【正文】        Abstract:This paper is a study of the students’ errors in their compositions in junior Grade one. Short though it is, the composition may show us what difficulties the students have when they output the language in written form in this stage, and what learning strategies they are employing when they have trouble acquiring the target language. What the study attempts to do is to discover some common characteristics in the students’ compositions and tries to enrich our understanding of error analysis.
        Key words: compositions; error analysis; inter-lingual errors; intra-lingual errors
       Ⅰ.Introduction
　　There are four skills in language learning: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among these four skills, writing is usually considered to be the last acquired skill because it is the most difficult. It is important for students to develop their ability to write in English. English composition is one of the ways to show students’ comprehensive competence to use English. Analyzing a student’s English composition can assess vocabulary, grammar as well as sentence structure. Although writing is an output activity, it can reflect how well the language skills have been input. In this sense, writing is considered to be one of the most effective means to reflect the learner’s input of language skills.
        II.Literature review
        1.  The significance of error analysis
        Error analysis, as the term suggests, is study and analysis of errors and is confined to the language learner. However, here “errors” refers generally to the learner’s misuse or misunderstanding of the target language, may it be grammatical or pragmatic(Hu Zhuanglin，2001) . Error analysis become the acceptable alternative to contrastive analysis by the late 1960s and got rapid development in the 1970s. Whereas contrastive analysis looked at only the learner’s native language and target language, errors analysis provided a methodology for investigating learner language. Various studies of errors have, to a certain extent, penetrated into the negative aspects of features in the process of second language learning and thus providing empirical evidence for the improvement of both learning strategies and techniques in second language teaching. Corder points out that a learner’s errors provide evidence of the system of the language that he is using at a particular point in the course. It can be further explained in three different aspects: First, the errors can tell the teacher how much progress the learner has to make in order to reach the goal.  It can also tell the teacher what remains for the learner to learn.  Second, they provide evidence for the researcher.  The researcher will know how language is learnt and what strategies or procedures the learner is using in his language learning. Third, they are indispensable to the learner himself, because the making of errors can be regarded as a device the learner uses in order to learn. It is a way the learner has of testing his hypothesis about the nature of the language he is learning. The making of errors then is a strategy employed both by children acquiring their mother tongue and adults learning a second language.
        2.  The theory of error analysis
        2-1 Definition of errors
　　What is an error? Error is the grammatically incorrect form; Mistake appears when the language is correct grammatically but improper in a communicational context. While errors always go with language learners, mistakes may also occur to native speakers（Hu Zhuanglin, 2001）.
　　It is necessary for us to know the difference between errors and mistakes. Corder claims that errors reveal the learner’s incomplete knowledge of the language, or as we may call it, the learner’s transitional competence while mistakes are the product of the chance circumstances such as memory lapses, lack of attention, tiredness, carelessness, etc. If the learners always use a wrong form this indicates a lack of knowledge- an error. However, if the learners sometime use a wrong form and sometimes a correct one, this would suggest that they possess knowledge of the correct form and are just slipping up- a mistake. Mistakes are the errors of performance. Errors are systematic in nature while mistakes are unsystematic. This also provides a reason why some linguists say the making of errors in a necessary part of learning while mistakes are of no significance to the learning process.
        2-2 Error sources
　　Researchers have been attempting to investigate the sources of learner errors and have come to various conclusions. There are four major categories of errors (James, 2001): Inter-lingual errors, intra-lingual errors, communication strategy-based errors, induced errors. The major sources of errors in the study are inter-lingual errors and intra-lingual errors. Inter-lingual errors result from language transfer, that is, is caused by the learner’s native language. For example, the incorrect English I and my friends saw a film, produced according to the word order of Chinese; instead of the correct English sentence my friends and I saw a film. Intra-lingual errors result from faulty or partial learning of the target language, rather than from language transfer. Intra-lingual errors may be caused by the influence of one target item upon another. For example, a learner may produce He is comes, based on a blend of the English structures He is coming and He comes. If inter-lingual errors may indicate the learners’ inability to get rid of the negative influence of L1 at certain stages, intra-lingual errors could reflect the general characteristics of learners’ competence at given period of L2 learning.
