The NATURE OF LEARNER LANGUAGE

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Identifying errors

To identify errors we have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to e the normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language which correspond with them

How can we distinguish errors and mistakes

Check the consistency of leaners’ performance

Try to correct leaners’ own deviant utterances.

Describing errors

1.Classify errors into gramatical categories2.Identify general ways in which the leaner’s

utterances differ from the reconstructed target language utterances.

3.Ommision (leaving out an item that is requred for an utterance to be considered grammatical)

Explaining Errors

• The identification and description of errors are preliminaries to the much more interesting task of trying to explain why they occur

Explaining Errors

Omission Errors e.g They leave out the article ‘a’ and ‘the’ and leave the –s plural nouns.

An overgeneralization Errorse. g the use of ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’

Transfer Errorsleaners’s attempts to make use of their L1 language (Leaners create their own

rules).

Developmental patterns

The early stages of L2 acquisitionThe order of acquisitionSequence of acquisitionSome implicationsications

The early stages of L2 acquisition

Acquisition Order Leaners begin to learn the grammar of the L2.

The sequence of acquisitionLeaners learn particular grammatical

structure, such as past tense.

The order of acquisition

To investigate the order of Acquisition,Choose a number of grammatical

structures to studyCollect samples of learnerIdentify how accurately each feature is

used by different leaners.

Sequence of acquisition

Must be seen as a process involving transitional constructions.

Transitional construction U-shaped course of development Restructuring

Some implications

Some linguistic features (particularly grammatical) are inherently easier to learn than others.

Example learners master plural –s before third person –s

it has implication for both SLA theory and for language teaching.

Variability in learner language

• Variability in learner language is systematic because learners use their linguistic sources in predictable ways

• The use of specific grammatical forms has been shown to vary according to the linguistic context, the situational context, and psycholinguistic context