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1.Error Analysis and Interlanguage Theory

1.1 Definition of error analysis
Error Analysis is a branch of Applied Linguistics emerged in the sixties to
reveal that learner errors were not only because of the learner’s native language
but also they reflected some universal strategies. This is a reaction to what was
called Contrastive Analysis Theory which considered native language
interference the major source of errors in second language learning what
behavioristic theory suggested. “Applied error analysis, on the other hand,
concerns organizing remedial courses and devising appropriate materials
and teaching strategies based on the findings of theoretical error analysis” (
Erdogan, 2005:22). Richards (1971:0l) explained “the field of error analysis
may be defined as dealing with the differences between the way people
learning a language speak and the way adult native speakers of the
language use the language”. Norrish (1983) argued that let us call a systematic
deviation, when a learner has not learnt something and consistently gets it
wrong, an error…A common example is using the infinitive with to after the
verb must (e.g. I must to go the shops). Let us suppose that the learner knows the
verbs want (+ to), need (+ to) and perhaps ought (+ to); by analogy he then
produces must (+ to) until he has been told otherwise, or until he notices that
native speakers do not produce this form, he will say or write this quite
consistently (Norish, ibid).
Brown (1987, p:08) gives a concise concept of error analysis by saying
“The fact that learners do make errors and these errors can be observed,
analyzed and classified to reveal something of the system operating within
the learner led to a surge of study of learners’ errors, called ‘error
analysis’.”
Corder (1973) states 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 teaching materials and his teaching techniques, and
show him what parts of the syllabus, he has been following, have been
inadequately learned or taught or need further attention. Move this to the previous section (Error :Commented [U1]
analysis)
I did :Commented [MF2R1]
The concept of error analysis is so brief. You :Commented [U3]
need more explanation
I did :Commented [MF4R3]
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1.2 The concept of error

The errors are regarded as a systematic way which affects the learner's
level of competence achievement.
Errors presupposes the norms of adult speakers. Deviations from theses
norms are now considered to be inevitable, necessary and systematic stages in
the language learning process and are taken to constitute hypotheses by the child
about the language to be learned .

The basic task of error analysis is to describe how learning occurs by

examining the learner output and this includes his/her correct and incorrect
utterances. There are two major approaches to the study of learner’s errors,
namely contrastive analysis and error analysis.
If someone wants to learn a foreign language, he or she will meet with
many kinds of learning problems dealing with its sound system, vocabulary and
structure. This is understandable since the student learning the foreign language
has spoken his own native language, which has been deeply implanted in him
as part of his habit. Very often, he transfers his habit into the target language he
learns, which perhaps will cause errors. The old approach contrastive analysis
pioneered by Fries assumed that these errors are caused by the different elements
between the native language and the target language. Fisiak (1981)
Conversely error analysis is carried out by identifying the errors actually made
by the students in the classroom. Selinker (1992) states that errors are
indispensable to learners since the making of errors can be regarded as a device
the learner uses in order to learn. Thus, error is a proof that the student is
learning. The error is the road that the student must pass to achieve the target
language. And, at this stage, the language produced by the student is called
interlanguage.

1.3 The significance of learners’ errors

Corder (1987) explains the significance of learners’ errors in three
different ways. The first to the teacher in that they tell him, if he undertakes a
systematic analysis, how far the learner has progressed towards the goal, and
consequently what remains for him to learn. Second, they provide the
researcher an evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies
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or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language. Thirdly

(and in a sense this is their most important aspect) they are indispensable to the
learner himself, because we can regard that making of errors as a means to the
learner to learn.” . It is a way the learner has to test his hypotheses about the How? :Commented [U5]
Explained in yellow :Commented [MF6R5]
nature of the language he is learning. Weireesh (1991) also comments on this
point by stating that when the learner does errors; error analysis uses them as a
valuable aid to identify and explain difficulties faced by him. He goes on to say
that error analysis serves as a reliable feedback to design a remedial teaching
method and in result it helps the learner to learn.
The making of errors then is a strategy employed both by children
acquiring their mother tongue and by those learning a second language.

Making mistakes can indeed be regarded as an essential part of learning.

(Norrish 1983). Brown (1987) suggests that language learning, like any other
human learning is a process that requires making mistakes.

