ERROR CORRECTION
Errors are believed to be an indicator of the learners' stages in their target language development. From the errors thet learners commit, one can determine their level of mastery of the language system. The investigation of errors has thus a double purpose; it is diagnostic and prognostic. It's diagnostic because it can tell us the learners' etet de langue ( Corder 1967) at a given point during the learning process and prognostic because it can tell course organizers to reorient language learning materials on the basis of the learners' current problems.
BOUNDARY BETWEEN ERROR AND NON- ERROR
Corder (1971: 169) refers to errrors as breachers of the code. Errors deviate from what is regarded as the norm. The problem, however, is thet sometimes there is no firm agreement on what the norm is. Languege has different varieties or dialects with the rules thet differ from the standard. Additionally, native speakers of a language sometimes have different rules, and their individual codes are called IDIOLECTS. This amounts to saying that there's not always a clear- cut boundary between errors and non- errors.
The difference between native speakers and foreign language learners as regards errors is believed to derive from competence. FL learners commit errors largely because of the paucity of their knowledge of the target lg, whereas deviant forms produced by native speakers are dismissed as slips or lapses. Slips of the pen are written errors, in which someone writes a word, syllable or sound other than intended. These errors fall into the same category as slips of the tongue ( speech errors), but they have different frequencies of occurrence, possibly due to the slower speed of writing. E.g. in writing, there are many more omissions leading to a large number of blends, suggesting that the mind is often ahead of the pen. Speech errors can be divided into selection ( replacement) errors, in which a wrong item, usually a word, has been selected, and assemblage ( movement) errors, in which correctly selected items have been wrongly assembled. On the whole, they originate not from deficient competence but from performance phenomena such as change of plans.
Many of deviant forms produced by uneducated or less educated native speakers are regarded non- standard, while FL learners' errors are mostly accounted for in terms of their learning stages. They can't be termed non- standard because learners do not belong to a particular geograpfical or social group in the target lg; consequently, their utterances sre tested against the norm for the standard variety of the target lg.
RELATION OF ERRORS TO TASKS
The notion of CONTROL is an important one in learners' lg use. Control is a term introduced in FL and L2 acquisition literature ( Sharwood- Smith 1986) to account for the discrepancy between competence and performance. That is, learners may well have acquired certain form of the target lg, but they may not be able to produce them correctly because they haven't mastered their use. For this reason, the proponents of the notion of control believe that performance does not reflect competence in a sufficiently transparent way.
There is variation of the learners' performance depending on the tasks. Learners may have more control over linguistic forms for certain tasks, while for others they may be more prone to error. Krashen (1981) suggests that tasks which require learners to focus attention on content are more likely to produce errors than those which force them to concentrate on the form.
Compared to spontaneous speech, planned discourese allows for greater use of metalinguistic knowledge and results in fewer errors. Time seems to play a determining role. Poor learners need more time to produce speech materials because they have little control over their linguistic awareness. Krashen (1981) believes the learners' monitor operates under three conditions: time, focus on form, and knowledge of the rule.
Differences are also observed in perfomance depending on whether the communicative task is spoken or written. FL learners tend to commit relatively more errors in spontaneous speech than in written discourse. This phenomenon is also related to the time available for planning and is referred to as STYLE SHIFTING. Even native speakers exhibit differences in performance between writing and spontaneous speech.
CAUSE OF ERRORS
One cause of an erroneous use of a FL is the learner's L1 INTERFERENCE. It is especially noticeable in the ponunciation of the lg. We can tell where someone comes from by his/ her accent. But the influence of L1 can also be seen in vocabulary ( e.g. False Friends) and grammar of learners. This is sometimes a deliberate action of learners who do not know how to express their ideas in FL, and therefore they resent to using words and structures taken from their L1 ( TRANSFER), trying to make them fit into the lg learned.
A 2nd cause of errors is OVERGENERALIZATION, which occurs when a learner does not know a rule well enough to know also the exceptions to the rule. E.g., a person who can say `I enjoyed the film' might also say *'I goed to the cinema yesterday'. However, we must remember that errors taking their source in overgeneralization of a rule show learners' creativity in using the lg she/ he already knows. In another case, learners might have made up a rule that is wrong in itself.
Thirdly, learners often say incorrect things, of which they are aware, because in the learners' opinions they convey the intended meaning best. That is another example of a creative and intelligent use of English for communicative purposes.
Sometimes, however, we talk about the ambiguous source of errors commited, when it is actually very difficult to state what an error originated from.
