الأستاذ صالح
08-12-2002, 00:26
Emirates
Ministry of Education
Sharjah Educational Bureau
Al-Khalideya Sec. School
Errors And Mistakes
“To err is human, forgive Divine”
What is an error ?
We all make mistakes in English-even native speakers. An error, however, is considered to be more serious. I shall define an error as “ a form or structure that a native speaker deems unacceptable because of its inappropriate use “
There has been a decided shift in the approach to analyzing errors . In Contrastive Analysis, the theoretical base of which was behaviourism, errors were seen as “ bad habits “ that had been formed. The response was based on the stimulus. It was assumed that interference of the mother tongue ( l1 ) was responsible for the errors made during the transition period of learning the target language. However, much recent research points to the contrary.
WHICH ERRORS?
GLOBAL LOCAL
distortion of distortion of
overall sentence, single elements
e.g., word order, e.g., verb tenses,
incorrect connectives articles,
auxiliaries
Result Result
communication communication
hindered not hindered
significantly
Priority
In error Analysis ( EA ) there has been a change from looking at the product ( error ) to the process ( why students make error ) Although still in its infant stages, EA has been the focus of much
research , which has led to changes in attitudes towards errors, evident in a less obsessive avoidance of errors. This cognitive approach sees errors as a clue to what is happening in the mind. In this approach, errors are seen as a natural phenomenon that must occur as learning a first or second language takes place, before correct grammar rules are completely internalized.
I think teachers are relieved to find a more realistic attitude towards errors. Errors are no longer a reflection on their teaching methods, but are, rather, indicators that learning is taking place, evidence that the mysterious Language Acquisition Device ( LAD ) is working. So errors are no longer “ bad ” but “ good ” or natural-just as natural as errors that occur in learning a first language.
The insight that errors are a natural and important part of the learning process itself, and do not all come from mother tongue interference, is very important. It has long been known that learners from very diverse linguistic backgrounds almost universally have difficulty with certain things, whether they existed or not in their mother tongue. For instance, nearly all second language learners –like children learning their mother tongue – produce forms like ‘ he musted do it yesterday’, he throwed the ball’, five womans’, etc., at some stage. The problem here is that they generalise a rule they know ( the past tense is formed by adding –ed; plural forms have an-s at the end ) to apply to all cases. The restrictions on the application of the rule have not been learnt.
Which errors to correct ?
Teachers , however, are still faced with the problem of “ which” errors to correct and “ how ” to correct errors. Time and space do not allow me to describe in detail which errors to correct. Very briefly though, I believe the gravity of the error should determine
( 3 )
whether correction is necessary. I suggest that for a first draft global errors be corrected, and local errors on the second.
Need for a unified approach.
Teachers of English invest many hours in correcting student writing, yet it is one of the areas that most teachers hesitate to discuss. They will, however, in my experience, acknowledge their concern about the lack of uniformity in correcting and marking papers. I have seen a growing concern not only about the disparity of grades in marking papers but also about differing system of and approaches to marking. The approaches can generally be described as:
1.over-correction i.e. writing every correct word or expression on the student’s paper.
2. use of abbreviations and symbols, along with arrows, circles
and lines.
3. marginal comments
4. a combination
How to correct
Most teachers know intuitively that supplying the correct form for a student might actually prevent him from retesting his own hypotheses about the new structure. It is a form of talking down to the student. He needs another chance to correct his error, but that requires time and energy and there is never enough of those. What can the teacher do to help students learn from their errors? General advice is sometimes given.
Some practical procedures for dealing with errors
1 The first stage is to establish what the error is ..
2. The second stage is to establish the possible sources of the error, to explain why it happened .It is important to do this as a full knowledge of the causes of an error enables the teacher to work out a more effective teaching strategy to deal with it.
3.The third stage is to decide how serious the mistake is to have a remedial work. We should look at the error in linguistic terms and see what rules are broken.
4.The last stage is the correction of the error . The teacher should point out the mistake, explain what is wrong and give some extra practice.
In short, it is clear from this brief discussion that the learner brings with him one source of error : his mother tongue. Even more importantly, the learning process itself is the source of other errors. The most sensible source of action , with present knowledge , for the teacher is to reject the extreme position-on one hand that errors are wrong and must be avoided at all costs by very carefully controlled drilling ; on the other that incorrect forms are necessary , even vital , and so should be actively planned into the teaching process-and attempt to blend the best features from both approaches into his error correction.
