Error Analysis (education)

Error analysis is a way for linguists, researchers, and educators to identify errors made by second language learners. Error analysis was created by Stephen Corder in 1970 in an attempt to streamline a larger concept known as contrastive analysis. Where the latter holds that errors made by second language learners are the result of what they know of their first (native) language, error analysis poses that specific errors are made for specific reasons possibly unrelated to transfer. Error analysis is limiting in nature as the process of identifying errors is time-consuming and fails to recognize the correct usage patterns adopted by the second language learner.

English as a Second Language > Error Analysis Keywords Asynchronous; Contrastive Analysis; Error Analysis; First (native) language (L1); Interference; Interlanguage; Linguistics; Morphology; Second (target) Language (L2); Second Language Acquisition; Transference; Transitional Competence

Overview

Error analysis can be used in any field. Many mathematicians and scientists analyze the errors made by others to determine better ways of teaching or more efficient ways to communicate data. In the field of language acquisition, a category of linguistics, error analysis studies the types and causes of errors made by second language learners. Rather than counting mistakes like misplaced commas, error analysts identify the reasons why commas are misplaced. For example, if commas are regularly omitted in the same place within sentences - rather than occasional or random omissions - error analysis could identify a systematic flaw in thinking, like a faulty definition of a comma. An occasional or random comma omission, on the other hand, could be caused by any number of things, from the speed at which the L2 learner is writing to the incorrect identification of a comma (mistaking it for a semi-colon, for example).

Error analysis is part of a larger theory of acquisition, contrastive analysis, which studies a pair of languages to identify within their linguistic structures what is similar and what is different. Using error analysis, linguists and educators can further identify what errors are made from the first language (L1) to the second (L2). For example, the random omission of a comma would probably indicate that the L2 learner was writing too quickly to take a pause between two complete ideas into account. However, the systematic omission of every comma between two independent clauses is most likely indicative of a misunderstanding of the rules of a comma. Mistaking that rule in a person's L1 will probably cause the same mistake in the L2 as well; this is known as transference and is the only cause for error that contrastive analysis allows.

Transference

Transferring a rule from one language to another when the structure of the languages is similar is referred to as positive transfer. If the structure is different, however, the transference is considered negative. This categorizing is not to be confused with positive and negative as being good and bad. A negative transfer is not necessarily a bad thing; it is simply a thing that happens when a second language learner tries to apply a rule of his native language to a second language that has a different structure and, therefore, different rules (of grammar, syntax, tense, etc.) From an educator's perspective, positive transfer is not particularly noteworthy. It is the negative transfer that causes teachers angst.

Dr. Steve Gras, professor and ESL Bridge Program coordinator at the State University College of New York at Plattsburgh, provides the following clarification.

Learners of English who speak Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. have a much more difficult time attaining a high level of proficiency than do speakers of French, Spanish, German, etc. These latter languages have much more in common with the sound system, vocabulary, and grammar of English than the former languages. Conversely, Asian languages are so dissimilar that it takes two or three times as long for speakers of those languages to be proficient enough to handle college-level courses … It is much easier for Spanish or German speakers to pronounce English than speakers of Thai or Vietnamese. (Actually, difficulties in pronunciation are best explained by contrastive analysis). Also, French speakers can learn the vocabulary of English much more quickly than Korean speakers whose vocabulary has little in common with English. French grammar is quite similar to that of English in comparison to Korean or Japanese (Personal communication, January 3, 2008).

Stephen Corder is credited with establishing error analysis and distinguishing it as a vital component of contrastive analysis theory. Corder noted that without error analysis, contrastive analysis theory lacked a predictive element. Identifying L1 transfer as the cause of second language errors minimized the knowledge L2 learners acquired but could not communicate. For example, the systematic omission of commas in the second language would tell contrastive analysis theorists that a learner omits commas in his first language and is simply transfering that information to the new (second) language. Corder pushed the concept of errors as having a valuable place in the education field. After all, knowing what errors L2 students make and why they make them is crucial to effective instruction.

