The significance of learner's errors

The significance of learner's errors

1. Schools of learners' errors

   • Errors are a sign of present inadequacy of teaching techniques
   • Error ocurr, we must focus on techniques for dealing with errors after they have ocurred

2. Learning of lenguage

   • Mother tongue
     • Inevitable
     • Part of the maturational process
     • Starts with no overt language behavior
     • Predisposition to develop language behavior
     • No one expects a child to not commit "errors"
       • systematic errors are the best evidence that a child possesses construction rules
     • unlimited number of hypotheses about the nature of the language he is learning
   • Second language
     • No inevitability
     • Begins after the maturational process is largely complete
     • Language behavior already exists
     • Replacement of the predisposition by some other force
     • The only hypotheses needed are: Are the Systems of the new language the same or different from those of the language I know?' 'And if different, what is their nature?'

3. New hypothesis

   • Human infant is born with an innate predisposition to acquire language; must be exposed to language for the acquisition process to start; possesses an internal mechanism of unknown nature which enable him from the limited data available to him to construct a grammar of a particular language.

4. Learner's errors

   • Mistakes
     • Performance errors, unsystematic, not important for the process of language learning
   • Error
     • Systematic errors of the learner from which we are able to reconstruct their knowledge of the language to date
       • Significance
         • For teacher
           • Tells them how far towards the goal the learner has progressed and what remains for him to learn
         • For researcher
           • Provides evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language
         • For learner
           • A device the learner uses in order to learn