Error Analysis: Four Sentence Structural Errors Made by Chinese EFL Students

Abstract

English has been widely used as a lingua franca. More and more Chinese students learn English as a second language and employ English in various contexts. Writing, as an important part to evaluate English proficiency, tends to be least performed by Chinese ESL learners. The research aims to investigate the extent to which Chinese learners of English are influenced by their first language in their English writing. It will focus on the analysis of the mistakes made on sentence structure by university freshmen in their English writings with specific reference to "that" relative clauses, "which" relative clauses, topicalization, and verbs. Sample writings for analysis are produced by a class of freshmen in Wenzhou-Kean University, a Sino-American university that uses English as the main medium of communication in meetings, classes, and assessment. This study defines four most predominant errors made by WKU students, that are, “which” clause problems, “that” clause problems, topicalization, and verb problems. Topicalization is observed to be possibly due to the influence of mother tongue language as Chinese is a topic-prominence language, opposing English which is subject-prominence. The construction of “serial-verb construction” widely used in Chinese might be one reason for predicates problems, while the wrong analogy of a similar parallel-verb structure may also be a reason. Errors in “which” and “that” clauses are likely to be caused by inadequate knowledge in the target language and its original complexity. The research will have a valuable contribution to ESL teaching to Chinese students. It will shed light on the design of ESL curriculum, teaching materials, and learning activities for Chinese ESL students in a university context.