        2-3 Methodology of error analysis
　　Corder (1974) also identified five stages for error analysis as follows: (1) Collection of a sample of learner language. The samples of learner’s language can be collected vertically or horizontally, and can be either speaking or writing data. In addition, natural samples are generally preferred compared with elicited data. The samples of the present study were collected naturally and sectionally from senior middle school students. (2) Identification of errors. Identification of errors shall be carried out according to standard written dialect and communication. Sentences are examined to see whether they are grammatically well formed and whether they are appropriate in situational context. It is of no easy job to identify errors in practice because some sentences are grammatically correct but inappropriate in the context. Coder offered two ways to identify errors: Respectively authoritative interpretation and plausible interpretation. The former detects errors by asking the learner (if available) to say what the utterance means and, by so doing, to make an ‘authoritative reconstruction’. If the learner is not available for consuctation, the latter has to be applied to give an interpretation of his utterance on the basis of its form and its linguistic and situational context. This thesis we use plausible interpretation. (3) Description of errors. As Hu Zhuanglin stated, in the stage of description of errors , if the erroneous sentence is intelligible, we compare it with the correct sentence produced by a native speaker and list the errors and mistakes. If the meaning of the sentence is not clear, we may refer to the learner’s native language to find out what he means and carry out a contrastive analysis. Taking into consideration the use of language in social contexts, we can describe mistakes as well as errors. (4) Explanation of errors. This stage is concerned with establishing the source of the errors. For example: accounting for why an error was made. There are four major categories of errors (James, 2001). Inter-lingual errors, intra-lingual errors, communication strategy-based errors, induced errors. (5) Evaluation of errors. Evaluation is defined as the process whose duty is the systematic and objective determination of merit, worth or value. Passing judgment on error is not a matter of devaluation of learners and their language, but rather one of assigning relative values to errors. Some implication will be put forward.
        3. The theory of language transfer.
        3-1 Definition
　　Language transfer, also called cross-linguistic influence, is one of the key factors contributing to learner’s inter-language. In the 1950s, transfer is understood within the behaviorist framework and to happen between two languages, that is, transfer happens between L1 and L2.  In Lado’s view, transfer is associated with habits.  He adopts the term ‘transferred habits’ (1957) and suggests that linguistic difference indicates linguistic difficulty and negative transfer.  Under such concept of transfer, transfer is often referred to as (L1) interference.
　　Odlin (1989), another dominant figure who has achieved remarkably in the study of transfer, furthers the concept of transfer by suggesting that transfer is not a falling back on mother tongue and there is likely to be a third language influencing second language learning. Chen Daliang(2006) quotes a working definition of transfer by Odlin : “Transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously (and perhaps) imperfectly acquired .
　　This working definition provides an adequate basis for the material to be discussed in this thesis.
        3-2 Classification of language transfer
　　There have been different classifications of transfer from different perspectives. From the perspective of the effect transfer has on second language acquisition, transfer is divided into positive transfer and negative transfer. In the view of Lado and his followers, language learners attempt to transfer the features of their mother tongue to the second language. When the structures of the two languages are similar, we can get positive transfer. When the two languages are different in structures, negative transfer occurs and results in errors (Hu Zhuanglin, 2001).
        Ⅲ. Analysis of the articles
        1-1 Errors in Article:
　　Article is a word used with a noun to show whether the noun refers to a particular example of something (the definite article-“the” in English) or to a general or not already mentioned example of something (the indefinite article-“a” or “an” in English). In English “a” is used before a word beginning with a consonant sound; “an” before a word beginning with a vowel sound. “a” and “an” are used only before singular countable nouns. “The” can be used before singular or plural nouns whether countable or uncountable (Zhang Zhenbang, 1999). According to the investigation made in this thesis, there are totally 35 article errors in the data. These errors can be divided into 3 types.
        (1) Spring Festival is during the winter holiday. 
        The Spring Festival is during the winter holiday.
       ( 2) I bought suit for my mother. 
