Error Analysis：From Grammar to Grammaring

1、错误分析：从显性语法到隐性语法error analysis：from grammar to grammaringcontentsabstract.1key words .1i. introduction.2ii. literature review.2 1. error analysis.22. views on definition of error. 33. limitation of error analysis.3iii. the main errors in writing .31. errors in tense and voice of verbs42. errors in th

2、e plural form of nouns.53. misuse or omission of articles.64. misuse or omission of prepositions.75. errors in word order.86. errors in the degree of an adjective.97. errors in subjunctive mood.10iv. solutions.101. building up a good knowledge of the english vocabulary. 112. acquiring a good command

3、 of the english grammar.113. getting familiar with the english culture.114. learning to write through writing.115. giving feedback to students written work.126. compare wrong and right sentences to improve your english writing.12vi. conclusion.12references.13abstract: this article collects language

4、errors of students writing. from the result we find that good way can improve writing skill. this article builds on error analysis and native transfer. the result shows that the grammatical errors stand out. errors in tense and voice of verbs are the most common ones. results from the questionnaire

5、reveal that thirty percent of writing errors is due to interference of native language and forty five percent of errors belong to intralingua errors. the findings from interview further confirm those chinese students writing errors are affected by chinese interference. detailed discussions and analy

6、ses of errors help to draw a conclusion that errors is the direct result of chinese negative transfer. chinese interference has an effect on chinese college students writing proficiency to a certain extent. therefore, language teachers should draw more attention to the teaching of vocabulary, gramma

7、r and writing strategies in order to improve their writing ability.key words: error; analysis; negative transfer; grammar; grammaring摘 要: 本文对学生写作中语言错误进行收集，并根据研究的结果发现，指出相应的对策以促进英语写作的提高是很重要的。本文以错误分析，语言迁移为理论基础，发现语法错误占据首位，动词的时态和语态是最为突出的语法错误。调查的结果表明学生写作错误中30%来自母语干扰，45%来自语内错误。谈访的结果进一步说明了学生的写作错误在一定程度上来自母语的

8、负迁移。对此，本文提出在教学中应加强词汇，语法和写作策略等方面的教学以减少写作中的母语负迁移。关键词：错误；分析；负迁移；显性语法；隐性语法i. introduction now, many people think that second language learning is a very important thing. the greater emphasis has been put on how to develop a learners language competence; many people would probably agree that writing is a

9、 complex task. the truth is that chinese students english writing has become a problem attracting many foreign and chinese teachers. it is a very importance part to show your english learning level. an investigation of some graduates shows that many of them have faced with the writing task in englis

10、h either in their work or for private business. the whole society does need more talents who are large at english writing and who have the well-improved writing ability of english. raimes (1983) has provided the reason for students to develop their ability to write. writing helps students to learn;

11、writing reinforces the grammatical structure idioms and vocabulary. for language learners, they do need grammatical knowledge and a good vocabulary, and considerable writing skills.however, the fact is that those chinese college students would like to spend more time acquiring the input knowledge th

12、an requiring a good command of grammar and vocabulary together and a painful process of thinking. the writing process is so time-consuming that the students may feel frustrated with little progress. as a result, the poor performance is caused in students writing tests. in the study of second languag

13、e acquisition, error analysis and language transfer are common and controversial issues which many linguists and foreign teachers have concerned themselves about for years. according to corder (1981), error analysis is a way of testing the learners hypothesis about the features of learners language.

14、 as an important research method for dealing with data, error analysis has been widely carried out in the foreign language teaching and learning. many researches have been focused on the relationship between native language transfer and second language acquisition, in which writing errors are includ

15、ed. the focus on error proportion of negative transfer is on the top in the study of second language acquisition.ii. error analysiserrors could be significant in the aspects of providing information about how well the learner obtains the target language and of providing an effective way of finding o

16、ut the problems in language teaching and learning by the rules of the target language. as a branch of applied linguistics, it attaches great importance to the study on second language learning.1. views on definition of error according to lenon paul (1991), a definition of an error must be establishe

17、d with to the assessment of potential error, and criteria must be established for the purpose of determining error types in a specific context. in order to get a much clearer definition of errors, different versions made by different researchers are presented as follows:dulay (1982) believes that er

18、ror is the deviations of learner speech or writing from some selected norm of developed language performance.friedenberg (1991) confirms that errors are deviations in pronunciation, structure, or vocabulary from being normal by adult native speakers.lenon paul (1991) claims that an error is a lingui

19、stic form or combination of more language forms. in the same context and similar conflictions of production it would not be produced by the speaker counterparts.in china, scholars have begun to introduce error analysis theory since 1980s. gui shichun (1985) pointed that error analysis is a common te

