Error Analysis
What is an error within the context of speaking a foreign language?
- An error is a form in a learner language that is inaccurate, meaning it is different from
the forms used by competent speakers of the target language.
What is error analysis?
- Error analysis isa method used to document the errors that appear in a learner
language, determine whether those errors are systematic, and (if possible) explain
what caused them. Native speakers of the target language (LT) who listen to the
learner language probably find learners’ errors very noticeable, although, as well shall
see, accuracy is just one feature of learner language.
- While native speakers make unsystematic ‘performance’ errors (e.g., slips-of-the-tongue)
from time to time, second language learners make more errors, and often ones that no
native speaker ever makes. An error analysis should focus on errors that are
systematic violations of patterns in the input to which the learners have been exposed.
Such errors tell us something about the learner’s interlanguage, or underlying knowledge
of the rules of the language being learned.
How to do error analysis?
- Although some learner errors are salient to native speakers, others, even though they’re
systematic, may go unnoticed. For this reason, it is valuable for anyone interested in
learning a language to do a more thorough look over the work and give feedback.
How to do error analysis?
- Identify all the errors in a sample of learner language
- For each error, what do you think the speaker intended to say, and how
should they have said it?
- For example, and English learner may say, aiming for a present tense, “*He set a
goal”. This is an error in this case, However what should the learner have said?
- There are at least two possible ways to reconstruct this error: (1) He
SETS a goal, and (2) He is SETTING a goal. In this first step of an error
analysis, remember that there may be more than one possible way to
reconstruct a learner error.
- *our school force use to learn English because um, it’s, it’s a trend.
- Our school forced us to learn English because it is a trend.
- Our school required us to learn English because it was a popular
language.
- Because everyone felt it was important, English was a requirement at our
school.
- Grammatical Error is indicated by using a star (*) in the beginning of the sentence,
closest to the error
- The way you reconstruct a learner error depends on what you think the intended
message is
- An added complication is that any given learner utterance may contain error at
many levels at once: phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical
- Finally, determine how systematic the error is. Does it occur several times, or is it just a
performance slip z9a mistake)? Even native speakers of a language make one-off
mistakes when they’re tired or distracted.
- Explain the errors
- Once they’re identified systematic errors in your sample of learner language,
think of what might have caused those errors. Usually there are several
possibilities:
- Native language transfer (using a rule or pattern from the native
language)
- Developmental (errors most learners make in learning this language no
matter what their native language)
- Induced errors (may be due to the way a teacher or textbook presented or
explain a given form)
- Communication strategies (may be used by the learner to get meaning
across even if he or she knows the form used is not correct)
- Explaining errors in a learner language isn't always straightforward; for
example, sometimes an error may appear to have more than one cause.
What error analysis misses
- Error analysis is a good first step, but it also can miss important features of the learner
language in focusing only on errors, you may miss cases where the learner uses the
form correctly.
- The second situation an error analysis misses is avoidance.
- Avoidance can lead to the absence of errors - but absence of errors in this case does
NOT mean the learner has no problems with relative clauses.
- Finally, error analysis focuses only on accuracy. Accuracy is just one of the three
ways of describing a learner language: accuracy, complexity, and fluency. If teachers
judge a learner language only in terms of accuracy, the learners’ development of
complexity and fluency can suffer.
