THE NATURE of LEARNER LANGUAGE Rodd Ellis, 2003 Chapter 2 Page 15-30 By Anisa Devi Prabajati 2201410116

elements Errors and error analysis Developmental patterns Variability in learner language summary

The main way of investigating L2 acquisition is bay collecting and describing samples of learner language. The description may focus on the errors that the learners make, or on the developmental patterns and errors that made by the learners and how the developmental patters and the errors change through time. Here we are going to learn all about the nature of the leaner language.

Errors ad error analysis The focus is on what learners get wrong. Reasons why it focuses on the errors: - the are conspicuous feature of learner language, raising the important questions of “why the learners make errors?”. - it is useful for teachers to know why learners make errors. - it is possible that making errors may actually help learners to learn when they self-correct the errors they make.

Identifying errors… It is the first step to take to analysis errors made by learners. Example: Jean is an adult French learner, he writes a paragraph of story , in the paragraph we can easily find and identify the errors he makes. * A man and a little boy was watching him. - was is supposed to were. *… went in the traffic. - in is supposed to be into

We can distinguish errors and mistakes made by learners by checking the consistency of learners performance. The consistency of using present participial whenever it is supposed to be in past participial ; learner keeps doing that then it indicates the lack of the knowledge. But whenever learner can do self-correct activity in producing the words then it means that he posses the knowledge the correct form but just slipping up the mistake.

Describing errors misinformation misordering When all the errors are identified, they can be described and classified into types. classifications Grammatical categories misordering misinformation

Explaining errors The goal is to explain why they occur. Errors are, to a large extent, systematic, and to certain extent, predictable. Errors are not systematic, many of them are also universal. In fact, many of Jean’s speech has been attested in the speech of many learners. If not all learners go through a stage of learning where they substitute the simple form of the verb for the past tense form.

Not all errors are universal, some errors are common only to learners who share the same mother tongue or whose mother tongues manifest the same linguist property. Some errors seem to be universal, reflecting learners’ attempt to make the task of learning and using L2 simpler.

Error evaluation Global errors Local errors Affect only a single constituent in the sentence Violate the overall structure of a sentence and for this reason may make it difficult process, Jean , for example says: The policeman was in the corner whistle…. Which is difficult to understand because the basic structure of the sentence is wrong

Developmental patterns The early stages of acquisition - SILENT PERIOD : children make no attempt to say anything to begin with. (the learners begin to speak in the L2 speech is likely to manifest two particular characteristics) Acquisition order Do learners acquire the grammatical structure of an L2 in a definite order? Sequence of acquisition Do learners learn such structure in a single step or do they proceed through a number of interim stages before they master the target structure?

The order acquisition Example: investigating a number of grammatical structures to study; i.e. progressive –ing ,and plural-s . Then they collect samples of learner language and identify how accurately each feature is used by different learners. This enables them arrive at an accuracy order.

Sequence of acquisition There must be seen a process involving transitional constructions. The next sequence is U-shaped course of development. That is initially learner may display a high level of accuracy only to apparently regress later before finally once again performing in accordance with target language norms.

Variability in learner language Learner language is systematic, that is, at a particular stage of development, learners consistently use the same grammatical form although this is often different from that employed by native speakers. Linguistic context Situational context

Linguistic context Situational context Learners vary their use of language similarly. They are more likely to use the correct target-language forms in formal contexts and non-target forms in informal contexts. another important that accounts for the systematic nature of variability is the psycholinguistic context. Whether learners have the opportunity to plan their production. The crucial element in the linguistic context involves some other constituent of the utterance. Example: George playing football – George played football all the time. In sentences referring past tense which do not have an adverb of frequency, the learners are more likely to use progressive marker.

Research on variability has sought to show that, although allowance should perhaps be made for some free variation, variability in learner language is systematic. That is ,learners use their linguistic source in predictable ways. The use of specific grammatical forms has been shown to vary according to the linguistic context ad the psycholinguistic context.

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