从中介语理论谈英语专业生写作偏误

1、on error analysis of english majors9 writing from the perspective of interlanguage theory从中介语理论谈英语专业生写作偏误英语（商务）何丹 指导教师：林红讲师（惠州学院外语系，广东，惠州，516007）摘要：本文首先回顾了二十世纪四十年代以来有关中介语理论和错误分析等方面的研究发现。在此基础 上采用定量分析的方法对惠州学院英语专业同一批学生在一年级和三年级时的英语写作错误进行了抽 样，并从语言知识，语内错误，语际错误和错误原因四方面进行分析和归纳，得出他们在不同年级时中 介语错误的分布和出现频率。这一分析对

2、于我们了解学生在不同阶段的中介语特点和英语水平有重要的 意义。研究与发现如下：1大一学生的中介语发展处于“突发阶段”和“系统阶段”间的过渡阶段，而大三学生完全处于 “系统阶段”。2. 母语迁移是影响学习者靠近目标语的一个不可忽视的因素3. 语内错误是本校学生所犯最多的错误4. 加强英语语法基础以及重视深入理解和运用词汇是英语学习的重点。最后本文总结了错误分析对英语学习者的影响和指导意义。关键词：第二语言习得；中介语；错误分析；语际错误；语内错误abstract： literature reviews of the previous studies on il and ea have been

3、illustrated in this dissertation. and then a databased analysis of il has been also made all the data came from compositions written by english majors at the same class of huizhou university when they're in the first year and in the third year respectively. by the use of quantitative analysis, i

4、l errors from the perspective of language knowledge, intralingual errors, interlingual errors and error sources have been scrutinized the purpose is to find the distribution changes and frequency changes of il eitors from compositions by the same class at different academic years to gain some insigh

5、ts into english language learningthe findings of this research can be summarized as follows:a. first-year students, here, are in a transitional stage between "systematic stage and "emergent stage5 while third-year students are undoubtedly in a systematic stageb impact of native language tr

6、ansfer's learners target language learning should not be neglectedc. intralingual errors are committed most often by english majors at huizhou university.d on the road to approach target language, the key to learning is to strengthen english grammar basic structure and thoroughly comprehend the

7、shades of words.implications for english language learning in huizhou university have also been summarized in this dissertation.key words :second language acquisition; interlanguage; error analysis; interlingual errors; intralingual errorsi introductionin the field of second language acquisition, te

8、rminology and theories changed all the time but one theory has retained its status in this field: the idea of the existence of an interlanguage (il). interlanguage refers to the separateness of a second language learners5 system, a system that has a structurally intermediate status between the nativ

9、e and target languages. iip201 however, the nature of the blending, or how “between" is to be interpreted, and the il systematicities have always been vague in sla literaturethis study will investigate some grammatical problems in the acquisition of english language by english majors at huizhou

10、 university. by comparing errors committed at different years' study by the same group of students at different years' study. we can find out what their dominant errors are and which stage their english levels stay at when quantitative analysis of the distribution, the occurrences of errors

11、from different aspects will be scrutinized one important reason to do so is that most of them don't know whether they have improved or not after 2 years' study their knowledge of english will be reflected in their writing of tem-8 examinatio n.ii literature reviewin the past 40 years, studie

12、s of second language learning have occupied a central place in the field of linguistics. among the various aspects in such developmental studies, learner language has been the highlight in the field of second language acquisition.2.1 a review of second language acquisition researchthe term "sec

13、ond language acquisition" refers to the subconscious or conscious process by which a language other than the mother tongue is learnt in a natural or a tutored setting.2|p6 it includes the development of pho no logy, lexis, grammar and pragmatic knowledge second language acquisition (sla) thestu

14、dy people have showed great interests, although it doesn't have a long history.2.2 interlanguage theory (il)2.2.1 the definition of ilaccording to seiinker, "interlanguage refers to the separateness of a second language learners9 system, a system that has a structurally intermediate status

15、between the native and target languages/'，1p201 nemser referred to the same general phenomenon in second language learning but stressed the successive approximation to the target language in his term approximative system.13|p9 corder used the term idiosyncratic dialect to connote the idea that t

16、he learner's language is unique to a particular individual, that the rules of the learners5 language are peculiar to the language of that individual alone.i4p,51 while each of these designations emphasizes a particular idea, but they share the notion that second language learners form their own

17、language system 2.2.2 the stages of il developmentthere are many ways to describe the progression of linguistic development and learners are variable in their acquisition. according to hd.brown, there are four stages of il development."the first is a stage of "random errors冷 in which the l

18、earner doesn't know that there are some systematic orders to a particular class of items.the second stage is 44emergentm. the learner becomes consistent in linguistic production.the third stage is a "systematic stage" in which the learner is now able to show more consistency. when thei

