Rodd Ellis, 2003
Chapter 2
Page 15-30
By
Anisa Devi Prabajati 2201410116
Errors
and error analysis
Developmental
Variability
summary
patterns
in learner language
 The
main way of investigating L2
acquisition is bay collecting and
describing samples of learner
language.
 The description may focus on the
errors that the learners make, or on
the developmental patterns and
errors that made by the learners and
how the developmental patters and
the errors change through time.
 Here we are going to learn all about
the nature of the leaner language.
 The
focus is on what learners get wrong.
 Reasons why it focuses on the errors:
- the are conspicuous feature of learner
language, raising the important
questions of “why the learners make
errors?”.
- it is useful for teachers to know why
learners make errors.
- it is possible that making errors may
actually help learners to learn when they
self-correct the errors they make.
 It
is the first step to take to analysis
errors made by learners.
 Example:
 Jean is an adult French learner, he writes
a paragraph of story , in the paragraph we
can easily find and identify the errors he
makes.
* A man and a little boy was watching him.
- was is supposed to were.
*… went in the traffic.
- in is supposed to be into
 We
can distinguish errors and mistakes
made by learners by checking the
consistency of learners performance.
 The consistency of using present participial
whenever it is supposed to be in past
participial ; learner keeps doing that then it
indicates the lack of the knowledge.
 But whenever learner can do self-correct
activity in producing the words then it
means that he posses the knowledge the
correct form but just slipping up the
mistake.
 When
all the errors are identified, they can
be described and classified into types.
classifications
Grammatical
categories
misordering
misinformation
 The
goal is to explain why they occur.
 Errors
are, to a large extent,
systematic, and to certain extent,
predictable.
 Errors are not systematic, many of
them are also universal. In fact, many
of Jean’s speech has been attested in
the speech of many learners. If not all
learners go through a stage of learning
where they substitute the simple form
of the verb for the past tense form.
 Not
all errors are universal, some
errors are common only to learners
who share the same mother tongue
or whose mother tongues manifest
the same linguist property.
 Some errors seem to be universal,
reflecting learners’ attempt to make
the task of learning and using L2
simpler.
Global errors
Local errors
Affect only a single
constituent in the
sentence
Violate the overall structure of a sentence
and for this reason may make it difficult
process, Jean , for example says: The
policeman was in the corner whistle….
Which is difficult to understand because
the basic structure of the sentence is wrong
 The
early stages of acquisition
- SILENT PERIOD : children make no attempt to
say anything to begin with.
- (the learners begin to speak in the L2 speech
is likely to manifest two particular
characteristics)
- Acquisition order
• Do
learners acquire the grammatical
structure of an L2 in a definite order?
• Sequence of acquisition
• Do learners learn such structure in a single
step or do they proceed through a number of
interim stages before they master the target
structure?
 Example:
investigating a number of
grammatical structures to study; i.e.
progressive –ing ,and plural-s . Then
they collect samples of learner
language
and
identify
how
accurately each feature is used by
different learners. This enables
them arrive at an accuracy order.
 There
must be seen a process
involving transitional constructions.
 The next sequence is U-shaped
course of development. That is
initially learner may display a high
level of accuracy only to apparently
regress later before finally once
again performing in accordance with
target language norms.
 Learner
language is systematic, that is, at a
particular stage of development, learners
consistently use the same grammatical form
although this is often different from that
employed by native speakers.
Linguistic context
Situational
context
Linguistic
context
The crucial element in
the linguistic context
involves
some
other
constituent
of
the
utterance.
Example:
George playing football –
George played football
all the time.
In sentences referring
past tense which do not
have
an
adverb
of
frequency, the learners
are more likely to use
progressive marker.
Situational
context
Learners vary their use of
language similarly. They
are more likely to use the
correct
target-language
forms in formal contexts
and non-target forms in
informal contexts. another
important that accounts
for the systematic nature
of
variability
is
the
psycholinguistic context.
Whether
learners have
the opportunity to plan
their production.