Error Analysis and Pedagogical Implications: A Case Study of Two English-Speaking Learners of Advanced Chinese

Ching-Hsuan Wu吳青璇

University of Pennsylvania Chinese teacher

论文摘要Paper Abstract："Error Analysis and Pedagogical Implications: Abstract Most of the current studies in Chinese as a second language error analysis are centered on the beginning and intermediate levels of proficiency, and not much empirical research about advanced levels has been made available. This gap in research is probably in part due to the paucity of advanced learners within an undergraduate education.

The researcher works at a Chinese Flagship program, in which most of thestudents reach the Advanced Low/Mid level on the ACTFL scale at the end of their first content-based Chinese class. Such teaching context has offered the researcher access to cohorts of advanced learners and allowed her to conduct the present study to share the observations and results on the teaching and learning at advanced levels.

This study was motivated by both 1）an interesting observation of a range of errors produced by groups of American college learners of Chinese, who were assessed as Advanced on the ACTFL scale, and 2）an educational need to help advanced learners progress to the Superior level. The purposes of this study are to identify and explain a collection of errors featured by Advanced learners of Chinese, add to teachers and researchers’ knowledge of leaners’ language, and help determine areas that require reinforcement in teaching and learning. In the present study, for example, 发达 and 出生 were observed being incorrectly used by both of the participants. The mistakes are as follows: 设计一个可以让他们思想发达的考试; 那个冬天出生了孩子；这样的环境说明了这是一个还没有得到发达的地方；她出生了第一个女儿之後就被流放了。In light of the commonly shared errors, the researcher interviewed the participants seeking for information regarding how the participants independently came to the similar linguistic decisions about the use of 发达 and 出生. Their answers helped the researcher develop an understanding of ways the participants processed new vocabulary words and further contributed to modifications to the teaching approaches that the researcher has adopted when introducing new phrases at the advanced levels. For instance, the information regarding the parts of speech of 发达 and few examples of its applications in the assigned readings can be a good starting point with practices and analyses ofcollocations of 发达 following.One of the pedagogical solutions to improve accuracy in learners’ language skills is to investigate the source of their errors and subsequently tailor the instruction to help the learners. Following the step of Error Analysis proposed by Ellis (1994), the researcher collected speech samples from two Advanced learners of Chinese during five one-hour Individualized Instructional sessions, where five types of oral tasks were implemented and recorded. Then, the researcher coded, identified, classified, described, and compared the errors of the two learners. Subsequently, the errors were analyzed and explained both interlingually and intralingually based on theories, study results, and learners’ comments on their own utterances. Finally, based on these actual committed errors in comparison to potential ones predicted by Contrastive Analysis, the researcher reports possible causes and consequences of unsuccessful language to teachers of Advanced learners of Chinese.

The researcher further proposes pedagogical approaches to improve the learning results to curriculum developers and learning strategies to learners. Using a PowerPoint presentation, the researcher will start with a literature review and research methods. The video clips of the samples of errors in each category and the analyses of them will be illustrated. Following the discussion of educational implications based on the findings, the audience will be invited for a Q&A session."

发言人简介Presenter's Bio："Dr. Ching-Hsuan Wu is the Academic Director for the Chinese Flagship Program in the Honors College at Western Kentucky University. Dr. Wu holds a Ph.D. in Second and Foreign Language Education with specializations in Teacher Education and Quantitative Research Methods from The Ohio State University. Prior to coming to WKU, Dr. Wu was Assistant Professor of Modern Foreign Languages at Ohio Wesleyan University, and she also taught at Bentley University, National Taiwan Normal University, and The Ohio State University. Dr. Wu has extensive experience in teaching Chinese at all levels, implementing Chinese programs, designing curriculum, and training teachers of foreign languages. Her research interests include Teacher Education, Second Language Acquisition in advanced learners, and East Asian languages pedagogy."