THE NATURE OF LEARNER LANGUAGE

1. THE NATURE OF LEARNER LANGUAGE Ellis 2003, Chapter 2 pp. 15 – 30 AmaliahKhairina

2. Errors and errors analysis • Developmental pattern • Variability in learner language

3. Errors and Errors Analysis • Some good reasons for focusing on errors : • They are a conspicuous feature of learner language, raising the important question ‘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 error they make.

4. Error and errors analysis : • Identifying errors • Describing errors • Explaining errors • Error evaluation

5. Identifying Errors • To identify errors we have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be the normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language which correspond with them.

6. How can we distinguish errors and mistake? To check the consistency of learners’ performance. If they consistently substitute ‘contain’ for ‘contained’ this would indicate a lack of knowledge – an error.

7. Describing Errors • There are several ways of doing this : • To classify errors into grammatical categories. • To try to identify general ways in which the learners’ utterances differ from the reconstructed target – language utterances.

8. Explaining Errors • Errors are, to a large extent, systematic and, to a certain extent, predictable. • Errors are not systematic; many of them are also universal.

9. Error evaluation • Purpose of the error analysis : to help learners learn an L2, there is a need to evaluate errors. • 1. Global errors • 2. Local errors ERRORS

10. 1. Global error : violate the overall structure of a sentence and for this reason may make it difficult to process. 2. Local error : affect only a single constituent in the sentence and are perhaps less likely to create any processing problems.

11. Developmental Patterns We can explore the universality of L2 acquisition by examining the developmental pattern learners. The patterns are : • The early stages of L2 Acquisition • The order of acquisition • Sequence of acquisition • Some implication

12. 1. The early stages of L2 • We can find out how a language is learned as a natural, untutored process by investigating what learners do when exposed to the L2 in communicative setting. • The characteristics are : • One is the kind of formulaic chunks which we saw in the case studies. • Propositional simplification.

13. 2. The order of acquisition • To investigate the order of acquisition, researchers do : 1. Choose a number of grammatical structures to study 2. Collect samples of learner language and identify how accurately each feature is used by the learners. Accuracy order means that the researchers rank the features according to how accurately each feature is used by the learners.

14. 3. Sequence of acquisitionHow L2 learners acquire irregular paste tense forms.

15. 4. Some implications The work on developmental patterns is important for another reason. It suggests that some linguistic features (particularly grammatical ones) are inherently easier to learn than others.

16. Variability in Learning Language • Learner language is variable • Learners sometimes employ one form and sometimes another • One type of error may alternate with another type • An error may alternate with the correct target - language

17. Important factor that accounts for the systematic of variability : 1. Linguistic Context The effect of linguistic context are also evident in learner use of the verb ‘to be’. 2. Situational Context Learners vary their use of language similarity. 3. Psycholinguistic Context Whether learners have the opportunity to plan their production.