20、aching method. with error analysis theory further explored, there are some experimental studies on linguistic and pragmatic errors.2. limitation of error analysis error analysis is an imperfect research tool and it dose not win its full acceptance. one major criticism is the total reliance on error

21、in the absence of other information. most students are cross-sectional and it fails to provide a complete picture of learner language so that the consideration of non-error is often ignored. diminishing error is becoming an important criterion for improving language proficiency, but the ultimate goa

22、l of second language learning is still the attainment of communicative fluency when you speak a foreign language. learners are not entirely clear about errors and they find it hard to describe. error analysis keeps us too closely focused on specific language rather than viewing universal aspects of

23、language. iii. the main errors in writing there are many reasons for students to make mistakes in their writing. i list seven reasons in our writing in this article, which always lead to the learners mistakes in writing. 1. errors in tense and voice of verbsyang huizhong (2000) states that there are

24、 many grammatical mistakes in college students writing. errors in tense and voice of verbs are the most common ones.chinese is one of the many languages that do not use inflectional means to mark tense. it is obvious that the whole chinese system of tense, modality, and aspect is different form that

25、 of english. english verb tense has three main kinds; the present tense, the past tense and the future tense. time is a shared concept for human, and it can be divided into three sections; past, present and future. if people want to express different meanings, they can use different tense.chinese ca

26、n express its perfect tense, continuous tense, and past tense through these three characters “过”, “着”, “了” respectively. chinese depends on vocabulary to express the concept of past and present, and grammar is not related to this process at all. we can understand this point according to the followin

27、g three examples：“我昨天买了一只笔。”-i bought a pen yesterday.“这会儿天下着雨”-now it is raining.“我从没有见过他”-i have never seen him. (corder, 1981:69-70)but in three english sentences, we use the three words “bought”, “is raining” and “have seen” indicating the tense.because of the complexity of expressing time throu

28、gh all kinds of verb forms, chinese learners in the elementary stage often make errors influenced by mother tongue very easily. the following are typical examples from students writing：(1) there be changes in the futures, too. (f) there will be changes in the futures, too. (t) (misuse of future tens

29、e for present tense)(2) the grain was acting as the main food in peoples diet. (f) the grain acts as the main food in peoples diet. (t) (misuse of past progressive for present tense) (3) fruit and vegetables need by people perhaps by that reason. (f) fruit and vegetables are needed by people perhaps

30、 by that reason. (t) (misuse of passive voice for active voice) one case is mentioned that there are apparent adverbials of time in english, but the existence of them is easily ignored. (4) i have gone to supermarket yesterday. (f) i went to supermarket yesterday. (t) (corder, 1981:69-70)as soon as

31、the learners see these two chinese characters “已经, their first reflection is that the tense of this sentence must be perfect tense by using “already ”, which is caused by the negative transfer of chinese at this moment. “已经” in chinese and perfect tense in english are corresponding. (5) i began to g

32、o on diet for three years to the day. (f) i have been going on diet for thee years to the day. (t) there is not a “be” in chinese passive voice, while “be” is an indispensable part of passive voice in english.(6) before the reforms in china performed, people hadnt had sufficient meat and fish in the

33、ir diet. (f) before the reforms in china were performed, people hadnt had sufficient meat and fish in their diet. (t) (corder, 1981:69-70) chinese learners always think that the first word of a sentence must be subject, so they often use this word to be the subject, and also because of chinese habit

34、s, they are used to using active voice to express passive meaning.if there is the chinese character “被” in a chinese sentence, they will not express it with passive structure without exception. in other words, whether they make use of passive structure or not is determined to the chinese literal mea

35、ning. the phenomenon shows that english learners whose mother tongue is chinese have a kind of inherent mode in their mind that there must be an imperative verb in a passive sentence. therefore, when expressing their ideas in english, they fail to analyze the relationship between subject and object

36、of sentences, consequently leading to errors in writing.2. errors in the plural form of nounsan english noun is a word or word groups that names a person, a place, an idea, or a thing (object, activity, quality, condition), which may be either proper or common and either concrete or abstract. an eng

37、lish noun has two forms; singular and plural, while a chinese noun has not such changes in form. it doesnt change with the number before the noun. the plural concept of a chinese noun isnt embodied on a noun itself but a number before the noun. lack of plural marking does occur frequently though nou

38、ns are not marked for plural. “许多” and “大量” are very common words put before a noun to express the plural concept.(1) i have two example to show the increase of peoples living standard. (f)i have two examples to show the increase of peoples living standard. (t) (2) there are three figure which can b

