（英语语言文学专业论文）错误分析及其对外语教学的启示.pdf

1 acknowledgement i would like to express my hearty gratitude to first of all the teaching staff of foreign languages college in shanghai teachers university for their conscientious instructions and education during all these seven years of my undergraduate and postgraduate study without the help of all those teachers and professors i would not have been able to accomplish my graduation thesis in such a successful way great thanks should also be given to the library staff in shanghai teachers university for their precious advice and help on my material collection meanwhile the accomplishment of my thesis owes a great debt to all the authors i list in the bibliography at the back of my paper so thanks should also be given to them i would also like to thank my family members and friends for their support and encouragement at times of my frustration finally a special word of thanks is due to professor deng for his valuable suggestions on and his prompt and careful revisions of my paper during the whole course 2 摘要 怎样提高语言教学质量这一问题一直困扰着语言学者尤其是语言教师 但是 一直到二十世纪下半世纪研究者们才开始把对学习者的语言学习与教师 的教学密切结合起来在此之前语言习得与语言教学被视为两块互不相干的领 域 因此那些努力想要改善语言教学的研究者们也从未认真研究过学习者究竟 是如何习得语言的 而今我们已认识到语言教学其实并不是一个单向的过程它与语言习得密 切联系 相互作用 离开语言习得 我们也就无从给语言教学下一个定义 nathen gage 1964 269 曾经说过为了满足教学的实际需求语言习得理论必须为语言 教学理论的产生奠定一定的基础换言之语言教学的提高与创新必须一语言习 得为依据 不考虑学习者的语言习得过程 我们的教学也就没法得到真正的改善 教学是学习的向导能帮助促进学习者语言习得的过程为学习者的语言习得设 定一定的条件和环境 而我们对于学习者如何习得语言这一问题的理解将会为我 们的教学提供某些启示所以用以指导我们教学的我们的教学方法教学材 料等等应该是我们对于语言习得的理解对语言习得过程了解的越多就能越 好地改进我们的教学虽然语言习得并不是一个那么简单易懂的过程此论文 主要是通过对学习者语言中的错误分析来了解外语习得的过程 并从中获得一些 有关外语教学的启示 关键词语言习得语言教学错误分析 3 abstract how to improve language pedagogy this is a question that has been haunting most linguistic researchers and above all language teachers but not until the second half of the twentieth century was the systematic study of how learners learn a second language related to the study of how teachers teach a second language before that time language learning and language teaching were considered two clearly separate areas therefore researchers trying to improve language teaching had never taken language learning into consideration now we know that language teaching is not a one way process it interacts with language learning in an extremely intricate way we can never define it apart from learning nathan gage 1964 269 noted that to satisfy the practical demands of education theories of learning must be stood on their head so as to yield theories of teaching in other words theories of teaching must be based on theories of learning without taking learning into account we can never really improve teaching teaching guides and facilitates learning helping learners to learn setting conditions for learning to take place our understanding of how learners learn will provide us with some insights into how we should teach what should guide our teaching our teaching style methods materials and so on is our understanding of language learning the more we find out and are sure about language learning especially through error analysis the better we can do to improve our teaching although language learning is not so simple a phenomenon that can be easily understood key phrases language learning language teaching error analysis 5 introduction this paper tries to provide some insights into the process of second language acquisition by looking into the language second language learners produce and thus working out some implications for foreign language teaching since error analysis is one way to study learner language i shall try to carry out this task from this aspect to begin my paper i will discuss two contrasting views on language learning in the first chapter namely behaviorists view and mentalists view then chapter two gives an account of what is known about error analysis its significance and the procedures to make an error analysis by analyzing learner errors we can be enlightened as to the strategies learners adopt while learning a second language therefore in chapter three i will focus on the discussion of second language learners learning strategies the last chapter chapter four is the most important part in this paper by analyzing learner errors and learners learning strategies we by now should be clearer about how learners learn a second language and are able to adapt our teaching to meet learners learning requirements thus facilitating second language learning so in chapter four a number of implications for foreign language teaching are derived based on the discussions in the previous chapters language teaching is not a one way process it involves efforts from both teachers and learners therefore understanding language learning is a necessary requirement for language teachers if improved language teaching can be effected 6 chapter one two contrasting views on language learning to understand second language learning researchers have tried to compare it with first language acquisition most children except those dumb and deaf ones are able to acquire their first language successfully no matter how complex the language learning behavior is psycholinguists who try to explain this phenomenon have put forward a number of language learning theories among which behaviorist learning theory and mentalist learning theory are the two extremes we shall look at each in turn 1 1behaviorists view on language learning the dominant psychological theory of language learning in the 1950s and 1960s was behaviorist learning theory like many ideas in psychology some of its basic notions have also been passed on to us by philosophers this language learning theory stems initially from aristotle s associationism however this is a theory not exclusive of language learning behaviorists merely apply general principles of learning to the learning of a language according to this theory language learning is not dissimilar to any other kind of learning in that it is a mechanical process of habit formation to the behaviorists any kind of learning behavior