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Essay Subject: Examines elimination of errors as crucial element of teaching language. Types of errors (cultural, fluencty, style, etc.), linguistic competence, accuracy, structure of language.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines elimination of errors as crucial element of teaching language. Types of errors (cultural, fluencty, style, etc.), linguistic competence, accuracy, structure of language. Paper Introduction: Introduction Before one can understand or help to eliminate the kinds of errors that speakers make when acquiring a secondary language, it is necessary first of all to understand the kinds of mistakes that occur in all speech production. The kinds of mistakes that all speakers make from time to time are not of especial interest to the teacher or researcher of second language acquisition because they exist within the universe of language at large rather than within the smaller universe of second language acquisition. They can – and should – be weeded out as a sort of background noise for the researcher or teacher who wishes to concentrate on the issue of secondary language acquisition. While the concepts of “error” and “mistake” might seem to be interchangeable, within the realm of speech production they must be viewed as different type Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Teaching English as a foreign language.London: Routledge. In R.W. Thus aninsistence on dividing errors into a number of small, quite homogeneouscategories may be problematic in that it masks the way language is actuallylearned. Typing errors may set up boundaries between differentparts of language that are so artificial to the structure of language andso external to the process of language acquisition that the process doesnot clarify the problems students have in acquiring a secondary language.Even though learning a secondary language is less holistic than native-language acquisition, it is also true that people do not learn the grammar,vocabulary and syntax of a language in isolation from each other. However, issues of when inelegance becomes equal to a lackof fluency shall be set aside here to concentrate on categorizing the typesof error that occur in non-native speaker's language. Bush no doubtknows what fluent English should sound like, but he does not seem to beable to produce it himself. Introduction Before one can understand or help to eliminate the kinds of errorsthat speakers make when acquiring a secondary language, it is necessaryfirst of all to understand the kinds of mistakes that occur in all speechproduction. While the concepts of "error" and "mistake" might seem to beinterchangeable, within the realm of speech production they must be viewedas different types of events with different causes and remedies. 95) notes that children - and this should seem to apply in largemeasure to adult learners of a secondary language as well - draw on threedifferent sets of references when they are confronted by linguisticmaterial that they do not know: general knowledge about the world,contextual clues specific to the utterance or circumstance and previouslyacquired linguistic generalizations. While fluencymay be defined as knowing how to speak a language both correctly andelegantly, competence refers to the actual capability of a person to do so. S. The errors that speakers make in a language that is not their nativeone are analogous to cultural errors, like sending chrysanthemums for acongratulatory bouquet in France because one does not know that mums areused only in funeral arrangements in that country. (It might also reflect the fact that the speakermakes similar mistakes in her/his native language and simply carries overthat mistake into the new language.) No native speaker would find such a usage acceptable and formallyeducated native speakers could offer up rules to show why such a usage iswrong. Input from the Inside: The Role of a Child'sPrior Linguistic Experience in Second Language Learning. 28) notes. Oxford:Oxford University Press. The most common forms of error may be described as errors of accuracy.These are the kinds of mistakes that native speakers would call "just plainwrong" because they violate some agreed-upon, codified rule. Types of Errors Having established these many provisos and exceptions to the way thatone categorizes errors, one is still left with a number of types of errorthat seem not to be a matter of either linguistic incompetence or of sometype of extra-linguistic error. Anderson(Ed.) New Dimensions in Second Language Acquisition Research. 137) list a number of possible categories oferrors in accuracy, including errors in tense, concord, case negation,articles, word order and lexical errors. Even further complicating the assessment and elimination of error insecondary language acquisition is the fact that errors may show up inspeech that are not in fact linguistically derived or based. 13 ) that the process of learning a secondlanguage is never the same as acquiring one's native tongue. They arethings that people do not intend to happen, that people can themselvesrecognize as error and that native speakers try to fix when they do happen. Thus it is perhaps more useful to use very broad (and thus moreholistic) categories such as fluency and accuracy in describing errors insecond-language acquisition. (1979). Mistakesare nonsystematic occurrences, genuinely innocent events that includethings like slips of the tongue and grammatical mistakes that result from aspeaker losing track of a sentence - forgetting, for example, what thesubject was before arriving at the predicate and so failing to make the twoagree. