A Survey of Error Analysis - H.V. George

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A Survey of Error Analysis

COMMON ERRORSin

LANGUAGE LEARNINGInsight from English

-H.V. George-



What Is an Error ?

• Error is “an unwanted forms” (a form which aparticular course designeror teacher does not want)

• Even in those parts of the world where a regional

standard is the mother tongue, some teacherthemselves frequently use forms would beclassed as “an unwanted forms”



Error and Standard

• For nonnative speakers, irrespective of thenumber of speakers of the local variety ofEnglish or of the local variety. For example,“Dutch English”

• In other word, for the learners there exist adouble standard .



Error and Standard

• Double Standard is the standard relevant tothe kind of English his own English tends to

become and the standard represent by rhe model

• Example :• Because Dutch and English are closely

associated languages, the double standard isapparent chiefly on the phonological level .

• In Malaysian English, the double standardapparent at every level .



A Model of Error Production

• We may assume that ”unwanted forms” is theresult of process or processes

• There are two processes of learner :

• A learner is exposed to experience of English

from his teacher & course book (input to thelearner)

• The learners produces spoker or written English(output from the learner)




• Simplified diagram represents a useful model for the study of error

IN OUT

Figure 1 (can be developed)

• Black box :• Storage / information / memory (features are selected for storage)

BLACKBOX




Figure 2

COURSE DESIGNER/ TEACHER (blackbox 1) LEARNER(blackbox2)

The the the

English course learner‟s

Language English

Selectionorganization

storage

Selectionorganization




• Figure 3 (further additions of figure 2 )

• Blackbox 2 : the learner‟s

• Blackbox 3 : person reacting to the output of blackbox2

Black box 2 Black box 3




Figure 4

The the the

English course learner‟sEnglish

Black box

1

Black box

2



Communication

Warren Weaver‟s classical diagram ofcommunication process :

Encoding Decoding

Message Message

Informationsource

Noisesource

Informationdestination

ReceiverTransmitter



The aim of

Straightforward Communication



The difference between :

Communication for adults

Communication for children



There is redundancy at three places :

1 32



Many features of English as acommunication system are

redundant.



The difference between the

progress of the child learningEnglish as a mother tongue andthe child learning English as a

foreign language.



Two issues that emerge as critical :

How far English as use by native

speaker is marked by redundancy ?How the learner comes to judge this

susceptibility ?



The difficulty of teachers of English

to Asian children.



Redundancy and Contrast

• Many linguists see linguistic distinctions interms of contrast. Redundancy is one of the

consideration, when it comes to contrast.Redundancy differs between two contrasteditems which have a same meaning, e.g. “he” and

“she” as third singular person pronoun inEnglish eventhough in Bahasa Indonesia “dia” isthe only word to define a third singular personpronoun.



Prediction

• Only a certain amount of school time can begiven to English. It is reasonable to not expect

more learning with the quantity and complexityof the material and the time given to learn it.



System and Prediction• Linguists say that language is a system. A system

is predictable. If there is a system, a prediction

may be made.• The teacher who gives a phonological and

grammatical “rule” believes that it will makeprediction possible.

• One of the task of the course designer andteacher is to make the experience of the learnermore regular to achieve greatest amount ofsuccessful prediction.



Estimating Regularity

• There are three ways to be able making anestimate of the degree of economy and regularity

shown by the English language itself.▫ Taking any “system” or area of the language work

and make a list (inventories)

▫ Using inventory and statistical survey

▫ Making direct checks



Inventories

There are two patterns in this method

a) Sentence Pattern

We get a large number of patterns with arelatively small number of sentence constituentitems.

b) Verb centered patternThe verb is the central feature of the sentence inEnglish, and, to a large extent, the grammaticalform of the sentence has to be fitted to its verb.



