Error Analysis Of The English Writing For Grade Nine Students ——A Case Study Of A Junior High School In Nantong,Jiangsu

Writing is an important channel for language learners to express their feelings and convey their ideas.Writing teaching has always occupied an important position in junior high school English teaching.Therefore,studying the common errors and error types of students’ writing and analyzing the causes of these errors are of great significance to writing teaching.Drawing on language transfer theory,interlanguage theory,comparative analysis theory,error analysis theory,and the requirements of English Curriculum Standards of the Compulsory Education（2011 edition）and the high school entrance examination in Nantong City,Jiangsu Province,the writing of the ninth grade students in a school in Nantong City,Jiangsu Province were collected and analyzed by using the text analysis method,the questionnaire survey and the interview method.Through the analysis,the findings are as follows: 1.Grammatical errors occur most frequently,with a total of 1120 occurrences,accounting for 52.9% of the total errors.The second most frequent type of error is lexical errors,with a total of 542 occurrences,accounting for 25.6 %,followed by ontological errors,324 times,accounting for 15.3%;discourse errors and content errors are the least frequent.Among the specific types of errors,word selection errors are the most common,followed by verb tense errors and vocabulary collocation errors.Spelling errors and Chinglish are also frequent.There are few sentence disorder,adjective,adverbs,voice,subject-predicate agreement,and compound sentence errors.2.The reasons for writing errors are mainly divided into linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors.Linguistic factors mainly include interlingual negative transfer and intralingual negative transfer.Non-linguistic factors include students’ lack of interest and confidence in English writing,students’ failure to develop good English writing habits and error correction skills,students’ inertia in error correction and poor awareness of error classification,teachers’ failure to give diversified writing guidance and to use innovative evaluation methods.In the light of the findings mentioned above,the author makes the following suggestions: 1.Stress the differences between Chinese and English languages,and reduce the impact of negative interlanguage transfer.2.Consolidate basic knowledge and reduce the influence of negative intralingual transfer.3.Stimulate students’ writing interest and cultivate their writing habits.4.Strengthen error correction and avoid making the same mistakes;5.Optimize teaching methods and enrich evaluation methods.6.Offer school-based writing courses to enhance the teaching of writing skills and strategies.