Error Analysis Journal

CONTRIBUTION OF ERROR ANALYSIS IN SLA

FOR ENGLISH TEACHER

Aqlisty Nia Chandra

anc.nia@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to describe the contribution of english teacher in analyzing students’ error in learning second language. Children make some mistakes as a natural part of language acquisition process. Many of the teachers complain that their students are unable to use the linguistic forms that they are taught. Error analysis is required in developing or increasing the techniques in teaching English. Errors provide feedback about the effectiveness of teacher’s teaching techniques and what part of the syllabus teacher has been following needs further attention. Studying the learner language in terms of the errors is something that teachers have always done for very practical reasons. Through the results of tests and examinations, the errors that learners make are a major element in the feedback system of the teaching-learning process. Therefore, it is important that the teacher should be able to not only detect and describe the errors from a linguistic view, but also understand the psychological reasons for their occurrences.

Key words: error analysis, SLA, english teacher

INTRODUCTION

In learning first language, children make some mistakes as a natural part of language acquisition process. When they get feedback from adults, they learn how to produce grammatically and semantically acceptable sentences in their native language. What a foreign language learner does in operating on the target language is not different from that of a child acquiring his first language. It is inevitable that all learners make mistakes and commit errors. The steps that learners follow get the language teachers realize that if the mistakes and errors of language learners in constructing the new language system are analyzed carefully, the process of language acquisition shall be understood. Many of the teachers complain that their students are unable to use the linguistic forms that they are taught. Lengo (1995) states “this situation is due to the teacher’s false impression that output should be an authentic representation of input.”

Error analysis enables teachers to find out the sources of errors and take pedagogical precautions towards them. Thus, the analysis of learner language has become an essential need to overcome some questions and propose solutions regarding different aspects. Corder showed to whom information about errors would be helpful like teachers, researchers, and students. Behaviourist learning theory described language learning as habit formation and explained why the second language (L2) learners made errors. Since the errors were result of non-learning rather than wrong learning, there was a danger of errors becoming habits if they were tolerated, so errors should be avoided. Depending on the behaviourism and structuralism Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) focused on the interference of first L1 on L2 learning. (Brown, 1987) In other words, accoding to cognitive approach the making of errors is an inevitable and necessary part of languge learning. Because of criticisms and new developments in L2 learning, the interest in CA declined as the enthusiasm for EA grew.

The Definition of Error Analysis

Brown (1987) says that language learning, like any other human learning is a process that involves the making mistakes. In order to understand the process of L2 learning, the mistakes a person made in the process of constructing a new system of language should be analysed carefully. Here we can give the definition of EA as a process based on analysis of learners’ errors. Brown ( (1987) defined the error analysis as ”The fact that learners do make errors and these errors can be observed ,analysed and classified to reveal some thing of the system operating within the learner led to a surge of study of learners’ errors, called ‘error analysis’. As it is seen in the definitions the aim of this process is to suggest suitable and effective teaching-learning strategies and remedial measures necessary in the target language. EA becomes distinguished from CA in that it examines all possible sources of errors.

Identification of errors

Everybody makes mistakes in both native and second language situations. Normally native speakers are able to recognise and correct such “lapses” or “mistakes” which are not the result of a deficiency in competence, but the result of imperfection in the process of producing speech (Brown 1987). Errors are deviances that are due to deficient competence (i-e “knowledge” of the language, wich may or may not be conscious). Mistakes can be self-corrected when attention is called. Whereas, an error is the use of linguistic item in a way that a fluent or native speaker of the language regards it as showing faulty or incomplete learning. In other words, it occurs because the learner does not know what is correct, and thus it cannot be self-corrected. 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.

Classification of Errors

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). Ellis (1997) maintains that “classifying errors in these ways can help us to diagnose learners’ learning problems at any stage of their development and to plot how changes in error patterns occur over time.”

Sources of Errors

Brown (1980:173-181) classifies sources of error into, 1) interlingual transfer, that is the negative influence of the mother tongue of learner, 2) intralingual transfer, that is the negative transfer of items within the target language. In order words, the incorrect generalization of rules within the target language; 3) context of learning, which overlaps both types of transfer, for example, the classroom with its teacher and its materials in the case of school learning or the social situation in the case of untutored second language learning. In a classroom context the teacher or the textbook can lead the learner to make wrong generalization about the language; 4) communication strategies. It is obvious that communication strategy is the conscious employment of verbal mechanisms for communicating an idea when linguistic forms are not available to the learner for some reasons. There are five main communication strategies, namely :

1.      Avoidance

Avoidance can be broken down into several subcategories, and thus distinguished from other types of strategies. The most common type of avoidance strategy is ‘syntactic or lexical avoidance’ within a semantic category. When a learner, for example, cannot say “I lost my way” he might avoid the use of way’ and says “I lost my road” instead.