1.4 Steps of the error analysis

1.4.1 Collection of a Sample of Learner Language
The first point in error analysis is the collection of a sample of learner
language. Researchers have identified three broad types of error analysis
according to the size of the sample. These types are: massive, specific and
incidental samples. All of them are relevant in the corpus collection but the
relative utility and proficiency of each varies in relation to the main goal. In
other words, in this first step, the researcher has to be aware of his research, and
the main objective of this stage is selecting a proper collection system.
The first type of sample mentioned involves collecting several samples of
language use from a large number of learners in order to compile a
comprehensive list of errors, representative of the entire population. A specific
sample consists of one sample of language used, collected from a limited number
of learners.
Finally, an incidental sample uses only one sample of language provided
to a single learner. In practice, the most common samples used by researchers
are specific and incidental in order to avoid the difficult task of processing,
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organizing and evaluating the large quantities of samples taken in a massive

sample collection.

1.4.2 Identification of errors:

Once a corpus of learner language has been collected, the errors have to be
identified. Therefore, it is necessary to know how to identify them. Indeed, the
identification of errors depends on four crucial questions. The first question is to
set up what target language should be used as the point of evaluation for the
study.
The second is related to the differences between "errors" and "mistakes or
slips". An error is made when the deviation arises as a result of lack of
knowledge while a mistake or slip occurs when learners fail to perform to their
competence in the target language. Normally, a mistake or slip is immediately
corrected by the learner.
The third question is about interpretation. There are two kinds of
interpretation: overt and covert. The former is easy to identify because there is a
clear deviation in form (She selled her car) and the latter occurs in utterances that
are syntactically and semantically well-formed but pragmatically odd (Where do
you go?). The fourth question is focused on deviations. There are two kinds of
deviation: correctness and appropriateness.
Their difference is very simple: the first is a deviation of the rules of the
language usage (I did ate with her) and the other is a deviation of the language
use (she can to do whatever she wants).

1.4.3 Description of errors:

The description of learner errors involves a comparison of the learner's
idiosyncratic utterances with a reconstruction of those utterances in the target
language. Researchers propose that there are two descriptive taxonomies of
errors: linguistic categories and surface strategy.
Linguistic categories are associated with a traditional error analysis
undertaken for pedagogic purposes; they can be chosen to correspond closely to
those found in structural syllabi and language text books. This type of
description allows a detailed description of specific errors and also for a
quantification of a corpus of errors.
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Linguistic categories, as Richards says (1971), state that learners' errors were the
result of L1 interference.
From another point of view, surface strategy taxonomy highlights the
ways in which surface structures are altered by means of such operations as
omissions, additions, misinformations and misorderings. Omission is considered
as the absence of an item that should appear in a well-formed utterance (He
cooking); addition is defined as the presence of an item that should not appear in
well-former utterance (*She doesn't works at hospital); misinformation is the use
of the wrong form of the morpheme or structure (*The chair was maked by the
carpenter) and finally misordering is regarded as the incorrect placement of a
morpheme or group of morphemes in an utterance (*What is doing my mother?)

1.4.4 Explanation of errors (Tracing errors to their sources)

In order to arrive at effective remedial measures, the analyst must fully
understand the mechanism that triggers each type of error (Şanal 2007). The
source of an error could be interlanguage. (Richards 1971).
Researchers in the field of applied linguistics usually distinguish between two
types of errors: performance errors caused by factors such as fatigue and
inattention (what Chomsky, 1965, called "performance” factors) and
competence errors which results from lack of knowledge of the rules of the
language (what Chomsky, 1965, called "competence”).
Performance errors are those errors made by learners when they are tired
or hurried. Normally, this type of error is not serious and can be overcome with
little effort by the learner. Competence errors, on the other hand, are more
serious than performance errors since competence errors reflect inadequate
learning. In this connection, it is important to note that researchers (Gefen 1979) !!!! :Commented [U7]
Only one researcher!!!!! :Commented [U8]
distinguish between mistakes which are lapses in performance and errors which
reflect inadequate competence.
Competence errors involve all language components: the phonological, the
morphological, the lexical, and the syntactic. They are in the mind, these errors
cannot be noticed only in performance level. An example of a phonological
error is the distinction between the phoneme /p / and the phoneme /b/ among
Arab ESL learners; so we hear them saying pird and brison, for example, instead
of bird and prison. An example of a morphological error is the production of
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such errors as womans, sheeps, and furnitures. A lexical error involves

inappropriate direct translation from the learner's native language or the use of
wrong lexical items in the second language. Examples of lexical errors are: This
is the home that my father built, and The clock is now ten. Finally, examples of
syntactic errors are errors in word order, subject-verb agreement, and the use of
the what is called in Arabic resumptive pronoun in English relative clauses
produced by Arab ESL learners as illustrated in: The boy that I saw him is called
Ali. The main sources that cause errors are two in number and they are:

