An Action Research On Common Errors In English Compositions Of Senior High School Students

Since the invention of the mature writing system,writing has become a very important way for people to record their thoughts and feelings and culture.In the process of learning a foreign language,senior high school students are bound to be involved in listening,speaking,reading and writing,among which the most difficult part is the writing ability.When they write compositions in the English examinations,students tend to making various mistakes.By analyzing 1500 English compositions of the 18 th,19th and 20 th students in Chongqing Tongliang High School,this paper aims to explore the common errors of senior high school students in English writing and the causes of these errors.In the beginning,this paper introduces the background information and basic elements of this research,the theories connected with this paper and the current research at home and abroad.Then the paper introduces the three main stages of this action research:information collection,interviews and questionnaires.With these methods,the common vocabulary errors,sentence errors and article errors in their English compositions are obtained.Then,the seven main causes are analyzed: inter-lingual transfer,intra-lingual transfer,inappropriate teaching methods,improper writing strategies,insufficient language input,lack of writing practice and mental factors.Based on the findings,the paper puts forward the following reasonable improvement measures: first,to strengthen the students’ awareness of the differences between English and Chinese way of thinking;Second,to strengthen the training of language input and output;Third,to strengthen the cultural background teaching;Fourth,to use multi-strategies to correct the mistake in the compositions.It is hoped that the conclusions of this paper can serve as a reference for schools to improve their students’ English writing ability.