Assessment of the English Skills of Tertiary Students

Despite increasing concern about student writing at the tertiary level there has been little empirical research into the nature and extent of the problem in Australia. The writing skills of three samples of university students in different courses were assessed using the multiple choice English Skills Assessment (ESA) test, and two other measures developed by the researchers: a detailed error checklist and wholistic ratings. The error checklist was intended to supplement as well as complement the skills areas covered by the ESA. On average, students responded correctly to 86 per cent of the ESA test items and made a total of 21 errors per 1000 words when writing narrative. The checklist enabled the detection of important deficiencies in writing not identified by the ESA, particularly in some areas of punctuation and sentence structure. Some different emphases are indicated for the testing of writing skills at the university level.     

Writing errors in Japanese kanji: A study with Japanese students and foreign learners of Japanese

The present study examined kanji errors in handwriting made by Japanese students and Australian learners of Japanese. First, a cognitive psychological model to explain the production of writing errors was proposed based upon the analysis of 374 writing errors of two-morpheme (kanji) compound words generated by Japanese students in spontaneous sentence writing situations. Despite the common assumption that kanji writing errors may not be related to the sounds of kanji characters (i.e., morphological phonology), the present study found that phonologically-related kanji writing errors were most numerous (60.0%), followed by orthographically-related errors (43.6%) and semantically-related errors (29.7%), including some overlap of these three types. Second, 408 kanji writing errors made by students learning Japanese in an Australian university were analyzed. Unlike the Japanese students, these subjects wrote more non-existing kanji and made orthographically-related mistakes rather than semantically- and phonologically-related errors. This result must be related to the level of kanji writing skills held by learners of Japanese. In light of these results, several suggestions were proposed for the methods of teaching kanji writing.     

母语负迁移与独立学院大学英语写作教学

以某学院期末大学英语考试的作文为语料,分析独立学院学生在大学英语写作中存在的主要问题;以母语负迁移理论为依据,学生典型错句为例句,分析在词汇、句法和语篇三方面产生错误的原因;并结合独立学院大学英语写作教学的实际,提出了克服母语负迁移,提高独立学院学生大学英语写作能力的对策。     

反思性学习策略在大学英语写作教学中的实证研究

该研究设计了一次旨在运用反思性学习策略提高大学生英语写作能力的教学实验,在为期14周的写作教学中,教师改变传统英语写作教学作文的批改模式,让学生自改、互改,认识错误的根源,建立错误档案,通过反思、内省的方式让学习者对自身写作中存在的困难和问题加以反思和总结,从而提高英语写作水平。定量和定性的分析结果表明：在英语写作教学中运用作文＂自改、互改—教师修改—再修改＂这种反思学习策略,学生在词汇、语法和句法类型出错的机率都显著降低,从而有效地提高了英语写作水平。     

大学英语专业学生语音辨析困难分析

听能在英语学习四项基本技能中占有特殊重要的地位。它是成功进行语言交际的基本形式和重要手段,也是发展其他语言技能的基础,但同时又是各种语言测试中困难最大的环节。近年来,听写作为测试学生整体听力水平的教学和评估手段受到越来越多的重视。本研究采用将学生听写稿与原材料逐句对比的方法,找出了学习者语音辨析错误类型,并应用SPSS证明了听力和语音之间的显著相关性,就英语听力学习及教学提出了几点建议。     

大学生英语写作中的常见错误分析及对策

大学生在英语写作中常会犯错,主要表现在词汇、句法、语篇三个方面。其主要原因是学生受中式思维的影响,学习方法过于机械,教师批改不够细致等。因此,必须有针对性地采取相应的策略。     

Text Writing within Simple Sentences: A Writing Fluency Intervention for Students with High‐Incidence Disabilities

Good sentence construction, the act of writing multiple words into sentence types that make semantic and syntactic sense, is needed for clear and meaningful written expression. The present study investigated the effects of a multi‐component writing intervention, sentence instruction and frequency building to a performance criterion, on the simple sentence construction of intermediate‐grade level students with high‐incidence disabilities. Four special education teachers delivered intervention to small groups of two students, a total of eight students, and assessed for retention. Overall results were positive but inconsistent across the small groups. Three of the four small groups improved their text writing within simple sentences during and following intervention, and moderate to large Tau‐U values for correct word sequences and for incorrect word sequences, respectively, were found. Results suggest that postinstruction writing fluency practice can be an effective part of writing intervention for intermediate‐grade level students with high‐incidence disabilities.     