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press. Rodgers. Both may result from the fact noted byRichards and Rodgers (1986, p. (1978). While this is probably unavoidable, it may also complicate the taskof teaching language. For example, a native speaker of English would immediately recognizethat the sentence "I should have did that yesterday" as grammatically wrongor inaccurate, presenting to the hearer an amalgam of auxiliary verbs notpermitted by English. (1986). Errors of fluency are harder to grasp for fluency has to do withaspects of language like style and elegance - fuzzy qualities that do notlend themselves to the same kind of stringent (and so easily teachable)rules that grammar sports. While the most fluent speakers make mistakes, they can amend thesemistakes once they are made aware of them. Errors - defined as the type of systematic mistake made by a personnot using her or his native language - may be divided into a number ofdifferent categories, as Ellis (1985, p. The kinds of mistakes that all speakers make from time to timeare not of especial interest to the teacher or researcher of secondlanguage acquisition because they exist within the universe of language atlarge rather than within the smaller universe of second languageacquisition. Rowley:Newbury House Publishers, Inc. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. The presence of established rules about areas of language such asverb constructions make them relatively simple to teach. He may be said to be fluent but incompetent, anunusual but not unique situation. A native speaker presented with a sentence like: "When the sunwas putting itself down behind the horizon the light was all of a suddenvery visible as long slanting rays which made it a great deal of effort todrive since I had not had time to think about bringing my sunglasses" wouldthink that it sounded odd rather than actually wrong. Broughton et al (1978, p. They can - and should - be weeded out as a sort of backgroundnoise for the researcher or teacher who wishes to concentrate on the issueof secondary language acquisition. Ellis, R. The lack of a clearrule that has been unambiguously broken (as would be the case in a subject-predicate disagreement) makes it harder to eliminate this kind of error,especially when secondary languages are taught within a paradigm oflanguage-as-rule-governed. Keller-Cohen, D. These errors fall intothe following types: interference errors, or errors that reflect the nativelanguage structure; errors produced when a speaker follows a general rulethat should not be followed in a particular circumstance; random errors,which occur when a speaker does not know the appropriate pattern in asecond language and simply guesses at what might be the correct form, andunique errors, mistakes that do not seem to result from interference fromthe native language or the misapplication of a pattern in the new language.These last may most closely approximate the mistakes that native speakersmake; they may be simple "mistakes" rather than "errors". The mistakes that nativespeakers make in a language are analogous to mistakes that people all makein other fields - slipping on a wet floor or burning dinner. Richards, J. Competence In determining the nature of error in language use there is theadditional issue of competence as Ellis (1985, p. C. This is analogous to a person whoknows how to play baseball but strikes out each time at bat. and T. Approaches and methods inlanguage teaching: a description and analysis. Such a mistake might result from interference fromthe verb structure of a native language or ignorance about how past tensesmay be parsed in English. Error analysis is a useful tool for both teachers and researchers asit helps teachers see the frequency of different types of errors as well ashelping them to classify those errors according to hypothesized cause.However, determining what type of error a speaker has fallen victim to canbe a complex issue, and determining the reason for the error even more so,for the same type of error may have more than one cause. While onelearns one's first language holistically, secondary languages tend to betaught and so learned as a collection of separate and often barely relatedgrammatical rules, lexical items and syntactical schema. Although linguistic competence is in large measure a question ofstyle, a speaker's style may be so unrefined that it borders on mistake.While researchers - and lay people - generally consider people to be fluentin their native languages, an argument could be made that this is notnecessarily so. Former President George Bush is often held up as a figure of someone who -despite extensive formal education and an upper-class background - quiteoften employed the most inelegant and even tortuous language. Reflecting pedagogical categories and traditions, teachers andresearchers categorize the errors that language learners make according totype. Errors of fluency include such problems as oddly placed adverbs,inappropriate use of register, vocabulary too elevated or too informal forthe occasion at hand, and awkward use of contractions. Once one moves beyond the issue of those stylistic excesses thatborder on error, there are a number of different types of error, includingthose of fluency and accuracy. As in allother areas of human endeavor, there is a range of language skills, andeven a native speaker may be incompetent. Linguistic (or cultural)errors of this sort are not the type that one can see for oneself becauseone cannot (either literally or figuratively) "hear" them but must havethem pointed out. (1986). References Broughton, G. A person may provide a linguisticallyincorrect answer because of faulty knowledge about the nature of the world.Neither of these would be strictly linguistic errors. These are the kindsof errors that might make a native speaker wince, but that break no cut-and-fast rule. Fluency in a language can in fact be defined as theability to catch one's own mistakes and know how to correct them. If one uses this model, it becomes clear that errors may be introducedinto speech for non-linguistic reasons. Keller-Cohn(1981, p. et al. A person may fail to understand aquestion (and so respond with an inappropriate linguistic utterance)because of a cultural reference. 53) points out. 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