19、r errors are pointed out, they will correct their errors instantly. of course, they5re more close to the target languagethe fourth stage is "the stabilization stage”, which is featured by the learners' ability to self-correct. it should be pointed out that the fourth stage does not describe

20、 a learner's total language system. one might be in second stage of the subjunctive mood, but he is in the fourth stage of past tense system.” 5p2112.3 approaches to il study2.3.1 contrastive analysis (ca)closely related to the study of interlanguage are two traditional approaches: contrastive a

21、nalysis and error analysis (ea). researchers from the 1940s to the 1960s conducted ca systematically comparing two languages charles fries, one of the leading applied linguists, stated it in this way. "the most efficient materials are those that are based on a scientific description of the lang

22、uage to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner.|6,p9 by the 1970s, however, their positions about the predicative power of ca and about the relationship between li and l2 learning faced serious challenges empirical research seemed to show tha

23、t significant learning difficulties are not necessary due to the differences between li and l2.l?1p172.3.2 error analysis (ea)2.3.2.1 significance of error analysisin s.pit corderos seminal 1967 paper “the significance of learners9 errors'； he made five crucial points: "(i)we should look fo

24、r parallels between li and l2 learning, since these are governed by the same underlying mechanisms, procedures and strategies.(ii) errors are evidence of the learners, in-built syllabus, or of what they have taken in, rather than what teachers think they have put in: intake should not be equated wit

25、h input.(iii) errors show that li and l2 learners both develop an independent system of language, 'although it isneither the adult system nor that of the second language (corder, 1967:166) but is evidence of atransitional competence'.(iv) errors should be distinguished from mistakes(v) error

26、s are significant in three aspects: they tell the teacher what needs to be taught; they tell the researcher how learning proceeds; and they are a means whereby learners test their hypotheses about the l2t 凶 pl6123.2.2 procedures of error analysisthe procedures for ea are figured out by corder as fol

27、lows:"a. collection of a sample of learner languageb identification of errorsc description of errorsd. explanation of errorse. evaluation of errors2323 error typesthe first distinction we should make is mistakes and errors a mistake refers to performance error that is e让her a random guess or a

28、“slip", which are caused by the lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, etc. the latter refers to systematic errors of the target language.21p51corder also makes distinction between overt and covert errors “an overt errors is easy to identify, because there is a clear deviation in form. a cov

29、ert error occurs in utterances that are superficially well formed but which do not mean what the learner intended them to mean."呦another division that is widely agreed on is that interlingual errors and intralingual errors believed by linguists an error that results from language transfer, whic

30、h is caused by the learner's native language, is called interlingual en*ors.91 p204 intralingual errors refer to those produced in using the target language in own terms. they result from faulty or partial learning of the target language, rather than from language transfer/91"204iil methodo

31、logy3.1 the purposefluency and correctness of our language expression can be fully detected in a composition, which represents one's english ability therefore, in order to detect and describe partial knowledge of english that english majors in china have, this dissertation seeks to investigate t

32、heir language output by analyzing the type and source of the errors made by english majors3.2 subjectsthe subjects chosen for this study are 37 students (22 females and 15 males) in the same class who are english majors at huizhou university. compositions are taken from their basic english test when

33、 they are freshmen and from their advanced english test when they're third-year students. in this way, not only can we analyze and describe their errors, but also detect errors' frequency changes after they have two years9 training and study.3.3 instrumentresearch samples are the writings on

34、 the set topics finished by students within limited time the requirements of two topics respectively are:write an around-150-word composition on the following topic within 45 minutes. students should base your composition on the outline given. marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar

35、 and appropriacy.work1 work is a necessary pant of our life.2 work provides us with a sense of achievement3 we should try our best to do well in our workfirst-yearstudentsii looks are not everything as the saying goes or are they? write a composition on: do looks really count? your composition shoul

36、d be about 300 words in length. you should state your argument clearly and then support it with details within 30 minutesthird-year studentaccording to carl james, “wc recognize just three levels of language: the levels of substance, text and discourse川because some errors require semantic and discou

37、rse competence for recognition, i concentrate on errors that can be recognized syntactically from grammar aspects, which belongs to the text level, while other two kinds of error levels are ignored here. researchers have found that the early stages of language learning are characterized by a predomi

38、nance of interference, but once learners have begun to acquire parts of the new system, more and more intralingual transfer-generalization within the target language 一 is manifested.51p214 since these two categories are so important, 1 also categorize errors into these two categories accordingly and

39、 spend more space on discussing sources of these two.iv results and discussion4.1 resultsdata analysis in terms of error frequency datathese errors have been grouped according to the error classification which they belong to and the language area where the errors were made the total number of these

