Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Under the situation that the world economy has been globalised, it is necessary tocommunicate between different countries in an international language for internationalrelations, cultural communications and commerce. With the entrance to WTO, China needslots of international communications. As a result, English is needed in China as a useful toolto connect to other countries. At last, As the society needs more communications, more andmore Chinese are learning English. In middle schools in China, English is a basic subject, andis required learning. However, in order to get good marks in the college entranceexaminations, lots of students pay more attention to the fixed language knowledge, and ignorethe most important purpose of English learning is to communicate. That is why students makelots of oral errors.For Chinese students, English is a second language. When students speak English, oralerrors are inevitable. Therefore, teachers have to correct different kinds of oral errors. If theerror correction is not appropriate, bad effects will be made on students’ further learning.Students’ oral English level can be greatly affected by teachers’ error correction in the directway.Error Analysis Theory is a tool to know the classifications and causes of oral errors in theways of observation and analysis of the oral errors. On the basis of the results, teachers canhelp students correct oral errors effectively, and improve students’ oral English levelobviously.
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1.2 Significance and Purposes of the Study
1.2.1 Theoretical Significance
As we all know, communication is the most important purpose of English learning.However, if oral errors still exist, and students cannot realise them, the communication can beseen as unsuccessful. This thesis will pay attention to in-class oral error corrections by aclassroom experiment which is on the basis of Error Analysis Theory. Therefore, to someextent, the participants and the theory of error analysis can be extended in the thesis.
1.2.2 Practical Significance
Although many researches in China pay attention to improving the effectiveness of oralerror correction in middle schools on the basis of Error Analysis Theory, there are fewresearches in China on improving the effectiveness of oral errors in rural high schools. Thisthesis is a study on what kinds of oral errors to correct, when and how to correct oral errors inEnglish classes in rural high schools. Therefore, it is significant to pay attention to theresearch findings that are on improving students’ oral English by correcting oral errors in oralEnglish classes in rural high schools.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definition of Errors
When people refer to the word error, the word mistake will occur at once. Lots oflanguage experts often argue the difference between these two words. It would be best for usto understand the word “error” from other experts’ opinions, so as to get an accurateexplanation.a. According to Dulay (1974), “errors are the flawed side of learner speech or writing. Theyare those parts of conversation of composition that deviate from some selected norm ofmature language performance.”b. According to Lalleman (1996), “error is a linguistic form or combination of forms, which inthe same context and under similar conditions of production would, in all likelihood, not beproduced by the speakers’ native speaker counterparts.”From the author’s opinion, in a word, errors refer to the deviant utterance in the targetlanguage. If we want to narrow the scope of the concept, we need to seek out the differencebetween errors and mistakes. According to Corder (1967), mistakes refer to “adventitiousartifacts of linguistic performance”. That is to say, the reasons for making oral mistakes arenot related to language rules, such as anxiety, memory slip or even tiredness. However, thereason for making oral errors is that the learners lack knowledge about the target language.The use of and understanding of the target language in a wrong way are called errors in thisthesis, so as to make the research logic and practical. Anyway, the author accepts the broaddefinition of errors.
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2.2 Classifications of Errors
Some famous linguistics opinions are given, so as to classify errors in a correct andcomplete way. Corder is the first person, and he classified errors into three aspects. The first is thepre-systematic errors. The cause of this kind of errors is that students do not understand alanguage rule of the target language in a clear way. However, these errors are occasional andnonsystematic. In this stage, students cannot find out their errors. Therefore, they cannotcorrect this kind of errors by themselves. The second is the systematic errors. After a period oflearning of the target language, students have mastered some language rules of the targetlanguage. However, students sometimes cannot use the rules correctly. Although they knowthat they are wrong, they cannot correct the errors by themselves. The third is thepost-systematic errors. After systematic learning, students can master the basic rules of thetarget language. However, they cannot speak the target language in the completely correct way.Therefore, errors may sometimes occur. In the stage, if the teacher points out students’ errors,students can find out the causes of these errors and correct them by themselves. Corder alsoput forward errors of competence and errors of performance.
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Chapter Three An Analysis of Students’ .... 12
Oral English in Rural High Schools........ 12
3.1 The Reasons for Students’ Poor Oral English in Rural High Schools......... 12
3.2 The Reasons why Error Analysis Theory can Improve Students’ Oral English Level ........ 17
Chapter Four The Empirical Research on ........ 19
the Analysis and Correction of Oral Errors ......... 19
4.1 The Subjects ...... 19
4.2 The Objects ....... 19
4.3 Instruments........ 20
4.4 Experimental Procedures..... 20
4.5 The Results and the Discussions ..... 22
Chapter Five Conclusion.... 48
5.1 Suggestions........ 48
5.2 Limitations ........ 51
5.3 Further Study..... 51
Chapter Four The Empirical Research onthe Analysis and Correction of Oral Errors
4.1 The Subjects
The experiment chooses two classes in a senior middle school, one is Class One, GradeTwo, and the other is Class Two, Grade Two. The two classes are both from Yong Nian No. 2middle school. Class One is the experimental class, and Class Two is the control class. Boththe two classes have 62 students. They are from 16 years old to 18 years old. Their Englishlevels are relatively similar. Most of the students in the two classes are from the rural areas inYong Nian, and the rest of them are from Yong Nian county. 124 students were tested through an oral test, teachers collected and classified oral errorsin the test. Two teachers taught English in the two classes respectively. In the experimentalclass, the teacher analysed and corrected students’ oral errors according to Error AnalysisTheory, in order to improve students’ oral English level. In the control class, the teachertaught English in the traditional way. The two classes used the textbooks with the sameversion. After twelve weeks’ experiment, the researcher organised another test to get theresults of the twelve weeks’ learning. The object of the study is to testify that throughclassifying students’ oral errors and analysing the causes, teachers can find out effective errorcorrecting strategies to improve students’ oral English level.
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Conclusion
So far, it has been the last part. This chapter can be divided into three parts. The first partincudes some suggestions, which are on the basis of the main findings of the research. Thesecond part includes the limitations of the present study. The third part is about further study. In general，the principle is：if the context is that the teacher who play the leading rolecontrol the language, and the students only follow what the teacher has taught and practisewhat the teacher has presented，oral errors should be corrected immediately. The tighter thecontrol is，the more quick the correction is. In other words, if the oral errors are related to newknowledge, immediate correction is necessary. However, when the teaching aim is only tocommunicate, the teacher had better reduce to correct the students’ errors and correct theerrors after their whole communication. If students’ oral practices are to master newknowledge, corrections should be immediate. However, teachers had better not interruptstudents’ speaking in the communication, in order to make sure that the whole communicationis fluent.Teachers can use indirect way to help students to correct their oral errors when theyspeaking, but they should be careful with students’confidence.
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Reference (omitted)