英语作文第三人称单数一般现在时错误分析
[Abstract] Writing is an effective and overall way of testing one’s English ability. It can help students to improve English proficiency, extend the learners’ using range, improve logical thinking and problem analyzing, and cultivate the strict work attitude. It can also improve one’s reading, speaking, ing and so on. During one and a half months teaching practice, the author analyzed 52 students’ 228 pieces of writings from two ordinary classes (103students) in senior 1 Xiamen Xiang’an No.1 Middle School (key middle school). The author counted up that the single third person present tense errors they made were as follows: expression errors 27%, subject-verb-is-not-in-agreement25%, tense errors17%, omitting “be”13%, syntax errors11%, consecutive predicates errors5%, spelling errors3%, omitting auxiliary verb0.42% and voice errors0.42%. In the author’s opinion, the main reasons are the discrepancy of thinking model, the influences of language transfer and the second language acquisition. As students of key middle school, they still make such kinds of errors, let alone the students in ordinary school. This paper attempts to analyze these problems and the reasons, aiming at making some suggestions for middle school English teachers’ consultation. In short, there is a long way for middle school English teachers to go to improve students’ writing skills.
[Key Words] Senior1 English writing; the third person present tense; transfer; mode thinking; Second Language Acquisition
【摘 要】 写作是能全面检测一个人英语水平的一种有效手段，而且写作能帮助学生提高使用英语的正确性,扩大所用语言的范围,提高逻辑思考及分析问题的能力，培养严谨的工作作风。另外,写作对阅读,,口语也都有促进作用。在一个半月的实习过程中笔者对厦门翔安一中（重点中学）高一两个普通班（103个学生）中的52位学生的228篇作文进行了分析，统计出他们所犯的第三人称单数一般现在时错误类型如下：表达错误27%；主谓不一25%；时态混乱17%；遗漏be动词13%；句法结构错误11%，连动错误5%；拼写错误3%；缺少助动词0.42%；语态错误0.42%。笔者认为出现这些错误的主要原因有: 英汉思维模式的差异，汉语对英语的迁移影响以及第二语言习得的影响。作为重点中学的学生他们仍然会犯这样的错误，更不用说那些普通中学的学生了。本文分析了所出现的问题和原因旨在给中学英语老师提供一些建议以供。总之，中学英语老师要提高学生的写作能力还是任重而道远的。
【关键词】 高一写作；第三人称单数一般现在时；迁移；思维模式；第二语言习得
1. Introduction
1.1 Basic concept of writing
“‘Writing is concerned, on the one hand with the definition and redefinition, creation and re-creation of the self, others, the world, a process which we may call reflection; and on the other hand, with communication with others, a process which we call transmission.’ From Wilkinson’s definition of writing we can see that writing is, first of all, a process during which a writer writes for a particular object view. Only in this way can writing be regarded with the emphasis on ‘communicative skill’ In the second language context, such as the situation in China where English is learned as a foreign language in the overwhelming majority of universities and colleges all over the country, writing or learning to write in English is commonly considered as an advanced and demanding requirement that is added to the complexities inherent in trying to master the foreign language—English.” [1] For more than a decade, students and teachers have been trying, to their wits’ end, to meet the requirement of college entrance examination. Unfortunately, the results are far from being satisfactory, only a small amount of students has actually developed the level of English writing skills while the larger part of students is still frustrated [2] . This paper will first present some tables about the main errors in students’ writings and the percentage of right and wrong. The second part of the paper will analyze the errors and the reasons of making them. At last, it will discuss about some possible ways that might be employed to the solution of the existing problems.
In China, students, especially middle school students, learn English as second language. But for many reasons, they cannot learn English as good as their native language. They’ll make all kinds of errors on writing, speaking and so on. Through one and a half months teaching practice in Xiang’an No.1 Middle School, the author lived through the real teaching process and found that there were lots of problems in students’ English writing. As follows, the author will present the principal aspects of the third person present tense errors in their writings by tables.
1.2 Basic train of thought
2. Study design
2 .1 Studying the problems
This study mainly discusses “the error usages of the single third person present tense in Senior 1 English writing”. The errors and the reasons of the errors are analyzed according to the tables made from the collection of language materials.
2.2. The source and collection of language materials
These materials of study come from senior 1 class3 and 4 some students’ English writings in Xiamen Xiang’an No.1 Middle School .The head-teacher of class 4, which is the author’s teaching practice class, set a writing for them once a week to train their writing ability .The word numbers are not required. The given topics are “A Woman Inspires Me”, “My English Teacher”, “Supplementary Writing of ‘The Necklace’”, “What do You Think about Animal Experiments” and “Is It Good or Bad for Students to do a Lot of Homework?” For some students didn’t finish all the writings and also didn’t hand in, so all the collections are 228 pieces of writings from 52 students. We will use them as the language materials of this study. The author has numbered all of them.
