain definitely effect on reducing students’ post-systematic errors.But the percentage of hybrid errors increased 13% on the fifth exam,which showed that the teachers had insufficient knowledge of such errors and had employed the teaching countermeasures inadequately.Considering the complexity of such errors,so teachers should need to use various teaching methods to improve students’ comprehensive ability to perform better on cloze and to use language well in general.Based on the research and findings above,the author has put forward some relevant suggestions.Teachers should understand the systematic error analysis theory as much as possible and apply it to the cloze teaching.Thus,because using it can effectively decrease the quantity of English cloze errors among the junior high students.Students should work constantly to improve their error classification ability to classify errors and gradually enhance their awareness of intercultural communication.Measurable improvement can be realized through the joint efforts of teachers and students.