避免中国学生在英语学习中出现典型错误的方法毕业论文.doc

【标题】   避免中国学生在英语学习中出现典型错误的方法 【作者】汪 琳 【关键词】典型错误、中国学生、英语学习 【指导老师】鲁晓权 【专业】英语 【正文】I .Introduction:Chinese people have learnt English for long time. But after China joined WTO, learning foreign languages?-especially English, has become more and more popular. More and more people in China, especially the young people, have realized that learning English is necessary for them to communicate with others in the world.In China, English is a course which was learnt since primary school. However, because of the differences between Chinese and English, the students will make a lot of errors which may make Chinese and foreigners misunderstand each other. Whats worse, this kind of errors will influence the students to learn English well. So, many linguists, teachers, and the students have to pay more attention to the errors, for example, according to B.F. Skinner, one of the most famous behaviorists. Errors should be avoided, and should be corrected because they are indication of non-learning and have the danger of becoming bad linguistic habits. Since errors will interfere with the new habit-formation process and are the results of negative transfers, so the best way to avoid the errors is to predict when they will occur and find ways to prevent the occurrence of them. Contrastive analysis is proposed as a valid means to predict potential errors 1. This paper lists some typical errors and provides some useful ways to help the Chinese students to avoid these errors in English learning.This paper includes five parts. The first part makes an introduction of this paper. The second part lists some typical errors in English learning. The third part analyzes the reasons of these errors. The fourth part gives some useful ways to learn English. At last, the author makes a conclusion for this paper. . Some Typical Errors in English learning“The aims of language teaching are usually termed through the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.” 2 Therefore, the importance of the four skills is easily seen. However, English learners usually meet some problems and make some errors in these four parts. A. Errors in English ListeningListening is an important means of language learning. It is one of the significant ways in English language communication. But so many students regard listening comprehension as the most difficult one among all kinds of examinations. As we can see, there are many problems the students meet while listening. Shelagh (1986) stated that one of the most obvious sources of difficulty for a learner of English is the way in which it is pronounced. 3 It means that native speakers' pronunciation of English can cause problems and fears to students in recognition, and listening comprehension. The students can not distinguish sounds correctly which is a typical error in English listening. This error is mainly caused by the students nonstandard pronunciation. If the students can not pronounce a word correctly, they can not distinguish the word in listening. For example, the students can not distinguish the nasal /n/and lateral /l/, the voiceless consonants (/t/ /k/ /f/ /s/) and the voiced consonants (/d/ /g/ /v/ /z/). So, if the students heard some words have similar sounds, they will misunderstand the meaning of listening material. That is to say, if the students read these words wrongly, others can not understand what they are saying and the students also can not understand what the English speakers are saying. In addition, the students vocabulary is insufficient, the students knowledge of grammar is not solid, and the students background knowledge is not enough. All these factors make listening difficult to them. B. Errors in English SpeakingIn the daily life, most of the students speak more than write. Speaking is fundamental to peoples communication. Nunan (1991) wrote, “success is measured in terms of the ability to carry out a conversation in the target language”. 4 That is to say, if the students do not know how to speak or do not get any opportunity to speak in English classroom, they may make errors easily in their conversation and lose interest in English.Oral English is one of the biggest problems of Chinese students. The students often make some errors in communication. The Chin-glish and pragmatic failure are typical errors in speaking. There are two examples:1.A：It was so late there was no taxi.B：.The first example is a typical Chin-glish expression. The correct expression is this: “It was so late that there was no taxi available.” 2. Situation: A Chinese students was at a native speakers home.A: What would you like to drink? Tea or coffee?B: No, no, no, no trouble, please.This example is a typical pragmatic failure5 which is defined by Jenny Thomas (1983) in Cross-Culture Pragmatic Failure. In Chinese culture, the guest will refuse at first by saying “no” when the host offers something to drink or to eat, whether he/ she would like to take it or not. In contrast the native English speakers always expect that the guest can give a truthful reply. And the host does not serve if the guest says “no”. From the examples above, we can see that Chin-glish is a typical error when Chinese study English and communicate with others in English.C. Errors in English ReadingEnglish reading has always been considered one of the most important parts of foreign language learning. Without reading, nothing can be done in the development of the competence in listening, speaking, writing and translating. The students often meet some problems and make some errors in reading. There are many factors that affect the students reading and result in some errors in reading, such as their insufficient vocabulary, not mastering reading methods and the understanding skills. The Chinese language is totally different from the English language. The former belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and the latter to the Indo-European language family. Therefore, When Chinese learners attempt to understand a text in English; they face linguistic problems in various respects: spelling, gender, verb forms, tenses and word order. Words such as “imaginative” and “imaginary” and “respectable” are often misunderstood and misused by Chinese learners as in their mother tongue words have virtually no inflexions. The Chinese students are more liable to stumble over articles and prepositions. The reason is that these particles are never used in the Chinese language and hence difficult to handle.D. Errors in English WritingWriting, as a form of verbal communication in writing, shoulder glances to convey his ideas, communication and understanding of the task of writing in English is also true, but errors in students English writing have hindered the progress of this communication. English writing is very difficult for the English learners. “Writing is an important embodiment of the language synthesis using ability. Only writing can truly reflect a persons language level.” 6 The expression of writing is demanded by the title of a composition. Writing a composition requires writer not only pay attention to the correction of language, but also the structure of a composition. In fact, many students fear writing in English, because they usually make some mistakes in their writings. According to the research, the students usually make some errors in word choosing and the sentence structure. There are two examples:1. We joined the sports meeting yesterday. The word “join” cant use in this sentence, it can be change into “take part in”. This sentence shows the problem of word choosing.  