        I bought a suit for my mother.
        (3) I took a course in EF school to practice English speaking. 
        I took a course in an EF school to practice English speaking.
        In sentence (1),we never say “这个春节”, “那个春节”in Chinese. We usually say “春节”, while in English “the” is used before the names of seasons and festivals. In sentence (2),the author wants to express the Chinese meaning “我给妈妈买了衣服”,but in English, this sentence must be “I bought a suit for my mother. In sentence(3), we never say “一个EF学校”,we usually say EF 学校.That’s why the student omits “an” here. These errors are caused by the negative influence of our mother tongue.
        1-2 Errors in tense
　　The verb is the backbone of the sentence.  It is the word that tells what action is taking place or what condition exists.  The verb puts life into the sentence; without it there is no sentence – just a group of words lined up with nothing to do, with not place to go. Inflection of verbs plays an important role in English sentence because the subject-verb concord is the essential structure in English sentences. In Chinese, the verb form does not change. Chinese has no markers for tense. The language does not use verb affixes to signal the relationship between the time of the occurrence and of the situation. Chinese verbs cannot signify the time while English ones can (Ren Xueliang, 1981). the Chinese language can express the time without grammatical forms of the time, whereas tense is an  indispensable grammatical category in English to indicate the time. In Chinese, we usually use “着”, “了”, or “过” to reflect tense, and sometimes we use “昨天”,  “今天”, or “明天” to reflect tense.  The form of the verbs never changes. For example:
        (10) We couldn’t usually go out, because the weather is very cold (was)
        (11) I relaxed and have new power on my body. (Had)
        In sentence (10), when the author wrote this sentence, he described the weather in the past. “is” should change the form.. Because in Chinese verbs always stay the same. In sentence (11) the author use past tense at the beginning of the sentence, he forget to change the form of “have”.
        1-3 Errors in prepositions
　　Prepositions are words used with noun (or noun equivalents) to show the relation in which these nouns stand to some other word in the sentence(Eckersley, C.E.＆ Eckersley, J.M, 1960) As English is an analytic language, prepositions play a large part in its structure and are the cause of many difficulties to us. There are 49 preposition errors in the data; these errors can be divided into 2 types:
        A. Preposition omitted
        (12) I played fireworks during the winter vocation.  (played with)
        (13) I got rid of the bad habit of getting late.     (get up)
        In sentence (12), the author thinks we can say “ play basketball” “plays football”. As to firework, he thinks we can say play firework. It’s wrong; we should say play with fireworks. In sentence (13), “get” cannot make sense. ‘Get up’ is a fixed phrase.
        B. Wrong preposition
        (14). I saw that the smile in my mother’s face.    (on)
       (15). I had a good time in the winter holiday.    (during)
        In sentence (14), this is a fixed usage “on one’s face”. In sentence (15), ‘In” indicates a period of time. “During” indicates duration of time. Here, we should use during. 
        Finally, the limitation of the study should be pointed out. The samples only show a partial picture of all the errors students make in their compositions. In addition, the author’s limited ability. Therefore, more work should be done in the future to solve these problems.
        References:
        Eckersley, C.E.＆ Eckersley, J.M. 1960. A comprehensive english grammar for foreign students [M]. Great Britain: Longmans.
        James, carl. 2001. Errors in language learning and Use: Exploring Error Analysis[M]. Beijing: Foreign language Teaching and Research Press.
         陈大亮，2006，基础阶段英语写作常见错误分析及对教学的建议[J]，天津外国语学院学报第一期
        丁往道，1998，《英语写作基础教程》[M]，北京：高等教育出版社。
        胡壮麟，2001，《语言学教程》[M]，北京：北京大学出版社。
        卢建梅，2005，从一次作文分析看大学生英语写作中的错误[J]，宜宾学院学报第8期。
        任学良，1981，《英汉语法比较》[M]，北京：社会科学出版社。
        张彩霞，2002，大学生英语作文中常见语法错误评述[J]，西安外国语学院学报第2期。[9] 章振邦，1999，《新编英语语法教程》[M]，上海：上海外语教育出版社。