2.3. The analyses of these language materials
The analyses can be divided into three stages. First stage, the author collected the materials from students and analyzed them one by one. Because these writings were corrected by the author during teaching practice in Xiang’an No1 Middle School, and the author has a general impression of them, so the main direction of this stage is to find out the wrong use of the single third person present tense, the right number of it and the total number.
Second stage, the author analyzed the wrong use of the single third person present tense and found out the reasons.
Expression errors refer to whether the expression of sentence is correct and has not grammar error and whether the expression conforms to the habit of English expression. Omitting “be” is that there should have been a “be” there, but it is omitted for some reasons. Consecutive predicates mean that a sentence has two main verbs without the conjunction.
Third stage, the author classified these errors according to the reasons, counted them up and made them into tables. Tables are arranged by the most errors they made to the least errors.
Table 1:
From the tables above we can see clearly that the main problems are expression errors, subject-verb-is-not-in-agreement and tense errors. Among 52 students, there are 29(table 2) students who have expression errors. The reasons they make these kinds of errors are that: the discrepancy of English-Chinese mode thinking, the negative transfer of native language and the second language acquisition.
3. Reasons
3.1 Mode thinking
A nation’s mode thinking and mode language are the deep structures of national culture that are congruous with culture. Because of the discrepancy of mode thinking, different nations have different ways of using language and other aspects. [3] So English learners surely will come across all kinds of difficulties for the discrepancy of its essence. In western countries, their space navigation views and the features of logical thinking are as follows:
First, in studying the relations of human-human and human-things, they mainly study the relations of human to things and human to natural. Second, in the relation of material and spirit, they put stress on the two opposition and division. Third, they pay attention to dialectic and reasons. Fourth, in scientific study method, the westerners strongly attach importance on evidence and analysis from ancient Greek. So, for the efforts of above-mentioned aspects, the westerners have bright features of stressing on reason, analysis and complete form.
But for China, there are complete different features. First, they put the relation of human-human in the first place. Second, to the relation of spirit and material, Chinese traditional philosophy pays more attention on the two’s unity and consistency. Third, there is an intuition on instinctive experience and entire synthesis. But it doesn’t pay attention to experiment and analysis. [4]
For above reasons, there is a great discrepancy of Chinese-English expression, so Chinese students, especially middle school students, always find that they can’t express their ideas naturally and accurately. They just translate their ideas word by word into English. [5]
E.g.:
(1) She like a child. (No.1) (Here No.1means the notebook I have numbered)
(2) She just like our sister. (No.7) (Here No.7means the notebook I have numbered)
(3) Our country need a person who is good at everything, not just a robot to do homework. (No.13) (Here No.13means the notebook I have numbered)
(4) – Are you Jeanne? (Telephone call)
-- I’m Jeanne. (No.30) (Here No.30means the notebook I have numbered)
The four sentences above are complete Chinglish. They’d better be revised as follows:
(1) She looks like a child.
(2) She just looks like our sister.
(3) Our country needs a person who is good at everything, not a machine that is just good at doing homework.
(4) –Is it Jeanne?
--Yes, this is Jeanne.
Such kind of errors takes up 27%. (cf. table 2)
3.2 The analysis by positive transfer and negative transfer
They make such kinds of errors not only because of the difference of Chinese-English thinking model, but also because of the negative transfer of native language. Applying previous experience and knowledge to learning or problem solving in a new situation is transfer. An important complex cognitive goal is for students to be able to apply what they learn in one situation to new situations. [6] In the study domain of second language acquisition, mother-tongue knowledge’s affect to foreign language acquisition is one of important problems that linguist and psychological linguist study. To the foreign learners who have mastered basic phonetics, lexical and grammar of language, the study of foreign language’s phonetics, lexical and grammar will certainly be affected by mother tongue language’s phonetics, lexical, meaning and grammar knowledge. At the same time, different nations have different types of communication model and utterance structure, so this kind of knowledge that mother tongue language has had will also affect foreign language communication model and utterance structure acquisition. This kind of effect is mother tongue language transfer in second language acquisition. Some people say that it has two types of transfer: positive transfer and negative transfer. When mother tongue language rules are the same as foreign language rules, the positive transfer occurs. When they have discrepancy, especially when they seem similar to each other but different as a matter of fact, it always produces negative transfer. [7] English and Chinese belong to complete different language systems. English emphasizes hypotaxis while Chinese stresses on parataxis. Because students can’t realize the difference between the two language phenomenons, they always transfer their Chinese knowledge into English learning according to Chinese thinking ways and expressions, so it will interfere they understand and master English. [8] The behaviorist ascribed errors largely to the interference of learners’ native language. Their native language habits prevent them from learning second language habits.[9] Transfer errors are not distinct from analogical errors. They represent aspects of the same underlying strategies. Both result from the fact that learner uses what he /she already knows about language in order to make sense of new experience. Pit Corder expresses that the first language provides a rather rich and specific set of hypotheses. With the help of their mother tongue language, the second language learners can apply some of them to their language studies. But transfer errors only occur in the SLA learners, of course, there are also some ambiguous sources of errors that are frequently hard to decide what categories they belonged to. [10]
3.3 Subject-verb not agreement
Subject-verb agreement means that subjects and their verbs must agree, meaning singular subjects require singular verbs and plural subjects require plural verbs. [11] But students often make mistake and the subject-verb always does not agree. Such kind of errors takes up 25%.