Interlanguage

Corder posited that when presented with an entire system of language - in addition to the knowledge a person has about his native language - a person will make errors while learning; those errors, according to Corder, can be based on the circumstance (informal versus formal environment), or on a systematic misinterpretation of the language structure (not truly understanding the purpose of a comma, for example). Both errors point to a person's proficiency in the second language; making a mistake because she's tired is very different than making a mistake because she doesn't understand how and why a comma is used. In many instances, a second language learner will adapt to L2 acquisition through a concept known as interlanguage.

Interlanguage is a term associated with contrastive analysis and Corder. Interlanguage references a language between two languages. Second language learners sometimes create an "interlanguage" between their native language and the L2 they are trying to acquire. In these instances, interlanguage is not necessarily a negative form of adaption; it is a way for L2 learners to adapt to a new language system and does include the transfer and projection of the linguistic structure of the L1 to that of the L2. Error analysis helps to determine which rules are pooled into the interlanguage to further understand the complicated undertaking of second language acquisition.

Applications

Writing

Interlanguage may be the route of errors Crompton (2005) discovered when analyzing the written work of his Malaysian students. The teacher noted a common misuse of the word "where" in his students' writing of English, and he believed that his students were making relative assumptions about how to use the word based on other rules they already knew about English (p. 158). Crompton (2005) also indicated that while there is much discussion of relative clauses in English as a foreign (or second) language in textbooks, there was little printed in reference to the effective use of where in those same texts (p. 159). He, therefore, conducted a study focusing on his students' misuse of the word. The study had a two-fold purpose. The first was to determine the basis of the error; the second was to create interventions for instructors with regard to teaching English to students whose first language is Malay (p. 158).

The difficulty Crompton's students were having could have been predicted, especially when one looks at the big picture surrounding the use of the word, where. According to Crompton, the term is identified in various reference publications as being part of four different classes of words: it is an adverb; it is an adverb and a conjunction; it is an adverb, a conjunction, and a pronoun; and, finally, it is a preposition (2005, p. 161). It is no wonder, then that "Bruneian [Malaysian] learners of English are using where at a rate of nearly double that of native English speakers (NES) … and nearly triple that of NES academic writers" (Crompton, 2005, p. 160).

Crompton's analysis focused entirely on his students' written work. He admits that concentrating solely on writing forced him to make interpretative judgments about what his students intended. This is not a generally acceptable form of research, and as Crompton points out, it put a great deal of pressure on him (2005, 162). He notes that

An analyst is forced into two interpretative acts: (a) attempting to infer the likeliest meaning of a faulty construction and (b) attempting to find a construction which expresses the inferred meaning in a way which most resembles what the writer actually wrote … Did the writer intend to modify a noun phrase or a verb phrase; in other words are we looking at a faulty relative clause or a faulty adverbial clause? In some cases there might be simple ambiguity and in others an unacceptable sentence might permit more than one plausible re-construction (Crompton, 2005, p. 162-163).

After reviewing his students' texts, Crompton concluded that his Malay writers were attempting to write adverbial clauses using where as a subordinating conjunction, expressing a "logical relation between two clauses" (2005, p. 167). As a means for intervention, Crompton encourages that ESL students be exposed to English in its written form as much as possible. To follow up on a student's incorrect use of any part of L2 acquisition, he notes that one-on-one discussion of errors - in addition to assigned reading - is a reliable method of ceasing such errors in the future (p. 168).

Online Learning (Writing) Systems

Learning Japanese is a challenging prospect to anyone interested in second language acquisition. Without effective instruction such acquisition can pose significant problems for students. Feng, Ogata, & Yano (2000) surveyed thirty-five students from China, Malaysia, Iran, Philippines, Canada, and Bangladesh who were intermediate learners of Japanese. The students noted that writing was the most difficult skill to learn with regard to the Japanese language; the students identified the most specific causes of difficulty to be the use of Chinese characters; "verbs, adjectives, and adjectival nouns in written Japanese" (Feng, et al., 2000). Of note is the students' disclosure that finding instructors to help them with error correction and supplemental instruction was also difficult (Feng, et al., 2000). As such, the researchers set out to identify a student-centered mechanism to both correct the errors these students were making and then to offer instruction regarding self-correction of those same errors in the future (Feng, et al., 2000).

