CHAPTER 2The Nature of Learner language

Source: Rod Ellis 2003 Second Language Acquisition pp. 15-30

Anhar Teo Sandrea2201410108

There are good reasons for focusing on errors:

They are a conspicuous featured language, raising the important question of ‘Why do learners make errors?’

It is useful for teachers to know what errors learners make.

Paradoxically, it is possible that making errors may actually help learners to learn when they self-correct the errors they make

The first step to analysing learners errors is to identify them.

To identify errrors we have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language which correspond with them

We need to distinguish errors and mistakes. Errors reflect gaps in learner’s knowledge; they occur because the learner does not know what is correct. Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance; they occur because in particular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows.

Check the consistently of learner’s performance. If they consistently substitute ‘contain’ for ‘contained’ this would indicate a lack of knowledge-an error.

Ask the learners to try to correct their own deviant utterences.

There are several ways of describing errors:

Classify errors into grammatical ways. Try to identify the different kinds of

errors.

Classifying errors in this ways can help us to diagnose learners’ problem s at any one stage of their development and also to plot how changes in error patterns occur over time

Errors are, to a large extent, systematic and to a certain extent, predictable. Errors are not only universal but also common errors

some errors that most learners usually do are:

Learners commit error of omission.Example: learners leave out the article ‘a’ and ‘the’ Learners commit overgeneralization

errorsExample: the use of ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’ Learners commit transfer errors

(attempt to make use of their L1 knowledge).

Global errors, violate the overall structure of a sentence and for this reason may make difficult to process

Local errors, affect only a single constituent in the sentence and are perhaps less likely to create any processing problems.

We can explore the universality of L2 acquisition by examining the developmental pattern learners below: THE EARLY STAGES OF L2 ACQUISITION THE ORDER OF ACQUISITION SEQUENCE OF ACQUISITION SOME IMPLICATION

What learners do when exposed to the L2 in communicative settings: Some L2 learners particularly if they are

children, undergo a silent period. Some learners talk to themselves in the L2

even when they decline to talk. When they begin to talk L2, their speech is

likely to manifest two particular characteristic.

Some learners find difficult to speak in full sentences so they frequently leave words out.

To investigate, the researchers choose a number of grammatical structures to

study (auxiliary be and plural -s). Collect samples and identify the accurancy. This

enables them to arrive at an accuracy order.

The acquisition of a particular grammatical structure, therefore, must be seen as a process involving transitional construction.

Acquisition follows a A-shaped course of development; that is, initially learners may display a high level of accuracy only to apparently regress later before finally once again performing in accordance with target-language norms

Learners are likely to pass trough the different stages (how L2 learners acquire irreglar past tense forms) :

The discovery of common patterns in the way in which learner language changes over time is one of the most important findings of SLA. It provides further support for the conclusion reached from the study of learner errors, namely that L2 acquisition is systematic, and to a large extent, universal, reflecting ways in which internal cognitive mechanism control acquisition, irrespective of the personal background of learners or the setting in which they learn

The important factor that occounts for the systematic variable are:

The Linguistic context The situational context The psycholinguistic context

Thank You