E.g.:
(5) On this term, our class have a new English teacher. (No.28)
(6) For one thing, too many homework keep the students from reading widly. (No.30)
(7) …but I think if she work hard, sooner or later, she will become one of the best teacher. (No.8)
They may be revised as follows:
(5) On this term, our class has a new English teacher.
(6) For one thing, too much homework keeps the students from reading widely.
(7) …but I think if she works hard, sooner or later, she will become one of the best teacher.
For Chinese doesn’t have the notion of subject-verb agreement, students have formed a certain kind of Chinese grammar. So when they learn a new complete different language that has such changeover, they often use their own grammar unconsciously though they have learnt foreign language’s grammar. [12] The errors’ reasons can be divided into two sorts: first, system language errors. Students know the rules of this system, but haven’t mastered them completely and not know some limits, and then errors occur. Second, errors occur after mastering the system. Though students have mastered a more complete concept of grammar, they haven’t taken shape as a kind of habit and still possibly make some errors that violate the rules of grammar. [13] So, in the author’s opinion, students would avoid this kind of errors through doing a certain number of exercises. The exercise would consolidate their notion of subject-verb agreement.
3.4.1 The general idea of SLA
Over the past two decades, research in the first language acquisition has an enormous influence on the study of second language acquisition. The research findings of the FLA (First Language Acquisition) and the influence on the SLA (Second Language Acquisition) have been studied by language researchers as well as pedagogical practitioners. People began to realize that L1 performances are quite consistent with these findings and hypotheses from other non-related areas. [14] The Behaviorists’ theory of Habit Formation claimed in B.F, Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1951) that language is not a mental phenomenon; it is behavior. It is learnt by a process of habit formation. This assertion was challenged by Norm Chomsky whose linguistic theory conforms that all children are born with innate capacity for acquiring a language. It is said that children can construct their own rule systems. The children are creatively constructing the language as he interacts with those people around him. The two schools of controversies have proceeded subsequently by lots of studies concerning the language acquisition. Theories, such as Monitor Model (Krashen 1981) hypothesizes that adults have two independent systems for developing abilities in second language, subconscious acquisition and conscious learning. Acculturation Model (and closely linked with it the Nativization Model) and a number of others are also devoted to the study of second language acquisition. [15]
SLA is best understood as a complex cognitive skill. Anderson has described cognitive skill acquisition as a “three-stage” process (the cognitive, associative and autonomous stages), using the “production system” notation to specify the dynamics of the system during the skill acquisition process. This framework is particularly useful in the current context because it helps to identify and test the existence and applicability of specific learning strategies that are appropriate at various stages in the skill acquisition process. [16] Language acquisition, according to Ausubel, can be divided into two forms—rote and meaningful learning, by anchoring and relating new items and experiences to knowledge is that exits in the cognitive framework. Children’s practice and imitation is a very meaningful activity that is conceptualized and purposeful while adults learn a foreign language in classroom by rote methods. Compared with children who acquire their mother tongue in a natural, meaningful context, adults’ rote learning, of course, cannot reach an ideal effect. [17]
3.4.2 The analyses of tense and voice errors
To most of Chinese students, English is their second language. The acquisition of English will be affected in different types and situations. Furthermore, the distance of mother tongue and target language is greatly related with the knowledge transfer. [18] From table1, we can see clearly that the errors of the single third person present tense take up 24% that are possibly affected by mother tongue’s negative transfer. The author’s students still couldn’t master it completely. They just learn it in classroom by rote methods and could not put it into practice or a real situation. Though the SLA helps them to learn it and to use it in a right way, they are still affected by mother tongue language easily.
