Abstract:Tense is a very important and unavoidable grammatical point in learning English. Without the tense knowledge, it would be unimaginable to learn English well. Correct use of tense in English writing is a basic criterion to judge the quality of English writing. However, in the teaching process, the author found tense misuse is very common in English writings made by vocational college students. Some relative researches and literatures were done in the past few years, but they mainly focused on the four-year or higher-level English majors and non-English majors. The researches taking vocational college students as subjects are relatively limited. Based on the situation mentioned above, the present thesis attempts to make an empirical study on tense errors committed by vocational college students.
Based on the theories of Error Analysis and Interlanguage, the author conducts a quantitative and qualitative study of tense errors committed by non-English majors at vocational college, taking Henan Mechanical and Electrical Engineering College as an example, in an attempt to find out the distributions and characteristics of these errors, and thereby to seek the possible types and causes of these errors and to provide pedagogical implications.
This thesis mainly addresses the following four questions:
1) What are the distributions and characteristics of tense errors made by non-English majors at vocational college?
2) What are the possible types of these tense errors?
3) What are the potential causes of these tense errors?
4) What are the possible pedagogical implications for the future vocational college English teaching?
To answer the four research questions, two experiments are made. The first one is writing task and another is grammaticality task.
For the first one, the author conducted the following stages: firstly, the author randomly chose two classes from Grade 08 at Henan Mechanical and Electrical Engineering College as subjects, in which the students’ number and their English level were similar as a whole. After the subjects had finished the writing task in allowed time, the author picked up 100 pieces of valid writings randomly. Then, the author encoded the 16 tenses by manual work and identified the tense errors shown up in the sample writings by hand. The data collected reveal: simple present, simple past and simple future are the most problematic tenses, which infers that the students are apt to make errors when dealing with these three tenses. The error rates in order are 51.24%, 31.34%, and 8.95%.
Grammaticality task was conducted as a complement to the first one. 32 uncompleted sentences containing 16 English tenses, were presented for the participants to make their choices to test their tense knowledge. Data collection was done by hand and 100 valid samples were chosen randomly. Data collected show that the compound tenses are prone to be used improperly. This reveals students’ ignorance of these tenses and rebeals that simple present (62.00%), simple past (50.50%) and simple future (50.00%) are still the problematic ones for the students, indicating the poor acquisition of tense knowledge.
The analyses of sample writings come to the findings that main error types in the subjects’ writings are
1) Omission
2) Additions
3) Misformation
4) Choice error in tense
With the help of the author’s colleagues, number of type errors were counted by manual work and the distributions and characteristics of tense errors were further offered. Types of tense errors were illustrated based on the errors committed by the students. For the third question, the author carried out analyses and discussions of the potential causes behinde errors in the subjects’ writings.The potential causes are
1) Interference of mother tongue
2) Overgeneralization
3) Incomplete application of rules
4) Ignorance of rues restriction
5) False concepts hypothesized
According to the findings above, some pedagogical implications for vocational-level English teaching are offered:
1) A systematic training and teaching of English tense
The teacher should attach importance to tense teaching and training, and when giving a lesson, the teacher is expected to explain the differences between some grammatical concepts and so on.
2) Developing students’ awareness of English way of thinking
The teacher creates an authentic environment, offers reading materials, and encourages students to keep writing and make oral practice on line to reach the goal.
The thesis is composed of five chapters. The opening chapter is the introduction part, generally presenting some background information about this study, and pointing out the significance of this study as well as a rough picture of this thesis. Chapter Two serves as literature review, including the related theories of the present thesis, the conceptual definitions of the key terms related with this study and the previous studies at home and abroad. Chapter Three is the research design. It describes the study undertaken in Henan Mechanical and Electrical Engineering College, including the participants, the research materials, data collection and the research procedures. Chapter Four is the core part, involved in the analyses and discussions of the distributions and characteristics of tense errors, main error types and potential causes. The last chapter firstly sums up the main findings, then offers pedagogical implications for vocational-level English teaching and points out some limitations of the present study.