Inventories with Statistical Information

a) A survey of inventory of verb forms accordingto frequency of its occurence.

simple past narrative is the highest frequency ofoccurence

past progressive “at that moment” is the lowest

frequency of occurence. b) A survey of using noun groups to encourage and

support the use of “stem-form English” in dailylife.



Native Speakers’ Choice

Noun groups in English are characterizied by a

complicated formal system for communicatinginformation which in many learners‟ mothertongue is incidental or contextual.

(-s) inflection indicates :• Plural x Singular ( a and the)

• Possessive x Nonpossessive

• a and the are used to plural and singular.

Example :• A toucan has a long beak

• The toucan has a long beak

• Toucans have long beaks

• The toucans have long beaks



The Teacher’s Knowledge: The

Learner’s Prediction There is a substitution table made by the teacher :

The learner is expected to recognize and become familiar with the construction verb + to + stem. But, the learnercannot use the substitution table without becoming awarenot only of the “horizontal” relationship, but of the“vertical” relationship

1 2 3 4 5

Hope do it

I Expect go there

We Intend to meet them tomorrow

want Write to him



Probability and Prediction

There are two aspects of Predictability :

1. Basically that of regularity and have seen thatonly partial regularity

2. This is the use of previous knowledge ofprobabilities to messages while they are being

transmitted, or on occasion, after they have been transmitted.



Twelve signs of the message : gt a gd jb & mo pa

For example : get, got, gut, goat, garret, garnet,gout, gust, great, and so on.

Twenty one signs of standard English: get a good

job and mo pa



Application of previous knowledge of probabilitieshas to happen at the same time as the reception of

the message.For example :

1. Prediction of Letter

/ð/ - /i/ - /s/2. Stressed Syllable of word

This is a „green „book



Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP)

and Communicative Dynamism (CD)

FSP is a concept of the disribution of information(known information and new information)

Communicative Dynamism is the constituent partsof FSP that have varying degrees to present theinformations.

Low CD Known InformationHigh CD New Information



(1)Defined or described in this general manner,learning is clearly one of the many manifestations

of physiologal homeostasis.(2)Physiologically, it is a neuromuscularhomeostatic condition ensuring the survival of theorganism in a changing and often unfavorableexternal physical environment.

.



(3)To an observer of behavior, learning is ahomeostatic mechanism the aim of which is to

maintain the life, substance, and energy of theliving creature.

(4)And like any homeostatic mechanism, it must

be controlled and actuated by some form ofnegative feedback of information about the degreeof its effectiveness



• Let us consider two sentences:

• 1. Susan is knitting a pullover for John.

• 2. She is doing something for him.



• the distribution of the and a.

The, being from its meaning anaphoric, precedes a

previously mentioned noun and tends to occur in

low CD sentence positions

a frequently precedes a not previously mentioned

noun and tends to occur in high CD sentence positions.



• Word and sentence constituent order, a basic

element a FSP, can be varied only to limited

extents in English

• context is necessarily an element of FSP.

Because of its contextual importance, a word

in a normally low CD sentence position may

have high CD



• Actually a very interesting and revealing

technique may be used, that of the “cloze” test,

or exercise as it becomes. In this type of

exercise every sixth word (for instance) is

omitted from a text and has to be restored

(guessed) by the learner.



• It is possible

(a) to omit words at regular intervals, which means

random omission as far as the prediction ofcode or FSP is concerned,

(b) to omit selected words, e.g., one in each line of

text, so that the tester or teacher can control whether the omission requires inference aboutthe code or inference from semantic context.



• solving a crossword puzzle involves inference

at the level of the word. Apart, from semantic

clues, the puzzle solver uses the clues of word

length and letter sequence probabilities.



• The first thing to recognize is that classroomattention is frequently directed to low CD

features, the so-called structure words, and themorphological features

• The second point to be made is that when the

whole of an utterance is entirely familiar andevenly spoken, not only the listener‟s butprobably the speaker‟s own response to the CDof the sentence parts may have been reduced.



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A Survey of Error Analysis - H.V. George

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