References
1. Creative Classroom Activities: Thomas Kral
2.Teaching English as a Foreign Language:
Geoffrey Broughton
3. The gooficon.Rowley
Ministry of Education
Sharjah Educational Bureau
Al-Khalideya Sec. School
Errors And Mistakes
“To err is human, forgive Divine”
What is an error ?
We all make mistakes in English-even native speakers. An error, however, is considered to be more serious. I shall define an error as “ a form or structure that a native speaker deems unacceptable because of its inappropriate use “
There has been a decided shift in the approach to analyzing errors . In Contrastive Analysis, the theoretical base of which was behaviourism, errors were seen as “ bad habits “ that had been formed. The response was based on the stimulus. It was assumed that interference of the mother tongue ( l1 ) was responsible for the errors made during the transition period of learning the target language. However, much recent research points to the contrary.
WHICH ERRORS?
GLOBAL LOCAL
distortion of distortion of
overall sentence, single elements
e.g., word order, e.g., verb tenses,
incorrect connectives articles,
auxiliaries
Result Result
communication communication
hindered not hindered
significantly
Priority
In error Analysis ( EA ) there has been a change from looking at the product ( error ) to the process ( why students make error ) Although still in its infant stages, EA has been the focus of much
research , which has led to changes in attitudes towards errors, evident in a less obsessive avoidance of errors. This cognitive approach sees errors as a clue to what is happening in the mind. In this approach, errors are seen as a natural phenomenon that must occur as learning a first or second language takes place, before correct grammar rules are completely internalized.
I think teachers are relieved to find a more realistic attitude towards errors. Errors are no longer a reflection on their teaching methods, but are, rather, indicators that learning is taking place, evidence that the mysterious Language Acquisition Device ( LAD ) is working. So errors are no longer “ bad ” but “ good ” or natural-just as natural as errors that occur in learning a first language.
The insight that errors are a natural and important part of the learning process itself, and do not all come from mother tongue interference, is very important. It has long been known that learners from very diverse linguistic backgrounds almost universally have difficulty with certain things, whether they existed or not in their mother tongue. For instance, nearly all second language learners –like children learning their mother tongue – produce forms like ‘ he musted do it yesterday’, he throwed the ball’, five womans’, etc., at some stage. The problem here is that they generalise a rule they know ( the past tense is formed by adding –ed; plural forms have an-s at the end ) to apply to all cases. The restrictions on the application of the rule have not been learnt.
Which errors to correct ?
Teachers , however, are still faced with the problem of “ which” errors to correct and “ how ” to correct errors. Time and space do not allow me to describe in detail which errors to correct. Very briefly though, I believe the gravity of the error should determine
( 3 )
whether correction is necessary. I suggest that for a first draft global errors be corrected, and local errors on the second.
Need for a unified approach.
Teachers of English invest many hours in correcting student writing, yet it is one of the areas that most teachers hesitate to discuss. They will, however, in my experience, acknowledge their concern about the lack of uniformity in correcting and marking papers. I have seen a growing concern not only about the disparity of grades in marking papers but also about differing system of and approaches to marking. The approaches can generally be described as:
1.over-correction i.e. writing every correct word or expression on the student’s paper.
2. use of abbreviations and symbols, along with arrows, circles
and lines.
3. marginal comments
4. a combination
How to correct
Most teachers know intuitively that supplying the correct form for a student might actually prevent him from retesting his own hypotheses about the new structure. It is a form of talking down to the student. He needs another chance to correct his error, but that requires time and energy and there is never enough of those. What can the teacher do to help students learn from their errors? General advice is sometimes given.
Some practical procedures for dealing with errors
1 The first stage is to establish what the error is ..
2. The second stage is to establish the possible sources of the error, to explain why it happened .It is important to do this as a full knowledge of the causes of an error enables the teacher to work out a more effective teaching strategy to deal with it.
3.The third stage is to decide how serious the mistake is to have a remedial work. We should look at the error in linguistic terms and see what rules are broken.
4.The last stage is the correction of the error . The teacher should point out the mistake, explain what is wrong and give some extra practice.
In short, it is clear from this brief discussion that the learner brings with him one source of error : his mother tongue. Even more importantly, the learning process itself is the source of other errors. The most sensible source of action , with present knowledge , for the teacher is to reject the extreme position-on one hand that errors are wrong and must be avoided at all costs by very carefully controlled drilling ; on the other that incorrect forms are necessary , even vital , and so should be actively planned into the teaching process-and attempt to blend the best features from both approaches into his error correction.
References
1. Creative Classroom Activities: Thomas Kral
2.Teaching English as a Foreign Language:
Geoffrey Broughton
3. The gooficon.Rowley