ERROR ANALYSIS (EA) Summary

Amalia Asokawati

BIG A/6

1. The Study of Learner Language

A learner language is what learners say or write when they are trying to communicate
spontaneously in a language they are learning. Interlanguage (IL) is the system that underlies
learner language grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The language being learned is
sometimes called the target language (TL)

Learner language can be described in terms of 3 dimensions: accuracy, complexity, and

fluency. Learner language is accurate when it conforms to target language norms; it is complex
when it contains a range of vocabulary and grammatical structures; it is fluent when it is
produced quickly and with few pauses. 

Communicative competence, or the knowledge of a language, has four components:

 grammatical competence: sentence-level grammar -- accuracy & complexity

 discourse competence: patterns of paragraph and text structure -- cohesion and coherence
 sociolinguistic competence: politeness, pragmatics, and social register -- appropriateness
 strategic competence: ability to get a message across -- effectiveness

2. Contrastive analysis hypothesis

Contrastive analysis hypothesis is an area of comparative linguistics which is

concerned with the comparison of two or more languages to determine the differences or
similarities between them, either for theoretical purposes or purposes external to the analysis
itself.

According to Lado (1995), one of the strongest claims of CAH is that a systematic
comparison of the language and the culture to be learned with the native language and culture of
the student it was possible to predict and describe the patterns that would cause difficulty in
learning, and those that would not, and also claimed that the key to ease or difficulty in foreign
language learning lie in the comparison between native and foreign language. So, those elements
that were similar to the learner’s native language would be simple for him and those elements
that were different would be difficult

Error analysis
Contrastive analysis Error analysis
Pedagogical orientation Scientific orientation
Focus on input Practice inductive learning Focus on linguistic and cognitive learning
Error of Transfer Multiple Types of Error

3. The Significance of Learners’ Errors

 Identifation of Errors

Identifying an error goes beyond explaining what an error is. However, as linguists pay
attention to the distinction between an error and a mistake, it is necessary to go over the
definition of the two different phenomena.

To distinguish between an error and mistake, Ellis (1997) suggests two ways. The
first one is to check the consistency of learner’s performance. If he sometimes uses the correct
form and sometimes the wrong one, it is a mistake. However, if he always uses it incorrectly, it is
then an error. The second way is to ask learner to try to correct his own deviant utterance.
Where he is unable to, the deviations are errors; where he is successful, they are mistakes.

 Description of Errors

A number of different categories for describing errors have been identified. Firstly,
Corder (1973) classifies the errors in terms of the difference between the learners’
utterance and the reconstructed version. In this way, errors fall into four categories:
omission of some required element; addition of some unnecessary or incorrect element; selection
of an incorrect element; and misordering of the elements. Nevertheless, Corder himself
adds that this classification is not enough to describe errors. That is why he includes the
linguistics level of the errors under the sub-areas of morphology, syntax, and lexicon
(Corder, 1973).

o Sources of Errors
o Interlingual Transfer
Interlingual transfer is a significant source for language learners. Dictionary of Language
Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1992) defines interlingual errors as being the result of
language transfer, which is caused by the learner’s first language.
o Intralingual Transfer
Intralingual Transfer errors result from faulty or partial learning of the target language
rather than language transfer. They may be caused by the influence of one target language
item upon another. For example, learners attempt to use two tense markers at the same time
in one sentence since they have not mastered the language yet

4. Idiosyncratic dialects and Error Analysis, Identifying and describing Errors,

Source, Categories and Level

An idiolect is a personal dialect but which linguistically has the characteristic that all rules
required to account for it are found somewhere in the set of rules of one or another social dialect.
Also, it can be said to be some sort of a mixture of dialects.

The language of a second language learner is not only type of idiosyncratic dialect. In
‘error analysis’ there are four classes of idiosyncratic dialect, they are the language of poems, an
aphasic, infant learning his mother tongue and the learners of a second language.