2.      Prefabricated patterns

Another common communication strategy is to memorize certain stock phrases or sentences without understanding the components of the phrases or sentences. The examples “Tourist survival” language in these prefabricated patterns are “How much does it cost?”, “Where is the toilet?”. “I don’t speak English” and “I don’t understand you”.

3.      Cognitive and personality style

One’s own personality style or style of thinking can be a source of error, highlighting the idiosyncratic nature of many learner errors. A person with high self-esteem may be willing to risk more errors, in the interest of communication, because he does not feel as threatened by committing errors with a person with low self-esteem.

4.      Appeal to authority

The learner may directly ask a native speaker (the authority) if he gets stuck by saying, for example, “How do you say?” Or he might guess and then ask for verification from the native speaker of the correctness of the attempt. He might also choose to look a word or structure up in a bilingual dictionary.

5.      Language Switch

Finally, when all other strategies fail to produce a meaningful utterance, a learner may switch to the so-called language switch. That is, he may simply use his native language whether the hearer knows that native language or not. Usually, just a word or two are slipped in, in the hope that learner will get the gist of what is being communicated.

Causes of Error

Norrish (1983:21-26) classifies causes of error into three types that is carelessness, first language interference, and translation. The three types of causes of error will be discussed briefly below.

1.      Carelessness

Carelessness is often closely related to lack of motivation. Many teachers will admit that it is not always the student’s fault if he loses interest, perhaps the materials and/or style of presentation do not suit him.It also occurs because of the difficult material.

2.      First language

Norrish states that learning a language (a mother tongue or a foreign language) is a matter of habit formation. When someone tries to learn new habits the old ones will interfere the new ones. This causes of error is called first language interference”.

3.      Translation

Translation is one of the causes of error. This happens because a student translates his first language sentence or idiomatic expression in to the target language word by word. This is probably the most common cause of error. In the article “A Non-Contrastive Approach to Error Analysis”, Richards (1971: 19-22) classifies causes of error into four term. There are:

a.      Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization generally involves the creation of one deviant structure in place of two regular structures, for examples, “He can sings”, “We are hope”, “it is occurs”.

b.      Incomplete Application of rules

An example of incomplete application of rules can be seen in the question forms. Very often they are used, not to find out something, as they should, but as a means of eliciting questions through a transform exercise.

Teacher’s questions >< Student’s responses

How much does it cost ?>< It cost five dollar

c.       False concepts hypothesized

False concepts hypothesized are something due to poor gradation of teaching items. The form ‘was’ for example, may be interpreted as the marker of the past tense, as in “one day it was happened”.

d.      Ignorance of rule restriction

Closely related to the generalization of deviant structures is failure to observe the restriction of existing structures, that is, the application of rules to context where they do not apply. They man who I saw him violates the limitation on subjects in structure with who.

Error Correction and Error Analysis

In general, the teacher’s job is to point out when something has gone wrong and see whether the student can correct himself, then, to find out if what the student say or write is just a mistake, or it is global or local. It requires that the teacher understand the source of the errors so that he can provide appropriate remedy, which will resolve the learner’s problems and allow him to discover the relevant rules. Thus, the source of the error is an important clue for the teacher to decide on the sort of treatment. Harmer (1998) suggests three steps to be followed by the teacher when errors occur. The teacher first listens to the students, then identifies the problem, and puts it right in the most efficient way. Corder (1973) states that knowledge of being wrong is only a starting point. Skill in correction seems to lie in determining the necessary data to present to the learner and what statements, descriptive or comparative, to make about it.

Oral works are at crucial point in terms of corrections and feedback time. For oral works, it is usually recommended that students making mistakes during a fluent speech should not be interrupted, but be reminded of the mistakes and talk about the reasons. If a pronunciation item is being practiced, the teacher should correct the related mistakes without interrupting the speaker (Ur, 1996). For correcting written works, it is accepted that the teacher should not correct the students’ mistakes directly but instead, should put marks indicating there is something wrong with that sentence, word, or punctuation. Ur (1996) suggest for the correction of errors as follows:

a.       Audio-lingualism: There is little need for correction at first sight. Latter one is not useful for learning.

b.      Cognitive-code learning: Mistakes should be corrected whenever they occur to prevent them occurring again.

c.       Interlanguage: Mistakes are important part of learning. Correcting them is a way of bringing the learner’s interlanguage closer to the target language.

d.      Communicative approach: Not all mistakes need to be corrected. Focus should be on message rather than mistakes.

e.       Monitor theory: Correction does not contribute to language learning.

