Stages of Error Analysis

Error Analysis is carried out in three successive stages as mentioned by Pit Corder (1973) These are (1) Recognition (2)Description and  (3) Explanation. There are a number of problems which one has to face in each of these stages. A thorough understanding of these problems along with possible measures toovercome them is necessary for a proper analysis of the errors.

1. Recognition of Errors

To recognize an error one should first of all know what is meant by the term ‘error’. Pit Corder uses the term “Erroneous” to mean those utterances which are either superficially deviant or inappropriate in terms of the target language grammar. He distinguishes between mistakes, lapses and errors. They correspond to what he calls           Pre-systematic, Post-systematic and Systematic errors.

i. Pre-systematic errors are those committed by the learners while he or she is trying to come to grips with a new point

ii. Post-systematic errors occur when one temporarily forgets a

iii. point that has been previously understood

Systematic errors are those which occur when the learner has formed inaccurate hypothesis about the target language (i.e. the language that he is learning).

Even native speakers utterances are full of slips of the tongue and lapses. These are supposed to increase under conditions of stress, indecision and fatigue. If this is the case with native speakers second language learners are sure to encounter these problems perhaps to a greater degree. In such cases the teacher may not always be able to distinguish such lapses from errors.

As Pit Corder points out, “Recognition of error is thus crucially dependent upon correct interpretation of the learners’ intentions”. He talks about two types of utterances:

The two types of utterances mentioned by Pit Corder are as follows:

(1) Overtly erroneous -Superficially deviant

(2) Covertly erroneous - Superficially well formed but not meaning what the learner intended to mean

To arrive at a knowledge of what the learner intended to say one can ask the learner to explain in his mother tongue what he wanted to say. An interpretation based on this is called ‘authoritative interpretation’. Then the utterances are reconstructed keeping in mind what the native speaker would have said to convey that message in that context. This is called an ‘authoritative reconstruction’.

In cases where one does not have access to the learner what is called a ‘plausible interpretation’ and a ‘plausible reconstruction’ could be made. This is done by studying the surface structure of the text-sentence in conjunction with the information derived from its context. Then the utterances are reconstructed to convey what the learner could possibly have intended to mean. To identify errors the original utterances are compared with their plausible or authoritative reconstructions. Once the recognition has taken place description could begin.

2. Description of Errors

In this step one tries to show the learners how they have failed to realize the intended message. There are problems which prevent proper description as the researcher needs an extremely good insight into the learner’s mind. Mc. Donough (1981) remarks that it should not be supposed that all learners take the same route to the same error “Nor should it be assumed that one learner may not at different times produce the same error for different reasons”.

But Pit Corder feels this is irrelevant for “ our object in error analysis is to explain errors linguistically and psychologically in order to help the learner to learn”. He suggests that we should look for errors that occur repeatedly so that we can observe the rule that the learner may be using and try to describe it.

This way only systematic errors are taken into consideration. This is a difficult task because individual learners may be highly inconsistent in their errors. Corder agrees that inconsistency is more characteristic of errors than systematicity. Once the errors are described properly explanation of errors can begin.

3. Explanation of Errors

Explanation is still largely speculative because of our limited knowledge of the psychological and neurological process involved in language learning. The same error could be looked at from various points of view. For example. a learner’s mother tongue has only one way of referring to future time while the target language has three ways of referring to the same. Here the learner has problems and commits errors. In this case it is difficult to decide whether the error was caused by mother tongue interference or because of the confusion of the rules of the target language.

According to David Lott (1983) mother tongue does not actually interfere though it does not give any guide to the learner. Nickel(1971) takes a wider view and considers the above example as an interference error. But he says in such cases we should distinguish between direct and indirect interference. Dulay and Burt (1974) define interference as the automatic transfer of the structure of the target language due to habit.

Pit Corder (1973) refers to three types of errors. These are : (1)transfer errors. (2) analogical errors and (3) teaching-induced errors. Selinker (1974) suggests five processes which are more or less similar to that suggested by Pit Corder but in a ddition includes strategies of second language learning and strategies of second

language communication to explain the nature of errors. Once we have decided to give an explanation from a particular point of view we can start classifying the errors. But there are a number of problems in classification too.

2.1.3 Classification of Errors

The main problem one faces in the area of classification is that one error can be classified in a number of ways. The following example dealt with by A.K.Sinha (1977) makes clear some of the problems one has to face while analyzing syntactic errors. The example is as under:

(a) The plane reached Detroit. There it stopped for half an hour.

(b) The plane reached Detroit and stopped there for half an hour.

(c) The plane reached Detroit. There stopped for half an hour.

In (C) according to the structuralist the sentence is erroneous because the subject is missing. The proper use of it is made in (a). According to a transformationalist a ‘conjoined coreference subject deletion rule’ is used in the wrong place in (c). It has been rightly used in (b). Application of a Hindi-knowing speaker of English would say it is the ‘the coreference subject deletion rule’ in Hindi which permits intersentential deletion of a coreferential subject.

A number of examples of this type have been cited by many to make the point that differences of opinion exist with regard to classification of errors. But once the choice is made as to which type of classification one wants to employ one can deal with it efficiently. Whatever the approach may be one thing stands out clear. Learners employ certain strategies to simplify their learning task. This is true whether they are learning their mother tongue or a second language. This fact is clearly seen when one studies their syntactic errors. Hence the study of learners’ errors could help us in two ways. Firstly we can understand the processes of language acquisition and secondly we can prepare materials which are suited to the needs of the learner.

So far the discussion has focused on how Error Analysis helps us gain a better understanding of the processes of language learning. Looking at it from a different point of view it can be seen how various studies which have been carried out with a view to finding out how language is acquired by children have changed our attitude and approach towards errors.