2. Although she is a pretty girl, but she cant attract me. The two words “although” and “but” can not be used together in a sentence. But the students usually use them in a sentence. Many students do not notice the rules of English sentence and usually use the Chinese sentence to replace the English sentence, which result in some sentence structure errors. This sentence can be corrected as “although she is a pretty girl, she can not attract me.” or “she is a pretty girl, but she can not attract me.”.The Causes of ErrorsForeign language learning is a long and complicated procedure, in which different students will make different kinds of language errors. To sum up, the main causes are as follows:    A. Cross-linguistic InterferenceA linguist pointed out that: “errors occurred primarily as a result of interference when the learner transferred native language habit into the second or foreign language. Interference was believed to take place whenever the habit of the native language different from those of the target language” 7(Ellis，1994：47). In other words, when a person is learning to master a second or foreign language, his or her mother tongue, including the elements of pronunciation, lexicon, grammar etc, would have some influences or even interference on the foreign language learning.B. Improper Communication Strategies In the process of communication, students sometimes feel that the limited knowledge can not fully express what they really intend to. Under such circumstance, they have to turn to some communication strategies. For instance, beginners use “yesterday” and “tomorrow” to represent the past and the future.       Another example is that when students can not directly express a certain meaning, they tend to paraphrase it. For example, the sentence pattern “should have + past perfect verb” shows the meaning that an action was opposite to what it really happens. While a beginner who does not have a knowledge of this sentence pattern，he can only use the prolix way like “I had the intention of taking part in the ceremony last night, but I was too busy” instead of the exact form “I should have taken part in the ceremony”.       Apart from those，students may come across this kind of problems, all of a sudden, they cannot find out a proper word or a phrase to express what they would like to. Consequently, the verbal phrase such as “kick off” will be replaced with “start to play the football match”. Despite the fact that these expressions are not against the grammar rules, compared to the native ones, it is very strange. C. Negative Influence of Different CultureErrors are always made when Chinese students communicate with the native English speakers, because of lacking knowledge of different culture, which may affect the development of communication，even lead to interruption or misunderstanding. For example, according to Chinese custom, it is normal to say “Hello, have you had your meal?” for greeting. However, it is ridiculous and strange to greet a foreigner with the same question，which will confuse him or her. Foreigners usually say “What a lovely day! Nice day, isnt it?” or just simply HiHello”. From this we can see different cultures result in different language habit.IV. The Ways to Avoid Typical Errors Typical errors in English learning hinder the students to learn English well. So the students must find some methods to avoid these errors and to improve their English level. The author gives out some methods which can help the students.A. ListeningListening is an important aspect in English learning. If the students dont master the skill of listening, they can not understand what they are hearing. It is hard to communicate with others without a good listening ability. There are some ways to help students to improve their English listening ability.1. Breaking the Barriers in PronunciationPronunciation is very important in English listening. If the students pronounced in a wrong way, it is hard for them to understand others saying. For example, as we know the voiceless consonant will change in English, such as the word “space”, the correct pronunciation is /sbeis/, not/speis/. If the students read it as /speis/, they cant contact with the word “space” when they heard this word in English listening. So mastering the basic vocal knowledge is very important for Chinese students to learning English listening well.a. Pronouncing the international phonetic symbols correctlyLearning the phonetic symbols is the first step in English learning. And pronouncing the international phonetic symbols correctly is very important for the students. There are many factors which will influence the students to pronounce the international phonetic symbols correctly. Such as the location of the tongue, the sharp of the mouth, vocal cords vibration and so on. For example: /b/ and /p/; /b/ is a labial, plosive and voiced consonant sound, /p/ is a labial, plosive and voiceless consonant sound. They are created when the upper and the lower lip are brought together to create obstruction. The difference is very small in /b/ and /p/, that is the vibration of vocal cords or not. When students pronounce /p/, the vocal cords do not vibrate. When students pronounce /b/, their vocal cords are vibration. Some words sounds are very similar, so the students need to know the differences. b. knowing the corresponding relationships between English letters combination and International Phonetic Alphabet, such as：sh/, th/. c. knowing the basic rules of the open syllable and close syllable, Such as use/ju:z/, begin /bi'gin/, pipe/paip/. d. mastering other pronouncing rules, such as: the intonation, the stop and the sense group. For example: Let's hold off/ ordering the dessert/ until later. This sentence can be divided into three sense groups. Readers can not stop in a sense group. They can have a short stop between two sense groups. The intonation is rising in the last part of each sense group. The declarative sentence ends with the falling tone, general sentence ends with the rising tone.2. Mastering Some Listening SkillsIf the students want to improve their listening ability, they must do a lot of practice. The listening practice helps them to cultivate the language sense. The students usually adopt three methods in listening practice: global listening, selective listening and intensive listening.a. Global listening“Global listening is usually used to understand the general idea of the listening.” 8The students should pay attention to the key words and the key phrases, and then get the main idea of the listening material according to the key words and phrases. The exercise design is the key to this strategy. The students can read the questions before the listening. They can get some information about the whole passage through reading the questions. It is a good way for the students to catch the key words and main idea. For example: 1. Where was Mrs., Edward going to take her son on Saturday morning?2. What did her son dream about last night?3. Why did her son laugh when Mrs. Edward asked what he did in his dream?There are three questions need to be read before the starting of listening. They can help the students to get some useful information. The students can know the main person and the time t