39、e shown as follows. (f)there are three figures which can be shown as follows. (t) (dulay, 1982:12) it is clear that “two” and “three” represent the concept of plural number in chinese; however, chinese learners pay little attention to the changes of a noun in form, because there is no such a grammat

40、ical rule in chinese. “examples” and “figures” are just plural in meaning. although there are no apparent marks of number in english, we should analyze them according to the specific condition to show the concept of plural number with plural number of a noun.by the way, some special nouns, such as s

41、heep, deer series, aircraft，and so on, these words have no plural forms. many irregular plural forms of nouns, such as child, knife, and thief are still needed to pay more attention. some words can be a countable noun as well as an uncountable noun with different meaning and references respectively.

42、(3) childs are growing up happily. (f)children are growing up happily. (t) (dulay, 1982:12)some countable nouns in chinese are used as uncountable noun in english, such as news, furniture, advice, cake, meat and bread. if it is necessary to express an idea of “individual” number, it needs to put “a

43、piece of” with the word together in english if it is necessary to express an idea of “individual” number.(4) a good news is that chinese gpt has increased another five percent in the five years. (f)a piece of good news is that chinese gpt has increased another five percent in the five years. (t) (du

44、lay, 1982:13)in short, the complexity of the number of an english noun in form and the differences between english and chinese increase the degree of difficulty of language output in the process of english learning for the increase of the possibility of negative transfer. 3. misuse or omission of ar

45、ticlesin a degree, misuse or omission of articles has something to do with the form of the noun, both the singular form and plural form. for chinese students, articles in english are too difficult to learn. it is not only because there are no articles in chinese but also because there are many excep

46、tions in the english grammar about articles. for example, in the sentence sufficient food is surly the basis of human activity”, no article is used before food”. but in the sentence we should pay more attention to the quality of the food”, there is the article the” before food”. this easily makes st

47、udents confused and leads to writing errors. (1) student is having dinner in the dining room. (f)a student is having dinner in the dining room. (t)it is easy to find that we are not clear about how many students are involved in the chinese sentence, but the listener can judge it according to the sit

48、uation. but in english, articles-“a”, “an”, and “the” should be used before the noun to signify the common reference and specific reference; otherwise the plural form of the noun should be presented occasionally with the definite article “the” if necessary.(2) take medicine. (f) take the medicine. (

49、t)indefinite article should be used with countable noun; living examples can be found as follows.(3) chinese people are brave and hard working. (f)the chinese people are brave and hard working. (t)“the” is considerably used in english for the sake of the specific reference to a person, thing, event

50、or group.(4) computer plays a important role in my life. (f) computer plays an important role in my life. (t) (dulay, burt, krash,1982: 233-238)the indefinite article “an” and “a” may cause the errors in english. in chinese, no difference that “an” is used before the vowels is found before a singula

51、r form of a noun.4. misuse or omission of prepositionsthis kind of errors is closely related to the collocation of words. for example;(1) he is interested with having sports. (f)he is interested in having sports. (t)(2) milk differs with bread in nutrition elements. (f)milk differs from bread in nut

52、rition elements. (t) (dulay, burt, krash,1982: 233-238)in english, vocabulary can be shown that adjectives, nouns and verbs can collocate with many prepositions, which cause many different meanings with different collocations. verbs can also collocate with preposition. however, there is no such case

53、 in chinese. so this interferes with chinese students writing more or less and directly or indirectly. living examples are provided as follows.(3) she besides me. (f)she is sitting besides me. (t)(4) the book on the table. (f)the book is on the table. (t) (dulay, burt, krash,1982: 233-238)prepositio

54、ns in chinese with the expressions of “在.旁边/上面/下面/左面/右面/外面/前面/后面” etc. this can be directly used as predicate, like a verb. they have the same meanings in english but they should be put with the verbs to serve as predicate. this kind of errors can be easily avoided if more attentions can be paid to

55、them and carelessness can be removed.5. errors in word orderbecause the cultures are different, english and chinese have many different ways to express their meanings. thus, there are a lot of different in expressing time, geographical position or the introduction of identity. english word order oft

56、en needs to organize corresponding concepts into grammatical structure, while chinese often applies the combination of them according to the procedure of thinking. there are some differences between english and chinese when a noun has several attributes, which should be arranged in a certain order i

57、n english, but they can be flexible and diversified in chinese order. for example:(1) the classroom has some students. (f)there are some students in the classroom. (t)it is a common error in expressing the chinese sentence, chinese learners regard “the classroom” as the subject of “有”, just as they translate this sentence word by word. (2) to