Error Analysis: Activity 2


Classify errors in learner language

An error is a learner language form that deviates from, or violates, a target language rule. Fragments or colloquial expressions are not errors if a native speaker would use them. Doing an error analysis involves finding a learner’s errors in a text and trying to understand what caused each one.

Instructions:

  1. Print the transcripts of Pari and Fereshteh’s Interviews below. Watch the two video clips and mark all the errors you hear on Pari’s lines 117-141 and Fereshteh’s lines 52-76.
  2. Transcript (PDF) 

    Transcript (PDF)

  3. Now print 2 copies of the Error Analysis Chart (PDF). Fill in the errors that you heard in the videos, one chart for each learner. Try to include examples of different types: phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary.

    a) In Column 1, indicate the line number where you found the error.

    b) In Column 2, copy the error and the words that immediately preceded and followed the error.

    c) In Column 3, indicate your reconstruction(s) of the learner’s erroneous utterance: how might a native speaker of the language say this? If there is more than one possible reconstruction, or target language alternative, list more than one.

    d) In Column 4, indicate causes of error, such as transfer of patterns from the native language, or overgeneralization and simplification of a Persian rule.

  4. Answer the following questions:

    a) Compare the learners’ errors. Did one of these learners seem to make more errors than the other, or make different types of errors than the other? Explain.

    b) Would you correct these errors in your classroom? How would you correct them?

    Please type your answers to the questions in the box below.

When you have finished typing your answer, click to compare your response with the Learner Language staff response.

 

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