The Nature Of Learner Language Chapter 2 Rod Ellis, 2003 Page 15-30 By: Fresi yuliana rahma yusita

The Nature Of Learner Language Errors and erros analysis Developmental pattern Variability in learning language

Errors error analysis Identifying errors Describing errors Explaining errors Error evaluation

Identifying errors The first step in analysing learner errors is to identify them. This is in fact easier said than done. To identify errors we have to compare the sentence learners produce with what seem to be the normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language which corespond with them. Sometimes this is fairly straightforwad. To distinguish errors and mistakes, one way might be to check the consistency of learners’ perfomance. Another way might be to ask learners to try to correct their our deviant utterances. Where they are unable to, the deviations are errors; where they are successful, they are mistakes.

Describing errors Once all the errors have been identified, they can be decscribed and clasified into types. There are several ways of doing this. One way is to classify errors into grammatical categories. We could gather all the errors relating to verb and then identify the different kinds of verb errors in our sample.

Explaining errors The identification and description of errors are preliminaries to the much more interesting task to of trying to explain why they occur. Errors are, to a large extent, systematic and to certain extent, predictable. Erros are not only systematic; many of them are also universal. Of courese, not all errors are universal. Some aerrors are common only to learners who share the same mother tongue or whose mother tongue manifest the same linguistic property. Errors, then, can have different sources. Some errors seem to be universal, reflecting learners’ attempts to make the task of learning and using the L2 simpler. Learners commite errors of omission. The use of ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’ is an example of an overgeneralization. Both errors of omission and overgeneralization are common in the speech of all L2 learners, irrespective their L1.

Error evaluation Where the purpose of the error analysis is to help learners learn an L2, there is a need to evaluate errors. Some errors can be considered more serious than others because they are more likely to infere with the intelligibility of what someone says. Some erros, known as global erros, violate the overall structure of sentence and for this reason may make it difficult to process.

Developmental pattern The early stages of L2 acquisition The order of acquisition Sequence of acquisition Some implications

The early stages of L2 acquisition In such circumstance, some L2 learners, particulary if they are children, undergo a silent period. When the learners do begin to speak in the L2 their speech is likely to manifest two particular characteristics. One is the kind of for mulaic chunks which we saw in the case studies. The second characteristics of early L2 speech is propotional simplification. Learners find it difficult to speak in full sentences so they frequently leave words out.

The order of acquisition To investigate the order of acquisition, researchers choose a number of grammatical structures to study. They then collect samples of learner language and identify how accurately each feature is used by different learners. This enable them to arrive at an accuracy order. That is, they rank the features accordin to how accurately each feature is used bby the learners.

Sequence of acquisition When learners acquire a grammatical structure they do so gradually, moving through a series of stages en route to acquiring the native speaker rule. The acquisition of a particular grammatical structure, therefore, must be seen as a process involving transtional construction.

Some implications The discovery of common patterns in the way in which learner language changes over time is one of the most important findings of SLA. The work on developmental pattern is important for another reason. It suggests that some linguistic features are inherently easier to learn than others.

Variability In Learner Language We have seen that learner language is systematic. That is, at a particular stage of development, learners consistently use the same grammatical form, althiugh this is often different from that employed by native speakers. We have also seen that learner language is variable. At any given stage of development, learners sometimes employ one form and sometimes another. Learners also vary the linguistic forms they use in accordence with the situational context. In this respect, learners are no different from native speakers. when native speaker of English are taking to friens, for example, they tend to speak informally, using colloquialexpression. The importance factor that accounts for the systematic nature of variability is the psycholinguistic context, whether learners have the opportunity to plan their product.

Variability In Learner Language Variablity in learner language, then, is clearly not just random. Learners have access to two or more linguistic forms for realizing a single grammatical structure but they do not employe this arbitrary. Rather their choice is determined by a variety of factors such as linguistic context, the situational context and the avaibility of planning time. It is important to recognize that this general sequence of acquisition applies to spesefic grammatical features. Thus, it is possible for indivisual learners to be at different stages in the sequence for different grammatical features.

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