The nature of error in adolescent student writing

This study examined the nature and frequency of error in high school native English speaker (L1) and English learner (L2) writing. Four main research questions were addressed: Are there significant differences in students’ error rates in English language arts (ELA) and social studies? Do the most common errors made by students differ in ELA and social studies? Are there significant differences in the error rates between L1 and L2 students in ELA? Do L1 and L2 students differ in how frequently they make the most common errors in ELA? Written work of 10th and 12th grade students in five states was collected. The sample included 178 essays (120 in ELA and 58 in social studies) from 67 students (33 10th graders and 34 12th graders; 49 native English speaking students and 18 English learners). Results indicate that there were significant differences in the frequencies of errors between ELA and social studies, with higher error rates in social studies. In addition, L2 writers had significantly higher error rates than L1 writers in ELA. Aside from a few types of errors (spelling, capitalization, and some punctuation errors), most types of errors appear relatively infrequently in school-sponsored writing. Moreover, the eight most common errors accounted for a little more than half of all errors, and these did not differ significantly between ELA and social studies writing or between L1 and L2 writers.     

论汉英翻译教学对学生写作技能的影响

从英汉思维差异、句子结构差异、语篇差异等角度分析了大学英语写作中学生常见错误产生的原因,说明了翻译教学对学生写作水平的重要影响,强调了写作教学中翻译意识培养的重要性。     

高职学生英语作文常见问题及教学对策

在英语写作方面,对高职学生的要求与对本科生的要求是不同的。高职学生在平时学习与考试中的重点是应用文写作。本文通过对学生应用文写作的调查分析,从句子错误与篇章衔接两方面总结出问题,并提出教学对策。     

非英语专业学生的语法错误类型及诱因分析

根据错误分析的理论并参考国内外有关语言错误研究的实例,以探讨学生在英语学习中出现的常见语法错误类型及诱因为目的,本研究从青海省3所大学抽取386名非英语专业的学生,采用命题作文的方式进行了英语写作测试,并从测试试卷中提取2344例可辨认语言错误从语法角度进行分类和讨论。通过大量的例句,分析和比较各类错误产生的原因及所占比例,另外在各年级间还做了量化比较,以期发现高年级和低年级的学生所出错误之差异及变化规律。     

非英语专业学生英语写作中的错误分析

英语写作是一直困扰非英语专业学生的难题,学生经常在写作中出错,从而阻碍学生英语写作能力的提高以至英语整体能力受到影响。因此,以错误分析理论为基础,通过分析学生作文中语言使用的错误,总结出学生所犯错误的规律是很有必要的。通过分析错误及改正,既可以强化学生的正确的语言输入,又可以帮助教师改进教学方法,进而促进教学改革。     

英汉句式组合差异与汉式英语句

从英语写作的句子层面,通过对比、阐释英汉两种语言的句式组合差异,对大学生英语写作中汉式英语句的错误进行了实例分析,认为在目前的英语写作教学中,有必要加强学生对英语句式的了解和组句能力的训练,从＂遣词造句＂入手,提高学生的英语写作能力。     

错误分析理论在高职英语写作教学中的应用

错误分析理论产生于20世纪60年代末、70年代初,是应用语言学的一个分支。这个理论在具体的应用实践中,可以作为教学或准备教学材料的一种辅助方式。通过对高职学生英语写作中错误的分析给教学带来一定的启示和指导,使英语写作教学更加具有针对性,更有利于广大高职学生提高写作水平和交际能力。     

What happens when students copy notes with different content and layout from an overhead screen? How often do they glance up and how accurate are they?

Twenty university students (ten men and ten women) were videotaped while they copied two sets of notes with different layouts from an overhead projector screen. They were timed as they read silently a prose passage and wrote a familiar sentence five times. Copying speed was related to writing speed but not to reading speed. Copying was faster and errors fewer when a paragraph of unfamiliar notes was laid out to emphasise the meaningful structure of the text. Similar changes to the layout of familiar notes already structured into meaningful parts did not reduce copying time or errors. The intervals between the students'glances was very variable and ranged from 3.2-13.8 sec which has implications for the study of human information processing. The average student made 12 copying errors and those who glanced least often made the most errors. The practical implications of the results were discussed.     

