Error Analysis

When examining the writing or speech of young children who are learning English, it is quite
intuitive for educators to identify patterns from individual students as well as among an entire
group of learners. Error analysis concerns itself with identifying these types of errors; however,
not all errors are (or should be) treated equally since their causes can vary. We know, for
example, that young native speakers of English tend to regularize many irregular verbs in the
past tense.

Infinitive Regularized Standard

Form Form Form
to hit *hitted hit
to buy *buyed bought
to seek *seeked sought
to teach *teached taught
to catch *catched caught
to see *seed saw
to fight *fighted fought

Rather than cause alarm, linguists and psychologists have determined that children’s tendency to
regularized irregular verbs demonstrates their ability to apply the simple past tense rule of
English morphology to different verbs (e.g., to walk > walked). It is actually a healthy and
necessary sign of first language acquisition. Similarly, second language learners of English (as
children, teenagers, or adults) will also tend to regularize irregular entities. Thus, the cause is not
the learner’s L1 interfering with their acquisition of English, but rather it is a normal issue that
all learners will confront when learning English, even children who grow up in English
monolingual households.

For many years, linguists have been trying to answer the question, “Where exactly do second
language errors come from?” When working with language learners, we may develop our own
theories as to why certain mistakes are made. It is quite possible that some of your ideas
actually align with what researchers are saying. Generally, linguists discuss three sources of
language errors:

(1) Transfer from the learner’s L1 [First-Language Interference]

(2) Target language patterns learned sequentially [Developmental Sequences]
(3) Various environments where the L2 has been learned [Input Variation]

Together, these factors influence the linguistic production in a learner’s second language and
pose certain challenges during the acquisition process. Conceptually, the learner’s L2 linguistic
competence can be viewed as its own language (called “Interlanguage”), sort of like a third
language living somewhere between the L1 and L2.
 L1 (Native Tongue) --------------Interlanguage-----------------L2 (Target Language)

What’s so new about this idea? Well, in the past, when a learner produced a grammatical
sentence in their L2, it was believed that the speaker had successfully acquired the linguistic
components necessary to configure that sentence in the target language. If they had produced a
few errors, it was assumed that particular L1 features were interfering with the otherwise
grammatical L2 structure. Interlanguage recognizes that (a) not all errors are a result of L1
transfer and (b) the learner’s L2 errors actually represent the learner’s current grammar. This
internalized grammar (i.e. interlanguage) contains a set of rules that inform their process of
language production. This interlanguage grammar is not static or permanent, but constantly being
revised and fine-tuned by the learner. Such a perspective supports linguists’ general
characterization of language use: it is rarely ever random and chaotic. The errors that are
produced in a learner’s interlanguage do follow their own logic of grammar even though they
may be unique to an individual learner.

The concept of interlanguage is quite controversial because it argues that a separate grammar
exists in the brain apart from the L1 or L2 grammars. Whether there is any psychological reality
to interlanguage grammars, many researchers still find the idea useful when discussing the
influences and challenges that are posed to language learners. If we are able to identify learner
errors as originating from their L1s, then we will be able to predict some of the problems
students will confront and hopefully address the issue early on. If the entire class shares a
common L1 (such as Spanish), then our lesson plans might even highlight common mistakes that
students will need to be aware of as they participate in language activities. For instance, pointing
out the similarities and differences between “to have” and “tener” may save the learner a lot of
time and hardship. Both verbs can be used as a main verb to mean “to possess” and they can
even be used to indicate obligation “to have to do something” = “tener que hacer algo”. Based
on these similarities, a learner may think that these verbs will always be used in the same way,
but we know that this is not the case:

“He has been working” ≠ *“El tiene estado

trabajando” AND

“Tener hambre/frio/calor/sueño/sed/razon/prisa/miedo” ≠

*“to have hunger/cold/hot/tired/thirsty/right/rushed/scared”.

Even though you may not know the L1 of your students, you may be able to notice a pattern
in their errors and respond to the more typical constructions that they produce.

It is important to recall that developmental sequences are not clearly identifiable with every
grammatical category in a language. However, it is relatively consistent with questions,
negation, and tense in English. Knowing that all language learners (including children who are
learning English as native speakers) tend to pass through these stages is helpful when we create
our lesson plans for adult learners of English. For starters, we wouldn’t want to design materials
that are clearly too advanced for our students. Research has shown that it can be counter-
productive since students will feel frustrated and perhaps lose interest in class activities. If a
learner seems to have achieved some advance-level questions in English, it is quite possible that
they have simply learned a few commonly used constructions (e.g., “Why don’t you do it
yourself?”) or memorized one or two particular complex questions without understanding how
they were formed grammatically. (Another way to state this is that the learners could have
acquired some formulaic language without ever having internalized the rules that accompany
that language.) With these particular areas of language acquisition, it is not recommended to
continue to more advanced lessons until children have fully grasped lower levels or stages.

Finally, we cannot deny that different language learners have vastly different experiences with
the target language and that these experiences influence how they acquire and use the target
language. Some introverted learners may have been exposed to the target language by reading
books and magazines while others who interact face-to-face with native or fluent English
speakers for several hours a day will learn different vocabulary and even a different style of
language. Being aware that each student brings to the classroom legitimate and real language
experiences should help us stay focused on the goal: to help learners wherever they are
linguistically so that they can get along better in their social world(s).

In the end, identifying the origins of these errors only empowers us as teachers and gives us more
perspective on the language acquisition process. In the past, teachers’ perception of language
learning errors failed to provide insight into where they are coming from and what might be
causing them (“How could these kids keep making the same mistakes?”). Some teachers might
have even created certain prejudices based on typical errors without knowing that some language
features (such as questions, negation, and articles) will cause problems for any student, from
whichever language background, and with any kind of linguistic aptitude. Knowing what to
expect and why certain types of speech are being used will certainly go a long way to inform our
decisions when conducting language and language arts classes.

The quest to discover the causes or influences of L2 errors has gone through several changes
over the years. We now refer to a learner’s L2 competency as “interlanguage” primarily because
we must recognize that they have a wide-range of influences that help form their own
idiosyncratic grammar which we call an “idiolect”. The three components to interlanguage (L1
Interference, Developmental Stages, and L2 Environment) each will be discussed in detail in the
following sections.