An Analysis Of The English Attributive Clause Errors Committed By Senior High School Students And Its Implications

The English attributive clause is one of the key grammar points in the New English Curriculum for Chinese Senior High Schools.Teachers and students spend much time and energy teaching and leaning it.In order to master the use of the attributive clause,many exercises are designed by English teachers for students to consolidate relevant knowledge.However,it is still difficult for students to understand and use this grammatical item accurately and appropriately.Therefore,the researcher,who is also an English teacher on the front line,chooses the attributive clause,the key and difficult point in high school,to conduct a study of error analysis to guide senior high school English teaching practice in the attributive clause.In this study,136 students from two classes in the tenth year and 32 English teachers in Xiaohai Senior High School of Weining County are selected as research subjects,and two research questions are raised:(1)What kinds of errors do the students mainly make in learning the attributive clause ?(2)Why are the students making these errors?Based on the two research questions,a test is designed to assess the students’ grammatical knowledge of the attributive clause.Meanwhile,questionnaires for the 136 students and the 32 teachers are distributed respectively in the research.To further explain students’ error causes in the attributive clause,an interview among four students and an interview among four English teachers are made respectively.The four students who are interviewed are chosen according to their daily academic performances and their performances in the test.The four English teachers are randomly invited to participate in the interview.The research finds that the errors students made in their learning of the attributive clause mainly concentrate on six types: the misuse of relative pronouns,the misuse of relative adverbs,errors on the omission of relative words,errors on the disagreement,errors on the structure of preposition+relative pronoun(which/whom)and errors on the component redundance in the attributive clause,which are primarily caused by the following six factors: no systematical grammar knowledge;negative language transfer;limited English language input and output;over-generalization of grammatical rules;limited vocabulary;deficient teaching and learning strategies.It is suggested that both the language form and language connotation should be taken into account in senior high school English attributive clause teaching.Teachers should design effective teaching plans and apply proper teaching methods;meanwhile,both teachers and students should evaluate the difference between Chinese and English in the teaching and learning process.