Corpus-based Study on Language Errors in English Writing

Abstract

English writing, as a significant English skill, can directly and efficiently embody English learners’ comprehensive abilities. In the English subject of Chinese college entrance examination, the score of writing accounts for as high as 16.7%. English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School Students, promulgated in 2017, puts forward specific requirements of English writing for high students. However, students still make various types of errors in compositions. Guided by Corder's error analysis steps, and collecting 96 English writings of the senior three students from three senior high schools in Nanchong, Sichuan as samples, the author builds a small corpus after tagging errors in samples based on the Chinese Learner English Corpus error annotation principle. Through the research, it is found that the language error rate of senior high school students is about 9.75%; the error types mainly focus on word errors, verb usage errors, word forms errors and collocation errors, namely, local errors, accounting for 75.3%. In this way, it hopes to improve students' language accuracy in writing and promote English writing teaching in senior high schools.