2

THE NATURE OF
LEANER
LANGUAGE
Group 3
 The main way of investigating L2
acquisition is by collecting and
describing samples of learner language.

• Focus on the kinds of errors learners make and change

• Describing the stages in the acquisition of particular

grammatical

• Examine the variability found in learner language

 Errors and error analysis
Focus on what learners get wrong rather
than on what they get right.
1. raising the important question of Why do learners make errors?

2. it is useful for teachers to know what errors learners make

3. making errors may actually help learners to learn when they self-correct
the errors they make.
 Identifying Errors
One day an Indian gentleman, a snake charmer, arrived in
England by plane. He was coming from Bombay with two pieces
of luggage. The big of them contained a snake. A man and a
little boy was watching him in the custom area. The man said to
the little boy ‘Go and speak with this gentleman.’ when the little
boy was speaking with the traveller, the thief took the biig
suitcase and went out quickly. When the victim saw that he
cried ‘Help me! Help me! A thief! A thief!’ the policeman was in
this corner whistle but it was too late. The two thieves escape
with the big suitcase, took their car and went in the traffic. They
passed near a zoo and stop in a forest. There they had a big
surprise. The basket contain a big snake.
 The answer key
A man and a little boy was watching (were)
Went in the traffic (into)
The big of them (bigger or big one)
The two thieves escape (escaped)
Distinguishing errors and
mistakes
• Errors => occur because the learner does not know what is
correct.
• Mistakes => occur because the learner is unable to perform
what he or she knows

Example of mistake:
The big of them contained a snake
The basket contain a snake
 Describing Errors
• One way is to classify errors into grammatical
categories

• Another way might be to try to identify general ways

in which the learners’ utterances differ from the
reconstructed target-language utterances. Such ways
include omission, misinformation and
misordering.
Omission :
Leaving out an item that is required for an utterance to be
considered grammatical
For example: she _ sleeping.

Misinformation :
Using one grammatical form in place of another grammatical
form
For example: the use of big instead of bigger

Misordering :
Putting the words in an utterance in the wrong order
For example: what he is doing?
 Explaining Error
• Error are systematic
Jean’s verb error described above do not involve haphazard
substitutions of past tense verb. This systematic suggests that jean
has constructed some kind of rule. Albeit a rule different from that of
the target language.

• Error are universal

The kind of past tense error found in Jean’s speech has been attested
in the speech of many learners where they substitute the simple
form of the verb for the past tense form.
 Errors Can Have Different
Sources
• Omission
They leave out the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ and leave the –s of plural nouns.

• Overgeneralization Error
The use of ‘eated’ in place of ‘ate’

• Transfer Error
Learners are to be seen as actively involved in shaping the ‘grammars’ they
are learning. They ‘create’ their own rules.
 Error evaluation
• Global Error : violate the overall the structure of the
sentence
example: the policeman was in this corner whistle ...

• Local error : a single constituent

example: the verb
 THANK YOU
Abdurrohman Wahid, Alvin Khusnia, Elif Septia Devy, Nur
Fitriyah, Qomari Laili, Saadatul Abadiyah