English verbs generally have strict different tense and voice. It stresses the different tense and voice by changing the verbs’ form. [19] All verbs must agree in tense unless you clearly prepare a reader for a time shift. Generally speaking, if your essay starts in the past tense, it should remain in the past throughout. Stay in the present if you start there. [20] But Chinese verbs don’t have changes of form. The sentences’ “tense” and “voice” are showed by lexical or through a particular context. [21]
E.g.:
(8) When she was angry, she looked like a lion. (NO.50)
(9) But no matter how tired she was, she never complained to us. (NO.45)
(10) Then Jeanne passed to Mathilde a necklace. (NO.43)
Actually these three sentences are wrong in the original present tense. They’d better be revised as follows to keep agree with the whole writings:
(8) When she is angry, she looks like a lion.
(9) But no matter how tired she is, she never complains it to us.
(10) Then Jeanne passes a necklace to Mathilde.
The errors they made as above take up 17%. It is clear to see that students often make tense errors though they have already learnt it.
The number of voice error in these writings is only 1 and it just takes up about 0.42%. It seems that the students have mastered it perfectly. Actually, it does not as the tables show. From the author’s personal teaching practice, the author found that students are still confused by the using of the voice. They made so little errors in these writings just because they only know to express their ideas in active voice but not passive voice. As we know, English uses more passive voice than Chinese. So they are affected by Chinese thinking model, and seldom use passive voice in some particular situations.
3.5 Chinese English
3.5.1 The general idea of Chinese English
Chinese English is the centerpiece of negative language learner’s native language negative transfer to English learning. Deng Yanchang holds that: Chinglish is speech or writing in English that shows the interference of influence of Chinese. Some sentences may be little or more than word for word translations of Chinese expressions. Chinglish may be grammatically correct, but the choice of the words or phrases and the manner of expression do not conform to Standard English usage. Although understanding may not be a problem, Chinglish is unacceptable. In another words, Chinese English means Chinese English learners and users are affected and interfered by mother tongue language and use the rules and habits of Chinese directly, so the broken English which does not conform to the standard English or the culture of English. [22]
Chinese English reflects in the wrong use of English words or sentences structure or syntax, etc. Syntax is a branch of linguistics that studies how words are combined to form sentences and the rules that govern the formation of sentences. [23] Different languages have different kinds of syntaxes. To whoever foreign learner, his / her habit of using language will be interfered by his / her mother tongue language unavoidably. Most of the Chinese students have shaped a comparative complete Chinese grammar when they begin to learn English. When they are studying a new language, they are dependent on their mother tongue language syntax unconsciously. When the representing syntax form of the same meanings mother tongue language and target language, it will result in positive transfer; but when they are different, it will result in negative transfer. Generally speaking, the English syntax and Chinese syntax are similar to each other largely. They all have the subject, verb, object, adjectival, adverbial and complement. The syntactic components generally have the same function but difference in the sequence. Chinese has a relative words order and they can’t be changed at one’s pleasure. The words don’t have the sign of word form as well .The wh-question sentence is quite similar with declarative sentence in word order. But the abundant forms of English determine the flexibility of the word’s order. Though English has the same main syntactic component with Chinese mainly, there are more inverted sentences in English than in Chinese. [24]
According to the study by Mr. Deng, syntax and consecutive predicate errors belong to this group. The author’s students often turn to use their mother tongue language syntax when they want to organize a sentence in English. This is an unconscious process, but it shows that the transfer plays an important role in their foreign language study. Because of the negative transfer in this circumstance, Chinese English comes into existence.
3.5.2 The analyses of syntax and consecutive predicate errors
Because of the positive transfer from mother tongue language, Chinese students make fewer errors in syntax. From the study we can see clearly in table 2 that the syntactic errors they made only take up 11%. It’s less than expression errors and subject-verb-not-in-agreement and tense largely.
E.g.:
(11)… and Does the environment going to bad. (No.18)
(12)… But I don’t think it realy right. (No.25)
(13). Not only she is a good teacher, but also is a good friend of us. (No.3)
These sentences’ had better be revised as follows:
(11)… and does the environment go worse?
(12)… But I don’t think it is really right.
(13) Not only is she a good teacher, but also she is a good friend of us.
Although the positive transfer plays a very important role in syntax, there are still errors caused by negative transfer. So we must pay attention on it as well.
