A Corpus-based Analysis Of Attributive Clause Errors In High School English Compositions

Under the background that the new curriculum standards require the development of middle school students’ core literacy and the development of students’ English language ability,the attributive clauses are still important knowledge points in college entrance examination.The new curriculum standards point out the requirements for students to master attributive clauses in compulsory and selective compulsory courses,reflecting the importance of attributive clauses in senior high school and the necessity of improving the acquisition of attributive clauses.In high school English grammar teaching,most English teachers regard the attributive clauses as the key and difficult points,and explain the rules and usage of the attributive clauses a lot,but the effect is not satisfactory.In the process of learning the attributive clauses,learners will find it difficult to understand and master because of the complex sentence components and various rules.In recent years,researchers at home and abroad have tried to analyze the mistakes of attributive clauses in students’ writing with the help of corpus tools and resources,hoping to identify the types of errors that students frequently make in attributive clauses and to make targeted suggestions for teachers.This study collects the compositions of three grades（one hundred for each grade,a total of three hundred）from a high school in Zhangzhou to summarize the types of errors through a self-built small corpus and discuss these errors in detail,so as to help English teachers to implement the attributive clause teaching better.The main research questions are as follows: 1)what are the types of errors in attributive clauses in senior high school selected students’ English compositions? Are there any differences between the attributive clause errors in senior high school selected students’ English compositions and those in the CLEC corpus for high school students? 2)Are the errors of attributive clauses in English compositions the same among high schools elected students of different grades? If different,is there a significant difference? 3)What are the reasons for improper use of English attributive clauses by senior high school selected students? Based on the theories of error analysis and interlanguage,this study is aimed at using the platform of corpus to study attributive clauses in high school students’ English compositions and making an in-depth discussion on the high-frequency types of errors in attributive clauses,so as to address the three problems mentioned above.Through the use of corpus tools and SPSS software,this study finds that: 1)The types of errors in attributive clauses can be divided into three categories: correlative errors,internal errors of clause,and the subject-subordinate relationship errors.Among them,the correlative errors include the misuse of relative pronouns,the misuse of relative adverbs and the inappropriate omission of relatives;The internal errors of clause include the misuse of singular and plural predicate verbs of subordinate clauses,the absence of subordinate clauses’ predicate verbs and the redundancy of subordinate clauses.The subject-subordinate relationship errors are mostly found in non-restrictive definite clauses,which are expresses as separate clauses.There are more kinds of attributive clause errors in senior high school selected students’ English compositions than those in CLEC corpus for high school students.The types of errors that occur most and least in attributive clauses are different and variable.Teachers should pay close attention to the attributive clause errors that students make.2)There are significant differences in attributive clause errors among senior high school selected students of different grades（the significance between groups is 0.023,the significance between Senior One and Senior Two 0.038,between Senior Two and Senior Three 0.01,between Senior One and Senior Three 0.602）.It can be seen that the frequency of errors in attributive clauses will not gradually decrease with the increase of grades.3)There are three main reasons for the errors of attributive clauses in senior high school selected students:（1）Weak basic knowledge of students;（2）Less practice of attributive clauses;（3）The influence of language transfer;（4）Improper learning attitude.