| According to Chinese Learner English Corpus(CLEC),four types of syntactic errors are often committed in Chinese students’ writings.They are structural deficiency errors(sn8),run-on sentence errors(sn1),punctuation errors(sn9)and sentence fragment errors(sn2).Generally speaking,structural deficiency errors,run-on sentence errors or punctuation errors have been studied more indepthly than sentence fragment errors.Against such a background,based on the two sub-corpora(ST3 and ST4)selected from CLEC,the present study aims to investigate sentence fragment errors in English writings composed by Chinese non-English major college students who are at different grades in College English Test Band Four and Band Six(CET4 and CET6).The study tries to analyze the occurrence of sentence fragment errors in those students’ writings multi-perspectively,so that it will hopefully improve the quality of English writing teaching and enable students to reduce the frequency of such syntactic errors.In order to smoothly conduct the study,the author has designed a series of questions which involve the distribution of sentence fragments in the two sub-corpora,the distribution of each type of sentence fragments in the two sub-corpora and the differences in the distribution of each type of sentence fragments in them,the linguistic features of major types of sentence fragments in them,and the various factors causing the sentence fragments.Based on the previous works,the author re-tagged sentence fragment errors,divided the sentence fragment errors in ST3 and ST4 into five types,labeling them as sn2-1(dependent-word fragments),sn2-2(v-ing and to-v fragments),sn2-3(added-detail fragments),sn2-4(incomplete-information fragments)and sn2-5(prepositional-phrase fragments).With the data in ST3 and ST4 retrieved,the major findings of the present study are summarized as follows: the number of sentence fragment errors is 459 in ST3 and 367 in ST4 respectively and the whole developing trend of sentence fragment errors is decreasing;in ST3,the order of quantity of the five types of sentence fragments is sn2-1>sn2-3>sn2-4>sn2-5>sn2-2,while the order of quantity of the five types of sentence fragments is sn2-1>sn2-4>sn2-3>sn2-5>sn2-2 in ST4.It is found that sn2-1,sn2-3 and sn2-4 are committed most frequently.As for the linguistic features of the major types of sentence fragment errors,it is found that among the dependent-word fragments,suchdependent words as because,if and when are used most frequently;among the added-detail fragments,for example and such as,two phrases for adding details,are used most frequently;and among the incomplete-information fragments,the missing-subject fragments and the missing-verb fragments,as two sub-types,appear most frequently.When it comes to possible factors for resulting in the fragments,it is found that the negative transfer of the students’ native language is an important factor;the differences between the two language systems and those between Chinese and English thinking modes are also important factors;while the impact of oral Chinese expression,the incomplete knowledge of English syntactic rules,and the wrong use of punctuation,especially comma and period,are another nonignorable factors.Based on the findings,this study provides some pedagogical implications for teachers and students.In the process of English writing teaching,teachers should focus on English syntactical structures,introduce the differences between the English and the Chinese language systems and try to cultivate students’ sense of English thinking mode in their English writing.On the part of the students,they should try their best to guard against the negative transfer of their native language,develop their English thinking mode consciously,avoid the impact of oral Chinese expression,and use punctuation marks properly in the course of their English writing. |
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