The nature of learner language

The nature of learner language

1. The kind of error learners make and how they change over time

2. Errors and error analysis

   • Errors are a conspicuous feature of learner language.
   • Useful for teachers to know what errors learners make
   • Errors may actually help learners to learn when they self-correct the errors they make

3. Identifying errors

   • Identify them
     • Compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be the "correct" sentences
   • Distinguish between errors and mistakes
     • Errors reflect gaps in a learners' knowledge, they occur because the learner doesn't know what is correct
     • Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance, they occur because the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows
     • Check the consistency of learners' performance
     • Ask learners to try to correct their own deviant utterances
       • Unable= error
       • Succesful= mistake

4. Describing errors

   • Classified into types
     • Grammatical categories
     • Omission
       • Leaving out an item
     • Misinformation
       • Using one grammatical form in place of another one
     • Misordering
       • Putting words in a wrong order
     • Helps us to diagnose learners' learning problems at any stage

5. Explaining errors

   • Errors are systematic and predictable, many of them are universal
   • They reflect the stage of development that the learner has reached
   • Learners commit errors of omission, overgeneralization, and transfer

6. Error evaluation

   • Some errors can consider more serious than others
   • Global erros, and local errors

7. Development patterns

   • All learners go trough a silent period
   • Acquisition progress
   • Sequence of acquisition
   • Learners regularly master some grammatical features before others

8. Variability in learner language

   • Systematic
   • Learners use the same grammatical form
   • Learners vary their use of L2 according to linguistic context, situational context, and psycholinguistic context