Fita Ariyana

2201410075

Rombel 7 (Thursday 9 am)

Introduction toSecond Language Acquisition

Chapter 2

The Nature of Learner

Language

Second Language Acquisition

Rod Ellis (2003)

page 15 - 30

Errors and Error Analysis

raising question of “Why do learners

make errors?”

knowing what errors learners make

helping the learners to learn when

making self-correct the errors

Why focusing on errors?

by comparing the sentences learners

produce with the correct sentences in the

target language

The Problems:

not the preferred TL in producing sentences

difficult to reconstruct the correct sentences

need to distinguish errors and mistakes

Identifying Errors

helping to diagnose learners’ problems

and to plot how changes in error patterns

The ways:

classifying errors into grammatical

categories

identifying general ways of learners’

utterances

Describing Errors

errors are:

to a large extent, systematic, and

predictable for certain universal

to learners of the same mother tongue

Having different sources : omission,

overgeneralization, and transfer errors

Explaining Errors

Global errors

=> disturb the overall structure of

sentence

Local errors

=> affect only a single constituent

in sentence

Error Evaluation

Developmental Patterns

belong to silent period

The characteristics:

formulaic chunks

proportional simplification

The early stages of L2 acquisition

is the same as accuracy order?

=> two opinions

1. ‘agree’

2. ‘disagree’

- sometimes learners begin using a structure

accurately early on only to start making errors

with it later.

- the order does vary somewhat according to

their first language

The Order of Acquisition

as a process involving transitional constructions

The stages of L2 learners acquire the native speaker

rule, as the example ‘irregular past tense’ :

1. Learners fail to mark the verb for past time, e.g.

‘eat’

2. They begin to produce irregular past tense forms,

e.g. ‘ate’

Sequence of Acquisition

3. They over generalize the regular

past tense form, e.g. ‘eated’

4. Sometimes learners produce

hybrid forms, e.g. ‘ated’

5. They produce correct irregular past

tense forms, e.g. ‘ate’

Sequence of Acquisition

L2 Acquisition is:

• systematic

• a large extent

• universal,

• reflecting the internal cognitive mechanisms

control acquisition

• irrespective of the personal background of learners

Some Implications

suggest some linguistic features

(particularly grammatical) are

inherently easier to learn than

others, e.g.

≈ The master learners of plural –s

before third person –s suggest it is

easy.

The important reason of developmental patterns?

Variability in Learner Language

The Systemic Nature of Variability:

Linguistic context

=> using verb depend on event, activity, or state

Situational context

=> know what the language should be used in

any situation

Psycholinguistic context

=> whether learners have opportunity to plan

their production

• Natural language

• form-function mappings (=> to build

variable system) not always according

to target language

• not random

• using one or two forms in free variation

Variability in Learner Language

• choice of linguistic forms is determined by:

- linguistic context

- situational context

- availability of planning time.

• at different stages of development:

- acquiring a single form

- using a single form for a variety of functions

Variability in Learner Language

- acquiring other verb forms

- starting to use the forms systematically

- eliminating non-target form

- using target language form

• not all speakers complete stage for

every grammatical structure =>

fossilization

Variability in Learner Language

Thank you…