Chapter 2
Rod Ellis, 2003
Page 15-30
By:
Fresi yuliana rahma yusita
THE NATURE OF LEARNER LANGUAGE
Errors and erros analysis
 Developmental pattern
 Variability in learning language

ERRORS ERROR ANALYSIS
Identifying errors
 Describing errors
 Explaining errors
 Error evaluation

IDENTIFYING ERRORS
The first step in analysing learner errors is to identify
them. This is in fact easier said than done. To identify errors we
have to compare the sentence learners produce with what seem to
be the normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language which
corespond with them. Sometimes this is fairly straightforwad.
To distinguish errors and mistakes, one way might be to
check the consistency of learners’ perfomance. Another way
might be to ask learners to try to correct their our deviant
utterances. Where they are unable to, the deviations are errors;
where they are successful, they are mistakes.
DESCRIBING ERRORS
Once all the errors have been identified,
they can be decscribed and clasified into types.
There are several ways of doing this. One way is
to classify errors into grammatical categories. We
could gather all the errors relating to verb and then
identify the different kinds of verb errors in our
sample.
EXPLAINING ERRORS
The identification and description of errors are preliminaries
to the much more interesting task to of trying to explain why they
occur. Errors are, to a large extent, systematic and to certain extent,
predictable.
Erros are not only systematic; many of them are also
universal. Of courese, not all errors are universal. Some aerrors are
common only to learners who share the same mother tongue or
whose mother tongue manifest the same linguistic property. Errors,
then, can have different sources. Some errors seem to be universal,
reflecting learners’ attempts to make the task of learning and using
the L2 simpler. Learners commite errors of omission. The use of
‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’ is an example of an overgeneralization. Both
errors of omission and overgeneralization are common in the
speech of all L2 learners, irrespective their L1.
Where the purpose of the error analysis is
to help learners learn an L2, there is a need to
evaluate errors. Some errors can be considered
more serious than others because they are more
likely to infere with the intelligibility of what
someone says. Some erros, known as global erros,
violate the overall structure of sentence and for
this reason may make it difficult to process.
 The
early stages of L2 acquisition
 The order of acquisition
 Sequence of acquisition
 Some implications
In such circumstance, some L2 learners,
particulary if they are children, undergo a silent
period. When the learners do begin to speak in
the L2 their speech is likely to manifest two
particular characteristics. One is the kind of for
mulaic chunks which we saw in the case studies.
The second characteristics of early L2 speech is
propotional simplification. Learners find it
difficult to speak in full sentences so they
frequently leave words out.
To investigate the order of acquisition,
researchers choose a number of grammatical
structures to study. They then collect samples
of learner language and identify how
accurately each feature is used by different
learners. This enable them to arrive at an
accuracy order. That is, they rank the features
accordin to how accurately each feature is
used bby the learners.
When learners acquire a
grammatical structure they do so
gradually, moving through a series of
stages en route to acquiring the native
speaker rule. The acquisition of a
particular grammatical structure,
therefore, must be seen as a process
involving transtional construction.
The discovery of common
patterns in the way in which learner
language changes over time is one
of the most important findings of
SLA. The work on developmental
pattern is important for another
reason. It suggests that some
linguistic features are inherently
easier to learn than others.
We have seen that learner language is systematic. That
is, at a particular stage of development, learners consistently use
the same grammatical form, althiugh this is often different from
that employed by native speakers. We have also seen that
learner language is variable. At any given stage of development,
learners sometimes employ one form and sometimes another.
Learners also vary the linguistic forms they use in
accordence with the situational context. In this respect, learners
are no different from native speakers. when native speaker of
English are taking to friens, for example, they tend to speak
informally, using colloquialexpression.
The importance factor that accounts for the systematic
nature of variability is the psycholinguistic context, whether
learners have the opportunity to plan their product.
VARIABILITY IN LEARNER
LANGUAGE
Variablity in learner language, then, is clearly not
just random. Learners have access to two or more
linguistic forms for realizing a single grammatical
structure but they do not employe this arbitrary. Rather
their choice is determined by a variety of factors such as
linguistic context, the situational context and the
avaibility of planning time.
It is important to recognize that this general
sequence of acquisition applies to spesefic grammatical
features. Thus, it is possible for indivisual learners to be
at different stages in the sequence for different
grammatical features.