1. Errors caused by negative transfer

If the learner of a foreign language makes some mistakes in the target language
by the effect of his mother tongue, that is called as interlanguage errors. For
example, any Arabic speaker learning English may say, “Ahmed tazwaj min
Fatma .” in his mother tongue, and he may transfer his old habit to the target
language. (Altunkaya, 1985) The result would be “Ahmed married with Fatma.”
which is not acceptable in English. The acceptable version is “Ahmed married Mention the acceptable example to show :Commented [U9]
the difference.
Fatma” without the preposition. It is done :Commented [MF10R9]

2. Errors caused by the target language

Learners may make mistakes in the target language, since they don’t know the
target language very well; they have difficulties in using it. For example, they
may say “mans” instead of saying “men” as the plural form of “man”. In that
way the learner overgeneralizes the use of plural suffixes.
Richards (1971) focuses on intralanguage/developmental errors and
distinguishes four types of developmental errors.
I-Overgeneralization e.g. he always go home early here the omission of third
person (-s) since in English all grammatical persons take the same zero verbal
ending except the third person singular in the present tense omissions of the ( -s)
in the third person singular may occur. The endingless form is generalized for all
persons.
II-Ignorance of rule restriction Closely related to the previous point and here the
learner fails to observe the restrictions of existing structures, that is, the
application of rules to contexts where they do not apply. The man who I saw him
violates the limitation on subjects in structures with who.
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III-Incomplete application of rule Under this category we may note the

occurrence of structures whose deviancy represents the degree of development of
the rules required to produce acceptable utterances. The response to questions
can be a good example do you read much? The learner response would be yes, I
read much instead of yes, I do.
IV-False concepts hypothesized. The continuous tenses are related with action.
Thus the was or was+ing may be used as past markers. Used together with the
verb +. ed it produces such sentences as he was climbed the tree. Interpreted as
the form for "past actions" it gives I was going down town yesterday instead of I
went down town yesterday.
The problem with this classification is that these types are overlapped. Give examples for each one> :Commented [U11]
done :Commented [MF12R11]

1.4.5 Evaluation
Error evaluation studies proliferated in the late 1970s and in the 1980s,
motivated quite explicitly by a desire to improve language pedagogy. In these
studies, judgments were based on three basic categories: comprehensibility,
seriousness and naturalness of the grammar. In this judgment process, judges
have to keep in mind that there are two kinds of errors: global and local. Global
error is the error which affects overall sentence organization (*my house
beautiful red), and local error is the error which affects single elements in a
sentence (*I want an hot dog).
The evaluation of learner error poses a great number of problems. It is not clear
what criteria judges have used when asked to assess the categories of an error.
Indeed, error evaluation is influenced by the context in which the errors occurred
and whether the judges are native speakers or foreigners; the judges’
comprehension of the erroneous sentences is so important .
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1.5 Error Types

Analyses of numerous errors in L2 learners' speech and writing have
revealed systematic distortions of surface elements of the new language and the
most famous types of errors are:
a. The omission of grammatical morphemes—omitting items that do not
contribute much to the meaning of the sentence, as in I buy some coloring book,
where past and plural markers are omitted.
b. The double marking of a given semantic feature by marking two or more
items in an utterance when only one marker is required, as in She didn't wented,
where the past tense is marked more than once.
c. The regularization of irregular rules, as in That mouse catched him, where
the regular past tense marker -ed is used instead of the irregular caught.
d. The use of different forms—using one form for the several required, as in
the use of the accusative for both nominative and accusative pronouns, e.g. Them
going to town; I know them.
e. The alternating use of two or more forms whose conditions for use are
still being internalized, as in the random alternation of much and many: too
much dolls; many potteries.
f. The disordering of items in constructions that require the reversal of
word-order rules that have been previously acquired, as in I don't know who
is it, where the placement of is erroneously follows the rule for simple questions
rather than embedded questions.

