Error Analysis and Foreign Language Teaching

下旬刊◆◆◆◆Error Analysis and ForeignLanguage Teaching◆吴冰(沈阳医学院外语部)Abstract : English is considered as a foreign language instead of a second language in China, but language learmning has a lot in commnon. As a non - English major col-lege teacher, this thesis is intended to have an analysis of the common erors made by non - English major college students and try to detect their possible sourceswhich mirors the stralegies that learmers use to acquire a language, and make an present some suggestions on how to avoid certain kinds of errors for the atempl tolanguage learners.Key words: Error Analysis Interlingual Erors correction1Introductionthings. The error in sentence (1) lays in the word make which has a great manySecond Language Acquisition (SLA) research, which took place around the meanings. But Chinese students usually translate it into' 制造,造成' ,90 theyendof 1960s, has come to occupy an important place in the development of ourcollocate this word with the word'* infuence wrongly. Actually , when used in thisin SLA research is through the analysis of leamer erors or Error Analysis (EA).Through the previous analysis, we can see the students could only know theEror Analysis has led to a whole new era of second language research and teach- surface meaning or its inappropriate Chinese meaning of some English words.3.2.2 Errors on Grammatical levelError Analysis has a long tradition. In the 1950s and 1960s the favored mod- logic , whereas in Chinese, people pay more attention to the meaning instead ofel for studying foreign or second language teaching and learming was Contrastive the form. For example, the Chinese language'下雨’which contains no objectAnalysis. The procedure involved first deseribing comparable features of mother is correct, while we need to add a subject in logie when translating this sentencetongue and target language, and then comparing the forms and meanings across into English. That is 1t is going to rain: In Chinese we often hear these utterthe two languages in order to identify the mismatches that would predictably give ances ‘吃小灶' , '打扫卫生，‘看医生','晒太阳',‘鸡毛蒜皮说了一大堆'rise to interference and eror.which seem ilogical in meaning but correct. That indicates Chinese people payIn the 1970s EA became an altermative to CA. EA involves first independ-more atention lo the meaning. The Chinese language is a most flexible languageently or objectively descibing the learmers Interlanguage and the target language in structure. An example is put here to ilustrate this point.itself, flloweld by a comparison of the two, so as to locate misnatches. The nov-3. 3 Crrection Methodselty of EA, distinguishing it from CA, was that the mother tongue was not sup-In general, the ways to corret erors are cassfied into two categories:(1)sposed to enter the picture. The claim was made that errors could be flly de~elf coretion;(2) teacher corection.scribed in temns of the TL, without the need to refer to the L 1 of the learmers.3.3.1 Self correction3Findings and analysisIdeally ，as only the leamners are actually capable of making changes in their3. I The Definition of Errorsdeveloping interlanguage systems ，the best formn of correction a teacher can do isWhat is a language error? In order to get a much clearer picturenition of errors; different versions made by different researchers are presented as3. 3.2 Teacher correctionfollows:Afer self correction, I did find that there were still a lot of errors that area. An error can be defined as a deviation from the nouns of the target lan-not discovered. This doesnt mean that the teacher is always supposed to give theguage. (Rod Ellis, 1994:51)correct form straight away. We could underline the errors and improper expres-b. Errors are deviations in pronunciation, structure, or vocabulary from-sions in the students' composition. Students are required to read their compositionwhat is considered to be normal by adult native speakers (Friedenberg, 991 :55)again afer teachers' correction.e. Erors are the flawed side of leamer speech or writing. They are those4conclusionparts of conversation or composition norm of mature language performnance thatdeviate from some selected ( (Dulay et. al, 1982:138)make errors respectable- -to force recognition that errors were not something to. Erors refers gencrally to the learmer's misuse or misunderstanding of thebe avoided but an inevitable feature of the leaming process. As a teacher, theytarget language, may it be grammaial or pragmati( Hu e. al, 1989 :329)can do their work pereecly well wihou glting the " feedback" from hisf. Eror is defined as an usnucessfl bit of language. (Carl James 1998:1 ) students. Erors functions to provide this " feback.3.2 Analysis of the Erors by Chinese College Sudents3.2.1 Errors on lexical levelReferencesLook at the folowing examples:[1]CalI中国煤化工误-错误分析探讨.北京:(1) It makes too much bad inluence to society.外语THCNMH GThe examples above all contain interlingual erors which are concermed with[2]刘润滑，又旭.新漏诺盲字教程。北京外语教学与研究出版lexis. In both English and Chinese, some words appear to refer to the same ob-社,2006.ject of concept on the surface, but actually refer to quite different meanings or[3]胡壮麟.语言学教程.北京大学出版社,2007.匦方赆据012