40、errors is 627 in this study. the numbers are used to show the relative frequency of various errors to judge their overall significance (but note that even 讦 an error occurred multiple times in a sentence, it was counted only once).table igroup igroup 11group igroup iibe-verb97article1422subject-verb

41、agreement2014subordinator823coordinator106pronoun1014misspelling5731preposition3312verb： tense, aspect voice, mood4041part of speech2012adj/ adv310incomplete sentence or no comma for a2722sentencenumber or nouns2529collocation or wordchoice5823group i: first-year studentsgroup ii: third-year student

42、sthe first and fourth columns refer to grammar variables categorized according to students error types. the second and fifth column show error frequency of first-year students' compositions while the third and the sixth column show error frequency of third-year students9 compositions. comparing

43、two groups5 performance, we can get an overview in these ways:1. compared with group i, group ii makes half spelling mistakes. after 2 years' study, vocabulary commanded by students obviously enlarges2. when group ii intends to choose a word or collocations to describe what they want to say, the

44、y become more serious and skillful than first year students who mainly focus on grammar mistakes when they're writing. this phenomenon can be detected from the ratio of 58: 233. it can be noticed that subordinator errors committed by group ii are nearly 3 times more than group i. it is out of ou

45、r expectations. finally, 1 found that the frequencies of using subordinators are completely different. group i seldom use complex sentences such as relative clauses group ii often use relative clauses or other complex sentences to express their ideas4. it is worth pointing out that the errors in usa

46、ge of verb are almost the same committed by group 1 and group ii it means that a command of english verbs is not as good as we expect.data analysis in terms of interlingual and intraligual errorsin this study, “article", "number on nouns'： “no stop for a sentence and "collocation

47、and word choice" are categorized into intralingual enors“intralingual errors reflect the general characteristics of rule learning such as faulty generalization incomplete application of lules and failure to learn conditions under which rules apply：p?04 according to richards5 method, other types

48、 of errors are put into intralingual errors although there * re overlaps between two categoriestable iigroup igroup iiinterlingual errors12437%9634%intralingual errors21063%18767%total334100%293100%group i: first-year studentsgroup ii: third-year studentsthe figures in the second column are the numb

49、er of intralingual and interlingual errors committed by first-year students and the percentages of these two types, which constitute the total number of errors respectively. the third column, made up of third-year students' results is the same format with the second one l.it seems that english k

50、nowledge of our students reach a certain level before they entered into huizhou university because interlingual errors committed by group i are only 37%.they've got a good training in english language system and almost mastered the differenee between english language system and chinese language

51、system.2. from the table above, it is forward that intralingual errors predominate in our students' compositions, while interlingual errors are about half less than intralingual errors at different stages3. mother tongue interference in group ii is only 3% less than group i. we can infer that th

52、e interference of mother tongue still play a significant role in junior students5 language system. 4. it is evident that chinese learners at the present study always violate target language conventions in the written production, which also reflect their incompetence in language use4.2 discussiontarg

53、et language learners commit errors largely because their language proficiency is not good enough for them to use this language at will. in order to fill the gap between inadequate proficiency and tough requirements of a task, language learners draw on different strategies, such as ignorance and avoi

54、dance, mother tongue transference, incomplete rule application, overgeneralizationl0 p,75187 in their il forms, which cause different types of en*ors next we describe and explain the analysis of interlingual and intralingual errors 421 interlingual errors“when we count the percentage of thinking-in-

55、chinese-then-translating-into-english when students write in english, the answer is from 50 percent to 80 percent, even as high as 100 percent for some individuals.1111 from this statement, we can infer that interlingual errors are quite common in target language learners' writing.a. inappropria

56、te word choice(1) as an english major student, 1 think the best way to learn english is to study on my own."student'' is overused here we don't need to add “student" in an english phrase when we say:作为名 夕卜语专业学生，where there is a “student in chinese it is obviously that chinglish

57、 is taking effect here(2) looks are usually decorated by three words: beautiful, plain and ugly.according to longman dictionary of contemporary english, “decorate" is used to express the idea of making the inside of a building look more attractive by painting it. the best verb for here is “desc

58、ribed” which is used to give details about them. when target language learners who choose the word “ decorated here is intervened by mother language “0參饰"whose equivalent in english is the verb "decorateb. misuse of article(1) we don't know what the society could bring to us.(2) first,

59、 people often judge the others by appearanceregardless of other types of errors the above, (1) and (2) misuse specific reference “the" in two sentences there is only one society, thus, we don't need to add “the" before society.c run-on sentence (no comma for one sentence)frequently two or more complete sentences are split by a comma instead of being separated by a period. p4i when the stude nts are writi