Sources of Error

o Overgeneralization

This process refers to extending the use of a form to an inappropriate context by analogy.
This is a normal and natural process and both learners of English as a second language as well as
children learning it as a first language often extend the use of grammatical rules to contexts
where they do not occur, as in I breaked the vase. A common form of overgeneralization is seen
when learners attempt to make irregular verbs fit regular patterns, as with break above and also
with cases such as seened (for saw), ated (for ate) , and wented (for went).

o Simplification

This occurs when learners reduce a complex aspect of grammar to a much simpler set of
rules and reflects a process that is used when messages need to be conveyed with limited
language resources. For example instead of making the distinction between “he” and “she” the
learner may use the masculine pronoun, or instead of distinguishing between first and third
person in verbs (I like, She likes) the learner may use the first person rule for all persons (I like,
He/ She like). Ortega notes that it is common in the early stages of language learning and
particularly in naturalistic learning situations. Simplification of aspects of grammar such as
questions tags occurs in some varieties of English.

o Underuse

Sometimes learners may underuse a form they have studied and practiced many times. For
example the learner may avoid using some constructions with if- (If I had known I would have
told her about it) and use instead I didn’t know so I didn’t tell her, because it appears to them as
more direct and easy to understand.

o Fossilization

Sometimes a learner’s grammatical development appears to have stopped at a certain level

and recurring errors of both grammar and pronunciation have become permanent features of a
learner’s speech. This is referred to as fossilization. Fossilization refers to the persistence of
errors in a learner’s speech despite progress in other areas of language development. For
example here are a few examples of fossilized errors in an adult fluent speaker of English who
uses English regularly and effectively, though often with a high frequency of what we might
regard as basic grammatical and other errors.

The Level of Error

1) Pre-systematic error
2) Systematic Error
3) Post Systematic Error

5. Types of Error

Among the most frequent sources of errors grown counts

1. interlingual transfer,

Mother-tongue influence, causes interlingual errors.They are very frequent at the

initial stages of L2 Learning since the Ll is the only language system the learner knows
and can draw on and therefore negative transfer takes place .Brown also argues that when
one is learning L3, L4 etc., transfer takes place from all the previously learnt languages
but the degree of transfer is variable

2. intralingual transfer,

Errors that result from L2 itself. James (1980: 185-187) goes into more details. He
refers to intralingual errors as learning-strategy based errors and lists 7 types of them:
False analogy, misanalysis, incomplete rule application, exploiting reciunciancy,over-
laboration,hypercorrection and overgeneralization

3. context of learning

It refers to the setting where a language is learnt, e.g. a classroom or a social

situation, and also to the teacher and materials used in the lessons. As Brown explains,
"students often make errors because a misleading explanation from the teacher, faulty
presentation of a structure or word in a textbook, or even because of a patent that was
rotely memorized in a drill but not properly contextualized"

4. various communication strategies the learners use

Communication strategies are consciously used by the learners to get a message

across to the hearer. They can involve both verbal and non-verbal communication
mechanisms (Brown 1980: 178).
6. non-Contrasitive Approach to Error Analysis

Distinguishing interlanguage, intralingual and developmental errors

INTERLANGUAGE errors; that is, errors caused by the interference of the

learner's mother tongue. A different class of errors are represented by sentences such as did he
comed, what you are doing, he coming from Israel, make him to do it, I can to speak French.
Errors of this nature are frequent regardless of the learner's language background. They may be
called INTRALINGUAL and DEVELOPMENTAL errors.

Rather than reflecting-the learner's inability to separate two languages, intralingual and
developmental errors reflect the learner's competence at a particular stage, and illustrate some of
the general characteristics of language acquisition. Their origins are found within the structure of
English itself, and through reference to the strategy by which a second language is acquired and
taught. Before we can analyze intralingual and developmental errors, we need to be able to
distinguish them from interlanguage errors in a sample of second-language speech. Initially,
contrastive analysis or a knowledge of the learner's mother tongue, allows for identification of
instances where the characteristics of one language are being carried over into another. We then
locate errors which are common to learners who have quite different mother tongues. They may
also occur with children acquiring English as a mother tongue and with deaf children learning
written English.
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