An Error Contrastive Analysis Of Verb In Writings Between Demonstrative And Ordinary Senior High School Students

Statistics(Yang Dafu,2005)showed that among all kinds of errors in students' writings,the ratio of verb errors ranks in the first in all categories of errors.Thus,based on the theories of error analysis and contrastive analysis,this study concentrates on verb errors in senior high school students' English writings and the reasons why students are always committing errors on verb,and provides references for improving English teaching in senior high school by quantitative and qualitative research methods.This study is based on the writing texts obtained from 146 second-grade students,some of whom come from demonstrative senior high school and others are from ordinary.And this study aims at solving four questions.(1)What is the general picture of verb errors in writings of senior high school students?(2)What is the discrepancy of verb errors between the demonstrative and the ordinary senior high school students?(3)What are the specific types of each type of verb error?(4)What are the causes of verb errors and what are the reasons for the discrepancy of verb errors between the demonstrative and the ordinary senior high school students?By comparing and analyzing self-established corpora of demonstrative senior high school students' writings and ordinary senior high school students' writings,this study has some important findings:(1)In senior high school students' English writings,the most common verb errors are tense,agreement and non-finite.However,the lowest frequency of error is mood error.(2)There is no significant difference in the amount of all verb errors between demonstrative senior high school and ordinarysenior high school students' writings.But as a whole,ordinary high school students more frequently misuse verb.At the same time,there is no significant difference in terms of finite errors and voice errors between the two different levels of school students,either.However,they do have significant difference in the misuse of pattern,set phrase,agreement,non-finite,tense,mood and modal.Except tense errors,the data shows that the other six items of verb errors are more frequent in ordinary senior high school's students writings.And the data also shows that the high frequency of verb errors between these two different levels of school are also different.For demonstrative senior high school,ranking in the top three is tense,non-finite and agreement errors,while the opposite is about agreement,non-finite,pattern.(3)The types of various verb errors in senior high school students' writings are as follows.Pattern errors are that students confuse about whether transitive verbs or intransitive verbs need to take objects or not,and how transitive verbs and intransitive verbs take objects.Set phrase errors are the errors caused by incomplete memory or literal translation.Agreement errors are focused on linking verb,primary auxiliaries“have or has”,notional verb and errors in compound predicate or errors in verb of subordinate clause respectively.And lack of predicate verb in one sentence is viewed as agreement errors as well.The types of finite errors are that the students take finite verbs for non-finite verbs or use non-finite verbs as predicate verb in one sentence.Non-finite errors are characterized by confusing the usage of infinitive(to-infinitive),-ing participle and-ed participle respectively.Tense errors are mainly for the reasons that students can not choose the correct tense to finish the writing according to the writing requirements and context.Voice errors refer to students unconsciously confusing about passive voice and active voice in writing.The common errors of mood are incomplete application of relevant mood rules.Finally,modal errors in students' writings are that modal verbs are followed by-ing participle,noun,adjective,etc.(4)The main sources for verb errors in senior high school students' writings are the combination interlingual factors and intralingual factors.Moreover,most of verb errors are due to intralingual factors,which indicates that the verb errors in seniorhigh school English writings originate from learners' inability to master and use the knowledge of the target language correctly.Meanwhile,the reasons for the discrepancy in verb errors between demonstrative senior high school students and ordinary senior high school students are closely related to the writing topics,students' language proficiency,English teachers' teaching strategies and teaching contents.Finally,based on the research data and results,some pedagogical suggestions will be put forward to improve English teachers verb teaching and correct verb errors in students' writings.