An Analytical Study On The Errors Of Verb "Be" In Junior High School Students' English Writings

As for English learners,writing is the most difficult of the four basic skills:listening,speaking,reading and writing.Although English compositions of junior high school students are short,many problems can be found in them.Many errors occur,especially in the use of verbs.They account for more than half of all the errors.The improper use of verb “be” is the top one.Verb “be” is the most frequently used verb.It is short,but complicated.It is a notional verb,a linking verb and also an auxiliary verb.It has eight different forms.For junior high school students,who are at the beginning stage of English learning,verb “be” seems to be easy to use.Actually errors occur one way or another in the use of the verb.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the verb “be” errors in junior high school students' writings.It can not only help teachers to find students' problems in the application of the verb,and analyze the reasons,but can also help students to use the verb properly.Based on language transfer theory and error analysis theory,this research took the compositions of 246 students from 5 classes of grade 3 of one Middle School of Wulanhaote,Inner Mongolia as research objects.It used text analysis method to classify and analyze the errors in the use of the verb “be” in students' compositions got from their first month exam.In addition,7 English teachers were interviewed to explore the reasons for the errors.This thesis aims to answer the following three questions:1.What are the types of verb “be” errors in junior high school students' English writings?2.What is the frequency of each type of verb “be” errors in junior high school students' English writings?3.What are the causes for verb “be” errors in junior high school students' English writings?The results of the research are: 1.Addition errors are the predominate errorsamong all the errors in the use of “be”.Fewer than addition errors are tense errors.Following them are omission errors,agreement errors and voice errors.2.Addition errors account for 38.2 percent of the total.Tense errors take up 27.3 percent.The omission errors,agreement errors and voice errors account for 21.1 percent,8 percent and 5.4 percent respectively.3.There are three main reasons for these errors:interlingual transfer,intralingual transfer and other reasons.The other reasons contain insufficient language input,limited cognitive ability,psychological impact and teachers' influence.Finally,based on the results of this study,the author puts forward some suggestions for both teachers and students.That are correct treatment and positive correction,appropriate input and timely output,restrain interlingual errors and correct intralingual errors,and improve teachers' ability and reduce teaching errors.