Corpus Analysis of the Various Errors Made by the Student

The software Wordsmith has been commonly used in corpus linguistics.In this paper,the author used the tool of Concord in Wordsmith to analyze various errors made by a student.Five passages made by the students are used.After annotating on the errors,the author uses Concord to sort out each error maker and made classification chart of the errors.All the errors are classified into two categories:errors caused by carelessness and by language ability.After analyzing,there are mainly three kinds of errors and in the first category and five kinds of errors in the second category.     

Comparison of reading comprehension levels of literate learners with different methods

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between two teaching methods used to teach reading and writing and reading comprehension skills and successes of fifth-grade students. The main difference between the two methods in our research; teaching of the first literacy in the sentence method, determined and sentences with various features, in the voice based sentence method, the sound of the letters in the alphabet is determined by the instruction of the determined group order. The mixed method research design is the process in which both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in collecting, analyzing and mixing the data in a study. The application of the study lasted for two years. The achievement test developed by the researcher was first applied to 1000 fifth-grade students who learned reading and writing by the sentence method, and, then, to 1000 fifth-grade students who learned reading and writing by the sound-based sentence method in the following year. The results showed that there was a significant difference between reading comprehension levels of the fifth-grade students who learned reading and writing by the sentence method versus by the sound-based sentence method. The difference was in favour of the students who learned reading and writing by the sentence method.     

"I was born full deaf." Written language outcomes after 1 year of strategic and interactive writing instruction

Nonstandard grammatical forms are often present in the writing of deaf students that are rarely, if ever, seen in the writing of hearing students. With the implementation of Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI) in previous studies, students have demonstrated significant gains in high-level writing skills (e.g., text structure) but have also made gains with English grammar skills. This 1-year study expands on prior research by longitudinally examining the written language growth (i.e., writing length, sentence complexity, sentence awareness, and function words) of 29 deaf middle-school students. A repeated-measures analysis of variance with a between-subjects variable for literacy achievement level was used to examine gains over time and the intervention's efficacy when used with students of various literacy levels. Students, whether high or low achieving, demonstrated statistically significant gains with writing length, sentence complexity, and sentence awareness. Subordinate clauses were found to be an area of difficulty, and follow up strategies are suggested. An analysis of function word data, specifically prepositions and articles, revealed different patterns of written language growth by language group (e.g., American Sign Language users, oral students, users of English-based sign).     

Not Mechanics but Meaning: Error in Tertiary Students' Writing

This paper draws upon an extended report to the now‐defunct Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission which analyses the errors found in over 300,000 words of writing in a British History course, produced by two groups of first year students in 1974 and 1984. There were no statistically significant differences between the two year groups. More interestingly and importantly, the results of the study indicate that the most statistically significant elements in error‐prone writing are those concerned not so much with the formal mechanics of writing but with the constitution of meaning. We interpret these results to suggest strongly that most of the problems of those writers who make many grammatical errors in their writing are problems which do not lend themselves to ‘purely’ grammatical solutions     

Reading during sentence composing and error correction: A multilevel analysis of the influences of task complexity

In this study we investigated the role of reading, how writers coordinate editing with other writing processes. In particular, the experiment examines how the cognitive demands of sentence composing and the type of error influence the reading and writing performance. We devised an experimental writing task in which participants corrected an embedded error (orthographic near-neighbors or far-neighbors) and completed a sentence (using 1 or 3 context words)—in either order. Data were collected by logging keystrokes and recording eye-movements. The results revealed that both error and sentence complexity influenced the approach to error-correcting. Participants generally completed the partial sentence first, and then corrected the error (approximately 90% of the items). Task complexity reinforced this tendency. Moreover, in most of these cases, the error was fixated at least once prior to sentence completion. This suggests that the error was detected (at least partially), but the correction response was inhibited. The differences in cognitive load also affect the reading activity during planning. This investigation illustrates how the interplay of two task factors, error and sentence complexity, appears to influence how writers coordinate error-correcting with sentence composing.