The Nature of Learner Language

Ellis 2003, chapter 2 pp. 15 -30By Aida W. Wardhananti

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Error and Error Analysis

Reasons for focusing on errors: The errors are feature of learner language

It is useful for teacher to know what errors learners make

Making errors may help learners to learn how to correct the errors

Step in Analyzing ErrorsIdentifying errors

Describing errors

Explaining errors

Error evaluation

Identifying Errors• To identify errors, we have to compare the sentences

learners produce with what seem to be the normal or correct sentences in target language which correspondent with them.

The sentences learners produce

Normal or correct

sentencesComparing

Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance. They

occur because the learner is unable to perform what he

or she knows.The learner cannot correct the

deviation.

Errors reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge. They occur because the learner does not know

what the correct is.The learner cannot correct the

deviation.

The Different ofErrorsMistakes

Describing Errors

The ways of describing and classifying the errors:

To classify errors into grammatical categories

• By relating to the verbs

To identify the general ways in which the learners’ utterance differ from the reconstructed target-language utterance (the general error)

• Omission• Misinformation• Misordering

Explaining Errors

It is about explaining why the errors occur.

e.g., People of Southern Africa will tend to have error in saying “We went at Johannesburg” despite of “to”.

It is because the people of Southern Africa has one preposition ‘at’ only to express both location and direction.

Different sources of errors• Omission error

e.g., leaving the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’

• Overgeneralization errore.g., using ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’

• Transfer errorUsing their L1 knowledge

Error Evaluation

Some errors can be considered more serious than others.

Global Errors

• Violate the overall structure of a sentence

Local Errors

• Affect only a single constituent in the sentence

Developmental PatternsThe order of acquisition

Some implication

The early stages of L2 acquisition

The characteristic of the early L2:• Children undergo a silent period

They make no attempt to say anything to begin with.They learn a lot through listening and reading

• Proportional simplificationLearners find it difficult to speak in full sentences so they frequently leave words out.

The order of acquisition

Natural Ordere.g., Schmidt found that Wes, whose first

language was Japanese, performed plural ‘–s’ very poorly, much less accurately than irregular past. Wes did NOT follow the natural order.

Sequence of acquisitionTransitional Construction

U-shaped course of development

Restructuring

ExampleStage Description Example

1 Learners fail to mark the verb for past time. ‘Eat’

2 Learners begin to produce irregular past tense forms. ‘Ate’

3 Learners overgeneralize the regular past tense form. ‘Eated’

4 Sometimes learners produce hybrid forms. ‘Ated’

5 Learners produce correct irregular past tense forms. ‘Ate’

Stage in acquisition of the past tense of ‘eat’

Some Implication• L2 acquisition is systematic and reflecting ways in

which internal cognitive mechanisms control acquisition.

• The work on developmental patterns suggests that some linguistic features are inherently easier to learn than other e.g., learners master plural –s before third person suggests that plural –s is in some sense easier to learn.

This has implications for both SLA theory and for language teaching.

Variability in Learner Language

Language is systematic

• Learners consistently use the same grammatical form

Language is variable

• Learners sometimes employ one form and sometimes another

• One linguistic form can trigger the use of another form e.g., ‘In Peru, George usually play football every day’ and ‘In Peru, George usually played football every day’

Linguistics context

• e.g., native speakers tend to speak informally ‘My kid’s a real pain’, in contrast, they tend to speak formally to someone they do not know very well ‘ my daughter can be very troublesome’

Situational context

• Whether learners have the opportunity to planPsycholinguistics

context

Factors that accounts for the systematic nature of variability

• e.g., ‘Mariana no coming today’ and ‘Don’t sit in that one chair’

Form-function mapping

• Some variability is free e.g., J produce two negative utterances in close proximity to each other, in the same context. ‘No look my card’ and ‘Don’t look my card’

Free variation

• Stopping developing while still short of target-language competence.

Fossilization

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