1.6.1. Error and Mistake

Corder (1973:261-262) distinguishes between error and mistake as follows.
Errors are:
a. Systematic, governed by rules and appear because learners’ knowledge of the
rules of the target language is incomplete, since they follow the rules of the
learners’ inter-language,
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b. Indicative of learners’ linguistic system at a given stage of language learning

i.e his/her transitional competence or inter-lingual development; and
c. Occurring repeatedly and not recognized by the learner, in the sense that
only teachers and researchers can diagnose them,
Mistakes are however regarded as random deviations unrelated to any system
and instead representing the same types of performance mistakes that might
occur in the speech or writing of native speakers. These include:
a. Slips of tongues or Freudian slips such as: ‘You have hissed all my mystery
lectures’ instead of ‘You have missed all my history lectures’.
b. Slips of the ear as in ‘great ape’ instead of ‘gray tape’
c. False starts, lack of subject-verb agreement in long complicated sentences
etcetera
d. Non-linguistic factors such as fatigue, strong emotion, memory limitation or
lapses, lack of concentration. The focus of this paper is on error and not on
mistake.
2. Interlanguage
The notion of ‘interlanguage’ has been central to the development of the field
of research on second language acquisition and continues to influence both the
development of second language acquisition theory and the nature of the central
issues in that field.
The term interlanguage was defined by Selinker (1972) as the separate
linguistic system evidenced when adult second-language learners attempt to
express meaning in a language they are in the process of learning.
This linguistic system includes not just phonology and syntax, but also the
lexical, pragmatic, and discourse levels of the interlanguage. The interlanguage
system is clearly not simply the native language morphological and syntactic
system mixed with target language vocabulary; that is, it is not the same
morphological and syntactic system of the learner’s own language if s/he wants
to convey the same meaning in his/ her native language. Just as clearly, it is not
the target language system that is used by native speakers of the target language
when they express those same meanings. Rather, the interlanguage differs :Commented [U13]

systematically from both the native language and the target language.
Interlanguage is usually thought of as characteristic only of adult second-
language learners, that is, learners who have passed puberty and thus cannot be
expected to be able to employ the language acquisition device (LAD) – that
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innate language learning structure that was instrumental in their acquisition of

their native language. Children acquiring second languages are thought to have
the ability to re-engage the LAD and thus to avoid the error pattern and ultimate
fossilization that characterize the interlanguages of adult second-language
learners.
Central to the notion of interlanguage is the phenomenon of fossilization. It is
the process in which the learner’s interlanguage stops developing, apparently
permanently his Second-language. The learner who begins his study of the
second language after puberty does not succeed in developing a linguistic system
that approaches that developed by children acquiring that language natively. This ??? :Commented [U14]

observation led Selinker (1972) to hypothesize that adults use a latent

psychological structure (instead of a LAD) to acquire second languages.
The Selinker(1972) five psycholinguistic processes of this latent psychological
structure that shape interlanguage are mentioned below:
(a) Native language transfer this happens when learners make ‘interlingual
identifications’ in approaching the task of learning a second language: ;they
perceive certain units as the same in their native language. So, for example, they
may perceive ‘table’ in their native language and as exactly the same as ‘tabla’ in
Arabic and develop an interlanguage in which tabla and use it as “tabla al
muhtawai” as (table of contents) which is not acceptable in Arabic.
(b) Overgeneralization of target language rules, this is a process that is also
widely observed in child language acquisition. The learner shows evidence of
having mastered a general rule, but does not yet know all the exceptions to that
rule. For example, the learner may use the past tense marker-ed for all verbs,
regular and irregular alike: walked, wanted, hugged, laughed, *drinked, *hitted,
*goed.
(c) Transfer of training this occurs when the second-language learner applies
rules learned from instructors or textbooks. Sometimes, this learning is
successful; that is, the interlanguage grammar rules are copied from the target
language rules and this makes the interlanguage more acceptable. But sometimes
errors result. For example, a lesson plan or textbook that describes the past ????Not clear :Commented [U15]
I Clarified it :Commented [MF16R15]
perfect tense as the ‘past past’ can lead the learner to erroneously use the past
perfect for the absolute distant past for old events without relating these to any
more recent event, as in the isolated statement, *‘My relatives had come from
Italy in the 1700s.’
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(d) Strategies of communication, it takes place when the learner attempts to

communicate meaning, but he feels that the linguistic item needed is not
available to him. He can resort to a variety of strategies of communication in
getting that meaning across. So, for example, if the learner wants to refer to an
electrical cord in English and does not know the exact lexical item to use in
referring to it, he can call it ‘a tube,’ ‘a kind of corder that you use for electric
thing I don’t exactly the name,’ or ‘a wire with eh two plugs in each side.’
(e) Strategies of learning are used by the learner in a conscious attempt to master
the target language. One such strategy of learning is learners’ conscious
comparison of what they produce in interlanguage with the native language. An
example of the latter might be that an English speaking learner of Spanish might
use a mediator word pot in order to remember that the Spanish word for duck is
pato – but might end up using pot in interlanguage references to a duck.