Name: Fajriah

Reg. Number: A1B214076

Class: Error Analysis (A2)

Types of Errors

According to Brown, an error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a

native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner. Errors cannot be self-
corrected. While a mistake refers to a performance error in that it is a failure to utilize a known
system correctly. It can be self-corrected.

Corder (1971) classifies Errors into two types:

1. Errors of Competence are the result of the application of the rules which do not
correspond to the target language rules. This error occurs when SL/FL learners do not
know the rules of target language adequately.
Errors of Competence are divided into two kinds of error:

a) Interlingual error depends on linguistic differences between the first language and the
target language. It can be interpreted as interference problem, or mother tongue
influence.

b) Intralingual error relates to a specific interpretation of the target language and

manifests itself as a universal phenomenon in any language learning process. It is
mainly overgeneralization found in both the first language and the target language
learning.

2. Errors of performance are the outcome of the mistakes in language such as false starts
or slips of the tongue. It happens when the learners suffer from stress, indecision, conflict,
fatigue etc.

Corder (1967) distinguishes two types of errors:

1. 'Breach of the code', which involves wrong application of grammatical rules, resulting in
ungrammatical constructions in learner's performance, and
2. 'Errors in the use of code'. It happens when learner use of the target language in
inappropriate context though the construction may be perfectly grammatical.

Corder (1974: 145-48) identifies four types of gramatically correct but inappropriate use of
constructions.
a) Referential errors are errors made by the speakers when they use a term with the intention
of refering to some feature of the world to where it is conventionally inapplicable, i.e.,
when he calls a hat a cap.
 b) Registeral errors are errors made by the speakers when they commit errors in the use of
register, i.e., in a naval context he refers to a naval ship as a boat.
c) Social errors are errors made by the speakers when they select forms which are socially
inappropriate to his social relation with his hearers, as when a pupil greets his teacher
with : well, how are you today, old man?.
d) Textual errors are errors made by the speakers when they do not select the structurally
correct form to show the intended relation between two sentences in a discourse, e.g., in
answer to the question : who is the woman over there? *Anna is.

Burt and Kiparsky (1975) suggest fundamentally two types of errors:

1. Local Error: It is an error which made by the learners which affects merely apart, clause
or phrase, of a sentence. It causes trouble in a particular constituent, or in a particular
clause of a complex sentence.

2. Global Error: It is an error which made by the learners which affects the interpretation of
the whole sentence. It is an error that violates rules involving the overall structure of a
sentence, the reactions among constituent clauses, or the simple sentence, the rules
among major constituents.

Dulay and Burt (1974) do not blame learners for their errors. They state the opinion that one
cannot learn without goofing. They prefer using the very mild word goof to refer to an error.
They have divided goof into four types;
1) Interference Like Goofs are the goofs which causes by reflecting the structures of the
learner's mother tongue.
2) Developmental Goofs are the goofs made by the learners when they over-generalize the
structure of the target language. It happens because of the inadequate data of the target
language.
3) Ambiguous Goofs can be characterized either as interference like goofs or a
developmental goofs which occur during the process of learning a second language, and
4) Unique Goofs are goofs in a learners performance which cannot be described as
developmental goofs or as goofs caused by the interference of the learner's mother
tongue.
Sources of Errors

Brown (1980:173-181) shows us the four sources of error. They are as follow

1. Interlingual transfer is the negative influence of the mother tongue of learner.

2. Intralingual transfer is the incorrect generalization of rules within the target language.

a) False analogy arises when the learner incorrectly thinks that a new item behaves like
another item already known to him or her. For example the learner already knows that
cats is plural from cat, so he or she thinks that *mouses is plural from mouse.

b) Misanalysis, an example of this situation is when the learner assumes that *its can be
used as a pluralized form of it.

c) Incomplete rule application: It happens when the learner doesn't apply all the rules
necessary to apply in a particular situation. In fact, it is the converse of
overgeneralization.

d) Exploiting redundancy e.g. unnecessary morphology, and intelligent learners try to

avoid those items which they find redundant to make their learning and
communication easier.

e) Over-laboration is when the learner ignores that the verb to enjoy is followed by
gerund and not bare infinitive.

f) Hypercorrection, e.g. *Does she can dance?, it reflects that the learners over
generalize the use of auxiliary verbs in questions.

3. Context of learning, errors in the context of learning can be happened because a

misleading explanation from the teacher, faulty presentation of a structure or word in a
textbook, or even because of a patent that was rotely memorized in a drill but not
properly contextualized.
4. Communication strategies. Sometimes the communication strategies can lead the student
to make error. Communication strategies the learners use : avoidance arises when a
learner consciously avoids certain language item because he feels uncertain about it;
prefabricated patterns are memorized phrases or sentences; cognitive and personality
styles can also cause errors, such as low self esteem learners; appeal to authority is a
strategy when the learner, because of his uncertainty about some structure, directly asks a
native speaker, a teacher or looks up the structure in a bilingual dictionary (Brown 1980:
180); and language switch is applied by the learners when they use his or her native
language to get the message across, regardless of the fact that the hearer may not know
the native language.