Hence, on the basis of related theory, by means of two compositions which students wrote in different back and forth units, the thesis tries to get a relatively clear, comprehensive and scientific description of the errors in eighth-grade students’ English writing compositions, compare and analyze the errors, intending to classify them into different groups and put forward some suggestions to teaching of English writing.

1.2.2 Significance of the Study

Regarding to the significance of the study, there are several dimensions. First, writing is not only one of the basic language skills in the process of learning a second language, but also completely embodies learners’ ability of using English. Examining their writing errors is to examine their ways of thinking, language acquisition process. What’s more, the researches about error analysis in writing mainly focus more on the college students, with less resources of junior students. Thus, from this perspective, the thesis hopes to give a positive trial on the study of Error Analysis of the eighth grade students’ English writing. Thirdly, most of the researches of EA theories application thesis concentrate on interview and writing corpus form, lack natural observation description, so the thesis also pay attention to the students’ cognition process by further analyzing their mastery degree of language points.

In consequence, with the theory of error analysis, interlanguage and contrastive analysis, the thesis expects to have a favorable attempt on the research of EA in eighth grade students’ English writing, hoping to find the possible causes, and provide the practical solutions, the effective ways to improve the situations of teachers’ teaching in English writing and students’ writing ability. In a word, the study of error analysis on junior students’ English writing is highly necessary and significant.

 2. Literature Review

It is of great significance to analyze the errors of language learners’ for the following reasons. First, there are obvious characteristics in foreign language learners’ language, such as English. To analyze the errors in their language can explain the reasons why they make those errors. Second, for language instructors, understanding learners’ errors improves the way of teaching. Third, by correcting errors by themselves, language learners are able to learn the language better (Ellis, 2000).源^自·吹冰|文\论]文'网[www.chuibin.com

2.1 The Study of Error Analysis Abroad

In general, overseas have much deeper researches in error analysis. Error analysis started from the sixties and seventies. It places the language learners in the center and immediately attracts great attention in the theoretical field and educational field. Influenced by structural linguistics and behavioral psychology, Contrastive Analysis focuses on learners’ external environment, instead of on the learners themselves, which is made up by Error Analysis. 

The climax stage of error analysis theories dated back to the seventies in the last century, many linguistics continuously researched in error analysis. Corder (1967) systematically demonstrated his understanding of error analysis, who is the pioneer of this field. From the perspective of mental interference, the causes of errors can be pided into two categories:  (1) Interlingual errors，which are caused by the interference of learners’ native language; (2) Intralingual errors, which are caused by the misunderstanding of the target language. Linguists Dulay and Burt (1973) also studied on the Second Language Acquisition, and their research subjects are adults, they classified language errors into three types: inter-lingual errors, intra-lingual errors and specific errors. 

With the widely implication of error analysis theory, more and more researchers and scholars began to realize that the second language acquisition is similar to mother tongue, which is a creative construction process. In 1980s, errors were systematically classified. Dulay, Burr & Krashen (1982) pointed out that errors were inevitable during the language acquisition process. Therefore, less second language acquisition of sentence structures assisted the second language learners to learn more effectively. Bowerman’s research (1998) on children’s errors in second language acquisition was persuasive. His research participants were his two daughters and their mother tongue was English. Thus, it was easy and convenient for him to record daily language errors.