GLOBAL AND LOCAL ERROR
In teaching, situations happen when the teacher has a difficulty in locating the exact error commited by a student in an essay. Teacgers often end up in covering a whole sentence or paragraph with red markers. This phenomenon imples that error is not always something that can be easily spotted. An erro can vary in magnitude. It can cover a phoneme, a morpheme, a word, a phrase, a sentence, or even a paragraph. Thia state of affairs is prompted by Burt and Kiparsky (1972: 73) to distinguish between GLOBAL and LOCAL error. A global error involves the overall structure of a sentence, and a local error is one that affects a particular constituent.
It should be pointed out that errors have variable effect on the inteligibility. Some errors have little effect in the sense that they do not impede comprehension. Others, however, can cause comprehension problems.
IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING
The most important errors are those which lead to misunderstanding. There is simply no point in learning to say correct sentences in English if they do not convey the intended meaning. Therefore, it is far more important to correct global errors than to correct small grammatical points inside one sentence. It does not mean we should neglect local errors. However, dealing with them can be postponed if the task does not demand it.
CATEGORIES OF ERRORS
OMISSION: certain linguistic forms may be ommited by the learner because of their complexity of production.
ADDITION: learners not only omit the elements they regard as redundant, but also they add redundant elements.
SELECTION: learners commit errors in pronunciation, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary due to the selection of the wrong morpheme, phoneme, structure or vocabulaty item.
ORDERING: misordering may occur in pronunciation by shifting the position of certain phonemes. At the morphological leve; misordering of bound morphemes in English is perhaps less frequent, given their limited number. Learners can also misorder words in a sentence. At the lexical level learners may reverse elements of a compound woed.
PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE ERROR
Errors can also be classified as PRODUCTIVE and RECEPTIVE. Productive errors are those, which occur in the lg learners' utterances, and receptive or interpretative errors are those, which result in the listener's misunderstanding of the speaker's intentions. Competence in a lg can be regarded as composed of productive competence and receptive competence. These two competences do not develop at the same rate. It is not uncommon to hear people say that they understand lg better than they speak it or vice versa.
It is easier to look into productive errors than receptive errors. Analysis of productive errors is based on learner's utterances, but to investigate receptive errors, one needs to look at people's reactions to orders, requests, etc. The way a listener behaves can give us some clues as to whether she or he understood a message or not. There are also vast number of ways in which receptive behaviour operates, some of which are culture specific.
ERROR CORRECTION
The most important decision regarding correction has to be made again and again: to correct or not to correct?
We can talk about correction only when we keep in mind one important rule: it is not the teacher's role to correct all non- standard lg the learners produce. The teacher's task is to help students improve their English. Sometimes the best way is not to correct especially when we are paying attention to what they want to say. There should always be time in the lesson when fluency is encouraged. At such times, linguistic errors are not corrected unless they disturb communication. In other words, the importance of errors is that they should often be ignored.
Of course, this should not be done always, as successful communication depends also on how accurate a learner is in building correct utterances. If we decide to devote some time to correction, we have to make sure that it is used positively to support the learning process. Correction should not be a kind of criticism or punishment.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Aitchison, J., `introducing language and mind.' London:1992. Penguin English;
Bolitho, R., “ Error Correction.” MET 4: 47- 48, 1995;
Burt, M.K., ` Error analysis in adult EFL classroom', TESOL Quarterly 9: 53- 63, 1976,
Burt, M.K., Kiparsky, C., `The Gooficon: A Repair Manual for English.',Rowley 1972, Newbury House;
Corder, S.P., The Significance of learner's Errors.',IRAL 5: 161-170, 1967;
Corder, S.P., Idiosyncratic Dialects and Error Analysis.', IRAL 9: 147- 160, 1971;
Edge, J., ` Mistakes and Correction.', London 1989, Longman;
Gomiz< M.C., ` Teacher's Development. Feedback: to Correct or Not to Correct.', MET 3: 44- 45;
Jain, M.P., ` Error analysis: source, cause and significance.', London 1974, Longman;
Krashen, S., ` Second Language Acquisition and Learning.', Oxford 1981, Pergamon;
McPherson, K., ` When and how to correct or not to correct.', MET 4: 49-51, 1995;
Rinvolucri, M. ` Mistakes 1.', MET 3: 57- 59, 1998;
Rinvolucri, M., ` Mistakes 2.', MET 4: 45- 47, 1998.