The N ature of L earner L anguage

1. The Natureof Learner Language Ellis, Rod. 2003. Second Language Acquisition.Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 15-30. AYU NETA F.D. 2201410025

2. Errors and error analysis There are good reasons for focusing on errors. They are a conspicuous feature of learner 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.

3. Identifying errors we have to compare the centences learners produce with what seem to be the normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language which correspond with them. • Example: A man and a little boy was watching him. • It should be: A man and a little boy were watching him. Identifying errors

4. Sometimes, however, learners produce sentences that are possible target language sentences but not preffered ones. • Example: ... went in the traffic. • A native speaker would probably prefer to say: ... went into the traffic.

5. At other times, it is difficult to reconstruct the correct sentence because we are not sure what the learner meant to say. • Example: The big of them contained a snake. • The correct sentence is: The bigger of them contained a snake.

6. Errors reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge; they occur because the learner does not know what is correct. • Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance; they occur because, in a particular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows. • Example ‘mistake’: The big of them contained a snake. • The verb correctly: The basketcontaina snake. We need to distinguish errors and mistakes.

7. One way might be to check the consistency of learners’ performance. • Another way might be to ask learners to try to correct their own deviant utterances. How can we distinguish errors and mistakes?

8. There are several ways of doing this. • One way is to classify errors into grammatical categories. We could gather all the errors relating to verbs and then identify the different kinds of verb errors in our sample—errors in the past tense, for example. Describing errors

9. Another way might be to try to identify general ways in which the learners’ utterances differ from reconstructed target language utterances. • Classifying errors in these ways can help us to diagnose learners’ learning problems at any one stage of their development and, also, to plot how changes in error patterns occur over time.

10. The identification and description of errors are preliminaries to the much more interesting task of tring to explain why they occur. • Errors are not sistematic; many of them are also universal. But some errors are common only to learners who share the same mother tongue or whose mother tongues manifest the same linguistic property. Explaining errors

11. Learners commit errors of omission. Ex: they leave out the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ and leave the –s plural nouns. • The use of ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’ is an example of an overgeneralization error. • Other errors, however, reflect learners’ attempts to make use of their L1 knowledge. These are known as transfer errors.

12. The purpose of the error analysis is to help learners learn an L2, there is a need to evaluate errors. • Some errors, known as global errors, violate the overall stucture of a sentence and for this reason may make it difficult to process. Ex: The policeman was in this corner whistle... which is dificult to understand because the basic structure of the sentence is wrong. • Other errors, known as local errors, affect only a single constituent in the sentence and are, perhaps, less likely to create any processing problems. Errors evaluation

13. Some L2 learners, particularly if they are children, undergo a silent period. They make no attempt to say anything to begin with. The silent period may serve as a preparation for subsequent production. • The second characteristic of early L2 speech is propositional simplification. Learners find it difficult to speak in full sentences so they frequently leave words out. • Ex: Me no blue. meaning ‘i don’t have a blue crayon’. Developmental patternsThe early stages of L2 acquisition

14. One concerns the acquisition order. Do learners acquire the grammatical structures of an L2 in a definite order? For example, do they learn a feature like progressive –ing (as in ‘painting’) before a feature like past tense –ed (as in ‘painted’). • Another question concerns the sequence of acquisition of particular grammatical structures, such as past tense.

15. They collect samples of learner language and identify how accurately each feature is used by different learners. This enables them to arrive at an accuracy order. That is, they rank the features according to how accurately each feature is used by the learners. • Most of the learners they have studied perform progressive –ing, auxiliary be, and plural –s most accurately, suggesting that they acquired these features first. • Another problem is that the reasearch treats acquisition as if it is a process of accumulating linguistic structures. Even the simplest structure is subject to a process of gradual development, manifesting clear stages. To investigate this we need to consider the sequence of acquisition. The order of acquisition

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

17. Acquisition follows a U-shaped courseof 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. • It is clear that the acqusition of what looks like a simple grammatical feature such as past tense is, in fact, a highly complex affair. • For example, with activity verbs learners are more likely to substitute a progressive form for the past tense form: After that the weather was nice so we swimming in the ocean. In contrast, with state verbs they subtitute the simply form of the verb: Last night everything seem very quiet and peaceful. • In the case of past tense, at any one time of learner may mark some verbs correctly for past tense, fail to mark others at all, and overgeneralize the regular –ed and the progressive –ing forms with yet others verbs.

18. Some linguistic features (particularly grammatical ones) are inherently easier to learn than others. For example, the fact that learners master plural –s before third person –s suggest that pliral –s is in some sense easier to learn. This has implications for both SLA theory and for language teaching. • Learners naturally learn one feature before another they must necessarily do so. A key question for both SLA and language teaching, then, is whether orders and sequences of acquisition can be altered through formal instruction. Some implications

19. We have also seen that learner language is variable. At any given stage of development, learners sometimes employ one form and sometimes another. Thus, one type of error may alternate with another type: Yesterday the thief steal the suitcase. Yesterday the thief stealing the suitcase. or an error may alternate with the correct target-language form: Yesterday the thief steal the suitcase. Yesterday the thief stealing the suitcase. Variability in learner language

20. These observations do not invalidate the claim that learner language is systematic since it is possible that variability is also systematic. • It appears that learners vary in their use of the L2 according to linguistic context. In one context they use one form while in other context they use alternate forms. • Learners also vary the linguistic forms they use in accordance with the situational context. In this respect, learners are no different from native speakers. • Another important factor that accounts for the systematic nature of variability is the psycholinguistic context- whether learners have the opportunity to plan their production.