An Analysis Of Verb Errors In Senior High School Students’ English Writing

As a critical part of language ability,writing is a key aspect of output ability in English.Furthermore,it is one of the standards used to evaluate senior high school students’ overall capacity.Consequently,the importance of writing in English is evident.However,English writing has always been the difficult points for students in senior high.Chinese students frequently make verb errors in written English because the verbs in English and Chinese differ significantly in terms of tense,voice,and person.Although the domestic and foreign experts have conducted extensive research on the use of verbs in writing,their studies have primarily focused on college students ’ compositions.Hence,this study attempts to collect 400 senior high school students’ compositions and establish a small writing corpus.Based on the error analysis and the criteria for verb errors in the Chinese Learner’s English Corpus,the study employs Ant Conc3.5.2 and SPSS 26 as research instruments to address the following three research questions:(1)What is the distribution of verb errors in senior high school students’ English writing?(2)What are the differences in verb errors made by senior high school students at different writing levels?(3)Why do senior high school students misuse verbs in English writing? The results demonstrate that there are nine types of verb errors in the English writing.The verb errors occurred from the most frequent to least frequent are finite,agreement,set phrase,modal verb,non-finite,tense,pattern,voice,and mood.Additionally,there are significant differences in the five classifications of verb errors in writing at different levels,namely finite,modal verb,tense,set phrase,and non-finite.However,there are no significant differences in agreement,patter,voice,or mood.Moreover,students make verb errors due to interlingual transfer,intralingual transfer,and English writing levels.Ultimately,this study concludes with appropriate suggestions to minimize students’ verb errors in written English in order to enhance their English writing capacities.