A cognitive-pragmatic approach to error analysis

Error Analysis is one of the major topics in the field of second language acquisition research. Errors are an integral part of language learning. The learner of English as a second language is unaware of the existence of the particular system or rule in English language. The learner's errors have long been interested for second and foreign language researchers. The basic task of error analysis is to describe how learning occurs by examining the learner's output and this includes his/her correct and incorrect utterances. There are two major approaches to the study of learner's errors, namely contrastive analysis and error analysis. Error analysis cannot be studied properly without touching upon the notion of contrastive analysis. Contrastive analysis and error analysis have been commonly recognized as branches of Applied Linguistic Science. This paper examines in detail the three most influential error theories: Contrastive analysis, Error analysis and Interlanguage theory. Corder (1978) maintains that interlanguage can be seen as a restructuring or a recreating continuum and, therefore; evaluates their role in second language acquisition.

Education Sciences , 2021

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

2019

The major aim of the current paper is to review and discuss three prevailing approaches to the study of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) since the middle of the twentieth century: Contrastive Analysis (CA, henceforth), Error Analysis (EA) and Interlanguage (IL). It begins with a general overview of how the CA approach was formulated and developed and discusses the three versions of CA which were displaced later by other approaches, such as EA and IL. The paper also provides an in-depth theoretical discussion of the notion of EA in terms of its definitions, goals, significance, development, causes and procedures. The discussion about the SLA approaches concludes with a review of IL which claims that language learners produce a separate linguistic system with its own salient features, which differs from their L1 and target language. Additionally, a bulk of previous studies conducted on EA in different contexts are reviewed throughout the paper.

Discussed in this paper alre reasons why people who speak second languages may not speak or write them with native-speaker-like fluency. These second-language deficiencies may be the results of (1) interference, the use of aspects of another language at a variety of levels; (2) strategies of learning such as over overgeneralization and analogy by means of which the learner tests out his hypotheses about the structure of the language; (3) strategies of assimilation, in which the learner makes his learning task easier; and (4) strategies of communication, whereby the learner adapts what he knows into an efficient communication model, producing an optimal utility grammar from what he knows of the language. In addition to understanding these deficiencies, it is necessary to distinguish between performance and competence errors. The former are occasional and haphazard and are related to such factors as fatigue and memory limitations. The latter are systematic and may represent either a transitional stage in the development of a grammatical rule or the final stage of the speaker's knowledge. While knowledge about second language learning is still largely speculative, excluding the possibility of prescribing recipes for teachers, this account of errors and learning strategies may suggest some of the reasons for errors. (Author/AMM)

Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2014

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of delineating L2 sources of grammatical errors with reference to the students' L1, instead of other types of error correction strategies, to help learners become familiar with sources of their errors and avoid making them in their text reconstruction task production and recognition test. To this end, two groups of Iranian English major (N=61) were compared. The result showed a main effect for the above-cited treatment as a result of which the experimental group outperformed the control group concerning their text reconstruction task accuracy and receptive knowledge improvement. Index Terms-delineating, reconstruction task accuracy, receptive knowledge I. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY When we review the second language acquisition literature, we realize that lots of teachers and researchers have been concerned about the issue of grammar for a long time. Most of them tried to find suitable methods and strategies in order to facilitate the acquisition of this challenging subject (Song and Suh, 2008). Lee (2007) states that in fact, the reaction against formoriented instruction (grammar translation method, Audio-lingual methodtotal physical response), motivated teachers and researchers to consider new language teaching methods which were mainly based on the meaning. By the appearance of these methods, Lee (2007) claims that language teachers have been encouraged to follow the objectives of communicative competence and fluency, while grammar teaching which was not related to communicative aims has been considered as "counterproductive"(p.88). But an immersion study shows that only meaning focused instruction cannot help us to have learners who produce target language form accurately and some stress on form is also necessary to help learners make better their language accuracy over time. (Swain, 1995, 1998). Yoshida, 2008 claims that in fact, by the appearance of a theory that emphasized some exclusive attention to form, researchers gave their attention to written corrective feedback more than. For example, Schmidt (2001) argues that meaning oriented activities are not sufficient for second language acquisition and learners should also pay attention to specific form. Pica (2000) states that: "Learners must be given L2 input that is made meaningful and comprehensible. They must selectively attend to form of their input as well as its meaning. They must produce L2 and be given feedback in order to modify their production toward greater comprehensibility, appropriateness and accuracy. (p.7) Swain (1995, 1998) claims the teacher can provide learners with feedback opportunity based on the content and grammar. Izumi and Bigelow (2000) also highlight the role of error feedback claiming that students within output production will formulate and test a hypothesis in order to put their next production based on it and they can change their incorrect hypothesis through various feedback strategies. Adams (2003) says that when learners are engaged in the process of output production, they may realize that they can't communicate what they want. So in this situation, the teacher can give them the corrective feedback. They may notice their problems and understand to what extent it is different from their original output. Havranek and Cesnik (2001) believe that in different classrooms, teachers use corrective feedback in order to grant and make their learners aware of some parts which do not match the target language forms. As it has been mentioned this focus on form led second language acquisition researchers to appreciate the role of corrective feedback. This renewed attention to form in SLA has made the issue of providing grammar the topic of very

Attitudes towards errors in language learning are changing as a result of recent contributions coming from the field of pedagogical grammar, which take into consideration notions of error analysis, contrastive analysis and the study of interlanguage. Errors, we argue, should be considered as opportunities to develop learners' language awareness to further their learning, and as instances for teachers to design more effective remedial work. Through the analysis of a learner's written assignment,

1983

ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics

This paper reports the results of a meta-analysis of 39 published studies conducted during the last decade (from 2006 to 2016) on the effects of instruction and corrective feedback on learning second language (L2) pragmatics. The study meta-analyzed the effects of instruction in terms of several moderator variables including mode of instruction, type of instruction, outcome measures, length of instruction, language proficiency, and durability of the instructional effects. It was found that (a) computer-assisted instruction generated larger effects than face-to-face instruction, (b) instruction was generally more effective for L2 pragmatic comprehension than production, (c) instruction produced larger effects when tested by selected response outcome measures although different patterns were observed across explicit-implicit categories, (d) longer treatments generated a larger effect size than shorter treatments, (e) studies conducted with intermediate level learners produced larger e...

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