The Nature of Learner Language

1. The Nature of Learner Language Ellis 2003, chapter 2 pp. 15 -30 By Aida W. Wardhananti 2201410055

2. Error and Error Analysis Reasons for focusing on errors: • The errors are feature of learner language • It is useful for teacher to know what errors learners make • Making errors may help learners to learn how to correct the errors

3. Step in Analyzing Errors

4. Identifying Errors • To identify errors, we have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be the normal or correct sentences in target language which correspondent with them. Comparing

5. The Different of Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance. They occur because the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows. The learner cannot correct the deviation. Errors reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge. They occur because the learner does not know what the correct is. The learner cannot correct the deviation.

6. Describing Errors The ways of describing and classifying the errors:

7. Explaining Errors It is about explaining why the errors occur. e.g., People of Southern Africa will tend to have error in saying “We went at Johannesburg” despite of “to”. It is because the people of Southern Africa has one preposition ‘at’ only to express both location and direction.

8. Different sources of errors • Omission error e.g., leaving the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ • Overgeneralization error e.g., using ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’ • Transfer error Using their L1 knowledge

9. Error Evaluation Some errors can be considered more serious than others.

10. Developmental Patterns

11. The early stages of L2 acquisition The characteristic of the early L2: • Children undergo a silent period They make no attempt to say anything to begin with. They learn a lot through listening and reading • Proportional simplification Learners find it difficult to speak in full sentences so they frequently leave words out.

12. The order of acquisition Natural Order e.g., Schmidt found that Wes, whose first language was Japanese, performed plural ‘–s’ very poorly, much less accurately than irregular past. Wes did NOT follow the natural order.

13. Sequence of acquisition

14. Example Stage in acquisition of the past tense of ‘eat’

15. Some Implication • L2 acquisition is systematic and reflecting ways in which internal cognitive mechanisms control acquisition. • The work on developmental patterns suggests that some linguistic features are inherently easier to learn than other e.g., learners master plural –s before third person suggests that plural –s is in some sense easier to learn. This has implications for both SLA theory and for language teaching.

16. Variability in Learner Language

17. Factors that accounts for the systematic nature of variability

19. Thanks^_^