Students
make a lot of sentences either in the form of speaking or writing or sometimes
body language, and the teacher is busy spotting the wrongful use of grammar,
inaccurate pronunciation, or awkward collocations in the students’ output
created in the target language they
learn. It is not an uncommon scene in a language learning class. However, there
is not one best way for teachers to find their students’ errors and correct
them throughout the course.
When
I first became an instructor for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students,
one of the major foci in my class was to point out my students’ errors or
mistakes. What is the difference between errors and mistakes? Errors are the
results from students’ lack of knowledge of the correct norms of target
language. Burt (1975) explains that errors interfere with communication and
affects overall sentence organization, whereas mistakes are the deviation or
processing problem in learner language that happens when they fail to perform
their competence. It was always difficult to tell the students’ errors from
mistakes in class. In order to help improve the learners’ errors, the method of
my pendulum had swung back and forth
between Contrastive Analysis (CA)
and Error Analysis (EA). CA is the
basis for identifying differences between the learners’ first language and the
target language to learn. This method was effective in predicting areas of
possible or potential errors. On the other hand, EA does not predict errors,
but discovers, identifies, and describes or explains errors in learner language
to find out what learners really know about the target language.
I
believe bilingual language teachers are assets, because the shared knowledge of
the learner language truly helps teachers identify the learner errors and
explain them psycholinguistically as well. They can make the best use of CA
through which the errors are effectively predicted. I have seen quite a lot of
Korean students misunderstood by native English speaking teachers because the
learner errors (both global and local
errors) did not make sense at all to those teachers, and in the end the
students were even viewed as rude or clueless to the teachers. Frustrating.
Alexander
Pope said “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Well, “To err is every
language learner; to help, teacher!” Making
mistakes and errors in language learning should never be seen as a sin or
something to be criticized. It is a natural phase through which one can improve
their fun-filled journey of language learning!
Expressions
Target Language:
(noun) a foreign language that a person intends to learn
pendulum: (noun)
used to refer to the tendency of a situation to oscillate between one extreme
and another
Contrastive Analysis (CA):
(noun) Method of identifying differences between learner’s first language and
the target language they learn. According to Contrastive Analysis hypothesis,
learner errors are bidirectional between their first language and target
language.
Error Analysis (EA): (noun)
Error analysis discovers and describes (NOT predict) the errors. Teachers use
EA to find out what learners know about target language.
global errors:
(noun) According to Burt (1975), global errors affect overall sentence
organization. These errors interfere with communication or comprehensibility of
a text.
local errors:
(noun) According to Burt (1975), local errors are errors affect single elements
in a sentence. These errors do not hinder communication.
e.g.,
“I angry”
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