KEY WORDS: error analysis, tense errors, vocational college students, interlanguage
摘要:时态在英语学习中是非常重要且是不能绕开的一个语法点。没有时态知识，学好英语将是不可想象的。能否正确运用时态是判断学生英语写作质量高低的一个基本的依据。然而，笔者在英语教学过程中发现在英语写作中高职高专学生的时态使用错误非常普遍。过去曾有人做过相关研究和探讨，但他们主要的研究对象是本科层次或更高层次的英语专业和非专业的学生。以高职高专学生为研究对象的研究相对较少。基于以上原因， 本论文试图以高职高专学生为研究对象对他们的时态使用错误情况进行实证性研究。
以错误分析和中介语为理论依据，以河南机电高等专科学校为例，笔者对高职高专非英语专业学生的时态错误情况进行了一项定量和定性研究，试图找出高职高专学生时态使用错误的分布频率特点，并分析这些时态错误的类型及其产生的原因，从而为将来的高职英语教学提供教学建议。
本论文将主要讨论如下四个问题：
（1）高职高专非英语专业学生时态使用错误的分布特点是什么？
（2）这些时态错误的类型有哪些?
（3）产生这些时态错误的原因可能是什么？
（4）本次研究结果对未来高职高专英语教学有哪些启示？
为找到以上问题的答案，笔者采用了实验的方法。实验内容分两个部分：英语写作和语法问卷。
在英语写作阶段，笔者进行了如下步骤：第一，从河南机电高等专科学校08级学生中随机选择出人数和英语水平相当的班级各一个作为实验对象，要求他们在规定时间内完成第一个受试内容，并从中任意选出有效写作材料一百份。然后，笔者将英语中的十六种时态进行附码，对实验样本中的时态错误进行手动标识。收集到的数据表明：在十六种时态中，一般现在时、一般过去时和一般将来时是发现问题最多的时态，说明这三种时态是高职学生最容易出错的时态，它们的错误率依次为51.24%、31.34%、8.95%。
语法问卷是对写作部分的补充，设计了32道选择题，涵盖了英语中的十六种时态，每一种时态将在两个句子中体现出来。这一部分要求受试者对这32个不完整句子进行选择填空。本次实验数据的收集依然采用人工形式，收集有效样本100份。统计数据表明学生复合时态的错误数明显高于简单形式的时态错误数,暴露出高职学生的时态知识掌握不全面；一般现在时（62.00%）、一般将来时(50.50%)和一般过去时(50.00%)依然是高职学生最容易出错的时态,说明高职学生对时态的基本知识掌握程度较低。
对学生写作样本中句子的分析发现学生英语写作中的时态错误类型主要有四类：
（1）缺失错误
（2）添加错误
（3）形式错误
（4）时态选择错误
按照以上四个错误分类，笔者在同事的帮助下，手动统计出各个错误类型所占的比重，进一步描述了时态错误的分布特点。依据学生写作样本，笔者对四种错误类型进行了举例分析。针对第三个问题，笔者通过学生写作中的错误样本，详细讨论和分析了产生这些错误的潜在的原因，这些原因包括：
（1）母语迁移
（2）泛化
(3) 规则应用不完整
（4）无视规则限制
（5）错误假设概念
根据以上结果，笔者对高职英语教学提出了一些建议：
（1）适当增加时态知识的讲授和训练：课堂上老师要重视语法，对容易混淆的语法概念要进行区分，帮助学生更好地理解时态领域的某些概念，如主谓一致原则等；
（2）注重培养学生的英语思维模式：通过老师课堂创造真实语境，提供大量阅读材料， 鼓励学生多写作，开展口语交流活动等形式培养学生的英语思维模式。
本文共分五章。第一章为引言部分，介绍了本研究的研究背景、意义和论文结构。第二章为文献综述部分，包括了与本论文相关的理论介绍、术语的含义及国内外的相关研究等内容。第三章是研究方法部分，介绍了本论文的研究设计，包括研究对象、数据采集和研究步骤。第四章为论文核心部分，主要讨论和分析了时态错误的分布特点、错误类型和产生错误的原因。最后一章为本研究的总结，总结了本研究的主要发现，阐述了本研究结果对未来高职高专英语教学的启示。同时，指出了本研究存在的不足以及对未来研究的建议。
关键词：错误分析，时态错误，高职学生，中介语