Within each complete predicate, there is one main word or phrase that tells what the subject is doing, or that tells something about the subject. This main word or phrase is called the simple predicate, or verb. A simple predicate, or verb, is the main word or phrase in the complete predicate. Verbs that tell what a subject is doing are action verbs. Action verbs can show physical action, mental action, or ownership. [25] Some verbs do not show action. These verbs tell something about a subject. They make a statement about a subject. [26] A consecutive predicate is that a sentence has two main verbs without a conjunction or a clause.
E.g.:
(14) It’s kiddy change my boring life. (No.4)
(15) Because the exam is too important and pass the exam is the only road to success. (No.49)
(16) Because she seems have much of energy. (No.50)
This kind of errors takes up about 5%. Though the number of these errors is not large, it is a very serious error. It must call forth the attention of all the teachers and students.
They had better be revised as follows:
(14) It’s kiddy that changes my boring life.
(15) Because the exam is too important, so to pass the exam is the only road to success. (16) Because it seems that she has much of energy.
3.6 Omitting link-verb “be”
Verbs that do not show action are called state-of-being verbs. These verbs make statements about a subject. State-of-being verbs are often used as linking verbs. A linking verb links the subject with another word in the sentence. The other word either renames or describes the subject. [27]
In English, if the link-verb “be” is used as predicate, we can translate it into Chinese “shi”. “Be” is often used in English expression to describe the character of something, the feature of outer surface and the state of feeling, etc. But in Chinese, they usually use noun, classifier as predicate to indicate the age, native place, date and subject’s character and category etc, and often needn’t use “shi”. Because of the discrepancy between English-Chinese habit of language expressions, Chinese students often omit the link-verb “be” unconsciously. Students may not omit it when they make a single simple sentence. But when it comes to a paragraph or a whole piece of writing, or a translation, the situation of omitting the link-verb “be” is existent here and there. [28] Students make this kind of errors largely because of the discrepancy of English-Chinese thinking model and the negative transfer of the mother tongue language.
E.g.:
(17) The first English teacher in the hight school. (No.27)
(18) My English teacher, Guo Yizhen, a good teacher. (No.1)
(19) I think in my heart my mother that inspires me. (No.42)
They should be revised as follows:
(17) My first English teacher is in the high school.
(18) My English teacher, Guo Yizhen, is a good teacher.
(19) I think in my heart my mother is the person who inspires me.
Such kind of omitting link-verb “be” errors take up 13%.
3.7 Spelling errors
Misspelled words, whether in a composition for school or in a letter to a friend, are likely to distract the reader from the thought being expressed. Consequently, it is important for a writer to spell words accurately. [29] Learning a few spelling rules will help you master hundreds of words. In this study, the author has found that this kind of errors they made mainly due to their careless spelling of words and their attitude to write a good composition is not very enthusiastic.
E.g.:
(20) When she reachs home, her husband, Pierre is sitting in the chair. (No.22)
(21) I hope she can helf my English because my English is so bad. (No.17)
Exactly, the right spellings are as follows:
(20) When she reaches home, her husband, Pierre is sitting in the chair.
(21) I hope she can help my English because my English is so bad.
This kind of errors takes up only 3%. It’s acceptable.
3.8 The analyses of table3
From table 3, we can find that there are 6 students whose false percentage is more than 50%. They take up 12%. Most students’ false percentage is above 20%. They take up 50%. It’s a large number and it is worth noticing. Only 15 students’ false percentage is less than 20%. It shows that students haven’t mastered the usage of the single third person present tense well. The larger part of students maybe mastered its usage to a certain extent, but for all kinds of reasons, they couldn’t use it accurately. The situation is still very serious. We can put our efforts into improving the students’ expression, subject- verb agreement and tense.
4. Practicable measures and personal suggestions
At present, most of Chinese students’ writing level is still not satisfactory. They often make all kinds of errors, especially in expression, subject-verb agreement, tense etc. The reasons that cause these errors are mentioned above. In the author’s opinions, it’s almost impossible to avoid these errors completely .So we have no choice but to reduce these kind of errors to the least .We can improve the ability through many ways, such as: to read more articles written by English speaking people can improve our ability of English thinking. Students should master the English grammar and compare them with Chinese grammar and then try to use them in practice. That would be good for us in improving the right use of subject-verb agreement, tense and syntax, etc. Teachers can input more knowledge of the different expressions between English and Chinese because of the discrepancy of English-Chinese thinking model and culture. Let students change the conscious input into unconscious output.
5. Conclusion
This paper is the statistics of the use of the single third person present tense in Senior1 English writing. The author analyzes the reasons of their wrong usages by tables and gives some personal suggestions, aiming to call up the attention of middle school teachers. The author hopes this paper would be of some help. This study is just for middle school teachers’ consultation.
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