is a process of forming habits in a rather mechanical way the well known representative of this theory is b f skinner in 1938 skinner published his behavior of organisms and in doing so established himself as one of the leading behaviorists in the united states he followed the tradition of watson who had adopted the classical conditioning theory as the explanation for all learning i e the stimulus response process in which learning behavior is elicited by a preceding stimulus meanwhile skinner added a unique dimension to watson s theory 7 to him the classical conditioning is but one specialized form of learning applicable mainly to animals he attempted to account for most of human learning and behavior in order to differentiate his theory from that of watson s skinner coined the term operant conditioning while watson s model put much emphasis on stimuli that precede the responses within skinner s model the importance of stimuli is de emphasized or rather transferred to the reinforcements which follow the responses for instance it is not easy to identify a specific stimulus which results in a baby s crying is it hunger or pain or wanting but it is not necessary for us to be concerned about it instead we should be concerned about the following consequences of his crying every time his crying may bring him food toys or whatever he wants gradually he forms the concept that his crying may satisfy his needs in this example the baby operates on his environment her response crying is reinforced until finally a particular behavior or concept is learned actually in skinner s model the reinforcements play the same role as the stimuli in watson s model according to skinner the events or the reinforcements that follow a response and that tend to strengthen behavior or increase the probability of a recurrence of that behavior constitute a powerful force in the control of human behavior our behavior is governed by its consequences while studying behavior it is necessary and important to study the effect of those consequences therefore to teach someone something we ought to attend carefully to the consequences of the reinforcements language learning then to the behaviorists is quite the same as any other kind of learning it is also a process of habit formation therefore the pattern of stimulus response reinforcement can also be applied to language learning behaviorists believe that every utterance produced by a language learner is a result of any kind of stimulus in other words every utterance is a response to a stimulus be this stimulus external or internal for example a child may happen to hear an utterance i m hot and imitates it or he may produce an utterance like i want water as a response to an internal stimulus such as a state of thirst however whatever the stimulus is it is of no great importance the key to the success in acquiring a language does not lie in those stimuli but in the reinforcements if a 8 response is correct the learner tends to get a positive reinforcement that encourages him to repeat the utterance later when he meets with a similar situation then through several repetitions the utterance finally becomes habitualized and therefore acquired on the other hand if a response is incorrect or not made it is not likely to be reinforced or maybe the reinforcement is a negative one on such occasions then this utterance will not be repeated therefore can not be acquired so what is of great importance in learning a language is the reinforcement after a response is made behaviorists therefore think that while teaching a language teachers should be very careful to the treatment of reinforcements positive reinforcements should be given only to correct utterances for reinforcements to be effective they should follow the responses as quickly as possible because things to be associated should have a close temporal relationship between them teachers whenever possible should try their best to prevent incorrect utterances otherwise those errors will become habits and be repeated without the conscious use of one s cognitive processes in conclusion to the behaviorists language learning is a mechanical process of habit formation by imitation and repetition of utterances undoubtedly there is much in the behaviorist learning theory that is true and valuable and worthy of our attention behaviorists take what can be observed objectively and scientifically as the resources of their research however this learning theory when applied to language learning has its own limitations firstly behaviorists consider reinforcements extremely important in the learning process but as we can see a child learning his mother tongue does not always receive a positive or negative reinforcement for each of his utterances what s more while behaviorists attach importance to the outward structure of an utterance an adult tends to pay attention to the meaning of an utterance that a child produces he tends to give a positive reinforcement when the meaning is correct and give a negative one when the meaning is wrong secondly behaviorist account of language learning emphasizes only what can be directly observed i e the input to the learner and the learner s own output and ignores what goes on in the learner s mind thirdly if what behaviorists say is absolutely true then the number of a child s utterances may be limited but in fact we 9 can observe that a child can produce an unlimited number of utterances and he is often able to create new sentences instead of imitating others utterances and repeating his original sentences because of such limitations this behaviorist view of language learning began to be challenged from the 1960s onwards under the influence of noam chomsky s innate theory from a preoccupation with the role of nurture i e how environmental factors shape learning researchers switched their attention to nature i e how the innate properties of the human mind shape learning 1 2 mentalists view on language learning this new