Prior to the work by Feng, et al., two methods of error correction and explanation existed. The first comes in the form of a computerized database, named Goyoo (Sugiura & Oosou, 1997, as cited in Feng, et al., 2000). Goyoo was created to support Japanese writing students as it contains over 4,500 student texts that have been corrected and their errors explained by teachers. Students can access the papers, note whether or not they make similar errors and view a description of how and why to fix those errors (Feng, et al., 2000).

The second method is that of asynchronous assistance coming in the form of email exchanges between students and their instructors. The Communicative Correction Assistant system (CoCoA) requires the input of pen and paper documents and teacher correction (most commonly associated to a "real classroom") to assist second language learners (Ogata & Yano, 1997). The concern with this form of assistance is that a method of error analysis has not yet been created in which to decipher the cause of learner errors (Feng, et al., 2000).

As such, Feng, et al. proposed a Writing Error Analysis Model (WEAM) for the CoCoA system. This method is a combination of the first two already developed. Utilizing a collection of Japanese L2 texts, the WEAM analyzes writing errors and acts like a middle-man between the student and teacher. A student sends a document to his teacher through email. The teacher downloads the document into WEAM, which analyzes the errors and produces information regarding the error's probable origin, etc.. The teacher then makes comments and corrections within the student text and uploads the document back into WEAM, which allows the student view the document with both the teacher's comments and WEAM's analysis about specific errors. WEAM also identifies one of three actions for error correction. The first is that the student need not correct the error identified. The second suggests that correction is best, and the third insists that correction is necessary (Feng, et al., 2000, p. 83).

The researchers wanted to evaluate the effectiveness of WEAM and did so by investigating its use within the Japanese L2 class. The Japanese instructor and second language learners overwhelmingly agreed that the system was easy to use, provided effective information, and encouraged students to understand each error prior to correcting it. The latter helped students reduce their errors altogether (Feng, et al., 2000, 94). It is important to note here that while the use of WEAM occurred asynchroniously, the students were not trying to learn Japanese independently. They had an instructor who assisted them both within the classroom and during off-hours through the email exchange of various texts.

Reading

Chiappe & Siegel (2006) wanted to extend the process of error analysis to reading English in native and second language acquisition for children in first and second grades. Their subject pool consisted of thirty-six native English speakers and thirty-eight L2 English learners. The researchers note that there is a set of stages that children go through when they learn to read (Chall, 1983; Ehri, 1997; Frith, 1985; Gough, Juel, & Griffith, 1992, as cited in Chiappe & Siegel, 2006). Children "begin reading with a logographic, or whole-word approach; followed by an initial, phonological decoding stage; and end with an orthographic stage" Chiappe & Siegel, 2006, p. 136).

In the first stage, children use a form of transfer by connecting words to the visual features of them, like the tail of the g in the word "go." Next, children break down (decode) the sounds of the letters they know in order to sound them out and make a word (Ehri, 1997; Frith, 1985; Gough et al., 1992, as cited in Chiappe & Siegel, 2006, p. 136-137). For children in first grade, this step is a little more advanced in that they can relate the sounds of letters (Ehri, 1997, as cited in Chiappe & Siegel, 2006, p. 137). For example, when speaking the word, "phrase", a child will pronounce the "ph" like he would an "f" in "faze." Finally, children can project and use analogies to decode new words from old ones (Chiapple & Siegle, 2006, p. 137). An example of this is the student who concludes that cook has the same sound as book even though they begin with a different letter. It may appear that native speakers of English are the students referred to here; they are not. Chiapple & Siegle (2006) note that there is no difference in this process in L2 learners (p. 151).

Effects of Culture

The only difference noted in this study is the same one that separates students who take standardized exams: culture. The students learning English as a second language in this study were developmentally comparable to the L1 learners except when faced with visual stimulus relating to American culture (Chiapple & Siegle, 2006, p. 144). Furthermore, the only other significant finding between these two populations of learners was that L1 students (those who know English as their native language) were less likely to make an attempt at pronouncing words that were unfamiliar to them (Chiapple & Siegle, 2006, p. 144).