The Error Analysis in  Second Language Teaching Program

Since the errors of performance are known to be unsystematic, but the errors of competence systematic, the teachers of English should be aware of the system of errors.It is not sufficient merely to study learners’ errors and to classify them in different groups. Only when the teachers of English know why an error has been produced they can set about correcting in a systematic way. It’s generally unacceptable to correct the errors of a foreigner for native speakers unless they have been asked to do so by him. But for the teacher, it is one of the most important tasks of him in the language classroom to decide when correction is necessary.

Implications for Syllabus Designers

Syllabus design of an English teaching course is a very important component of teaching-learning process. There are many factors to be considered to decide on what to teach to what level and age group. At this point, errors are significant data for syllabus designers as they show what items are important to be included or which items needs to be recycled in the syllabus. Keshavarz (1997) maintains that an error-based analysis can give reliable results upon which remedial materials can be constructed. In other words, analysis of second language learners’ errors can help identify learners’ linguistic difficulties and needs at a particular stage of language learning. It is essential for a syllabus to provide with the needs for learning appropriately and errors are important evidence for that.

The Teacher Learn from Error Analysis

Corder (1973) says that “ the most obvious practical use of the analysis of errors is to the teachers. Errors provide feedback, they tell the teacher something about the effectiveness of his/her teaching materials and teaching techniques, and show the teacher what parts of the syllabus, he/she has been following inadequately learned or taught and need further attention. Error analysis can be a very useful device of a foreign language teaching program. The frequency counts of errors supported by the solutions of CA can be helpful in setting up teaching priorities.

Teachers can benefit from the findings of error analysis in many ways. Errors tell the teacher how far towards the goal the learner has progressed and what remains for him to learn (Corder, 1987). Following the student’s progress, the teacher is able to carry on his studies in accordance with what the learner needs to know and what part of the teaching strategy to chance or reconstruct. Errors are a means of feedback for the teacher reflecting how effective he is in his teaching style and what changes he has to make to get higher performance from his students. Furthermore, errors indicate the teacher the points that needs further attention. Additionally, errors show the way to be treated when their sources are identified correctly. Hopefully, from the error analysis:

a.       The teacher will be in a much better position to pinpoint those areas of English where his/her students go wrong for various reasons.

b.      The teacher will have a better and more systematic understanding of how the learners’ native-language system interferes with their learning of English.

c.       The teacher will come to know a lot about the learning problems of individual students. All this in formation will equip the teacher much better to devise remedial measures to make his teaching and learners’ learning much more rapid and effective.

CONCLUSION

From the explanation above, it can be conclude that error analysis is required in developing or increasing the techniques in teaching English. By doing the error analysis, a teacher can concentrate on the materials in which most learners made error; a teacher can also evaluate himself whether he/she succeeds in teaching or not; and finally he/she can improve his/her techniques in teaching by preparing systematic materials.

Errors provide feedback about the effectiveness of teacher’s teaching techniques and what part of the syllabus teacher has been following needs further attention. Studying the learner language in terms of the errors is something that teachers have always done for very practical reasons. Through the results of tests and examinations, the errors that learners make are a major element in the feedback system of the teaching-learning process. For this reason, it is important that the teacher should be able to not only detect and describe the errors from a linguistic view, but also understand the psychological reasons for their occurrences.

 Therefore, the diagnoses and treatment of errors is one of the fundamental skills of the teacher. Correction of errors is as important as identification and description of them. The sources and the sorts of the errors are determiners for the sort of feedback. Findings of error analysis function as facilitator in language teaching in many ways only if the teacher is aware of them and able to make use of them in the teaching process appropriately.

REFERENCES

Brown, H.D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching. New York, Longman.

Corder, S.P. (1973). Introducing applied linguistics. Middlesex, Penguin.

Corder, S.P. (1987). Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Ellis, R. (1997). Second language acquisition. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Harmer, J. (1998). How to teach English. Essex, Longman.

Keshavars, M.H. (1997). Contrastive analysis and error analysis. Tehran, Rahmana Pub.

Lengo, N. (1995). What is an error? English Teaching Forum, 33(3), 20-24.

Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.