learning theory is mentalist in orientation therefore we call it a mentalist theory of language learning this theory is highly contrastive to behaviorist learning theory it contradicts the behaviorist learning theory in almost every aspect mentalists believe that human beings and only human beings can learn a language not because they are subjected to a similar conditioning process but because they possess an inborn capacity for acquiring a language this capacity is separate from any other cognitive capacity within the human mind e g the capacity for logical reasoning it is used exclusively for language learning to describe this capacity the term language acquisition device was coined by researchers and often shortened to lad for the convenience of discussion i will borrow this term for my own use to the mentalists the lad is specific to the human species and never fails to operate in normal human beings that is the reason why any human being without any mental deficiency is able to acquire a language successfully a child from birth is exposed to the linguistic environment that serves as a trigger for the lad it gives the child a means of processing the speech in the environment so that he can extract an abstract and complex set of rules which of course are only his own hypotheses about the structure of the language and may therefore be deviated rules from the adult language these hypotheses are then tried out when the child produces his own 10 language and are regularly checked against the further data exposed to him if he finds his hypothesis cannot account for all the data he modifies it and checks it again so what the child is doing is constructing an internal grammar of the language and this grammar passes through successive modifications before it finally becomes the complete grammar of the adult language to explain what enables the lad to operate so quickly the mentalists suppose that it may already contain some of the universal features which are found in all known languages such as the use of word order to signal meaning or basic grammatical relationship like that between subject and object according to the mentalist learning theory language learning is not a mechanical process of habit formation through the chain of stimulus response reinforcement it is a cognitive process of rule construction through hypothesis formation and hypothesis testing environment as for language learning input is needed but only to trigger the operation of the lad it is necessary for language acquisition but it is not decisive children cannot acquire a language only through exposure to linguistic environment during the process of rule construction the rules or hypotheses the child formulates are mostly incorrect or at least incomplete before they are finally up to the standards of the adult language while he is trying out his hypotheses in his own production of the language he will inevitably make mistakes more accurately errors therefore for the mentalists error making is an unavoidable part in the whole process of language learning errors may be indications of the child s improvement in the course of learning showing that he has come to some rules of his own for example forms that have been observed in the speech of children such as i breaked my toy i better go to bed now bettern t i are not likely to be heard from an adult something other than imitation of adult speech is going on what is significant is not that the child is making errors he is generalizing two rules from his errors we know he at least knows that the past tense of a verb is formed by the regular process of inflection and that modal auxiliary verbs can be repeated in question tags apparently the mentalist views on language learning like those of the behaviorists are valuable for us to make use of in teaching a second language 11 however every coin has two sides so far we have examined only one side of the mentalist theory and it is time to see the other side some inadequacies of the theory or rather some points on which researchers have not yet reached an agreement first of all is there really a black box lad in our brain the lad is merely supposed to be existent chomsky made this hypothesis through examination of language learning process and his own logical reasoning but there is no scientific evidence to show that human beings are born with such an innate capacity in addition although chomsky admitted the function of environment was to trigger the workings of the lad he underestimated the importance of input to language learning even if a human being does have a born capacity for language acquisition and is able to formulate rules of a language without exposure to environment he has no way to extract his own rules therefore the effect linguistic environment has on language acquisition is far greater than what chomsky had estimated although the role it plays in the learning process is different from what the behaviorists think after looking into the two contrasting learning theories from a historical point of view we now can come to a conclusion that neither of these two theories can account adequately for language acquisition as a matter of fact there is not a single theory existent that can serve this purpose what we should and can do now is not to develop such a language learning theory but to understand language learning as much as possible in order to improve language teaching one very important way to understand language learning is to look into what language learners produce during their learning process from the next chapter on my focus will be transferred from general language learning to second language learning by attending to the language second language learners produce 12 chapter two descriptive study of learner language error analysis learner language plays an important role for us to understand second language learning by analyzing learner language we may get some idea of how learners learn a second language and then apply thes