When considering basic literacy skills, we found that the performance profiles of ELL children were similar to native English speakers. Indeed, ELL [English language learners] and NS [native speakers of English] children showed comparable performance and growth in reading words … Furthermore, reading difficulties in English occurred with approximately the same frequency for native and non-native speakers of English … We also found support for the view that phonological awareness and phonological processing in English develop in a similar fashion for native and non-native English speakers (Chiapple & Siegle, 2006, p. 149).

The authors of this study do make clear one point: any conclusions drawn from this experiment are notable only within the population of middleclass students. Those students considered in lower and higher socioeconomic classes were not included in this study. However, some generalizations about reading development can be made across financial status. From the perspective of this study, error analyses shows that L1 and L2 English learners used similar strategies, including word recognition, to read words that were unfamiliar to them . Furthermore, there is no obvious difference in the way L2 learners process information while reading when compared to the L1 students. It is safe to offer that teachers can plan developmental activities for L1 or L2 learners based on the data collected from this study and trust that students will achieve reading skills at a similar rate.

Viewpoints

Error analysis is limiting regardless of what subject is being studied. While it holds valuable predictive capabilities, it also makes many language acquisition mistakes difficult to quantify. For example, error classification is quite inclusive. An error analyst can identify a type of error like omission or substitution. That same analyst can also note whether an error is out of context or at what level the error occurs, like vocabulary - a surface error, or syntax - a more deeply routed problem. In addition, errors can also be classified according to whether or not they actually change the meaning of a sentence or concept.

For example, it is common for a native English speaking child to say, "I braked it." While this is incorrect word form, it does not stem from faulty logic, and it implies that the child can project the rule of the past tense (and the use of "ed" endings) from word to word. As there is little question in what the child is trying to convey, correction from an instructor is not necessary in the case of a young child. Children develop language in predictable stages, as Chiappe & Siegle (2006) note. As the child in this example reads, hears, and continues to write English, he will learn the correct forms of brake and broke and utilize those forms in the future.

There are three notable problems with this type of error identification. First, collecting data that lists these errors doesn't necessarily tell a teacher what kind of error a student is making. Second, by focusing on the errors a student makes while speaking and/or writing, a teacher is not focused on the student's errors of interpretation, what he may be misunderstanding from what he reads or hears, for example. Finally, and possibly most importantly, by focusing primarily on errors, correct usage becomes ignored (Cherrington, 2000).

Conclusion

People who teach English to native speakers know that most students who don't know the logistics of grammar put a comma in a sentence where they would pause or take a breath if they were to read that sentence out loud. This error is caused by a misinterpretation of the English language structure. Knowing that there is a deep-routed misunderstanding behind the error - rather than an erroneous strategy like placing a comma precisely after every fourth word - gives a teacher the knowledge to approach comma instruction in a way other than attempting to thwart a bad habit. It is only through the analysis of the error, though, that allows the teacher to focus her instruction on the significance of it - the student doesn't know the structure of English. Teachers utilize this type of analysis all the time and value its worth in the classroom.

Terms & Concepts

Asynchronous: Occurring at different times.

Contrastive Analysis: The study of a pair of languages to identify their structural differences and similarities.

Error Analysis: The study of the types and causes of errors made by second language learners.

First (native) Language (L1): The first language a person learns to communicate (speak, write), generally because it is utilized in the home and/or community.

Interference: Rules of the native language obstructing knowledge of the new (second) language.

Interlanguage: A language system developed by a second language learner; identified when the learner uses strategies like language transfer, overgeneralisation, and simplification to acquire the L2.

Linguistics: The study of language.

Morphology: The study of word formation and structure, including inflection and origin.

Second (target) Language (L2): The second language a person learns or is attempting to learn.

Second Language Acquisition: The ability to communicate effectively (proficiently) in a second language.

Transference: Using the system of rules (i.e.: how sentences are formed) of one language to produce another language.

Transitional Competence: The ability to transfer a native language to a second language.

Bibliography

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