Overview of Error Analysis

What is an error?
An error is a form in learner language that is inaccurate, meaning it is different from the forms used by
competent speakers of the target language. For example, a learner of Spanish might say "Juana es *bueno,"
which is not what competent speakers of Spanish would say. The accurate form should be "buena."

What is error analysis?

Error analysis is a method used to document the errors that
appear in learner language, determine whether those errors are
systematic, and (if possible) explain what caused them. Native
speakers of the target language (TL) who listen to learner
language probably find learners' errors very noticeable, although,
as we shall see, accuracy is just one feature of learner language.

While native speakers make unsystematic 'performance' errors

(like slips of the tongue) from time to time, second language
learners make more errors, and often ones that no native speaker ever makes. An error analysis should
focus on errors that are systematic violations of patterns in the input to which the learners have been
exposed. Such errors tell us something about the learner's interlanguage, or underlying knowledge of the
rules of the language being learned (Corder, 1981, p. 10).

How to do an error analysis

Although some learner errors are salient to native speakers, others, even though they’re systematic, may go
unnoticed. For this reason, it is valuable for anyone interested in learner language to do a more thorough
error analysis, to try to identify all the systematic errors. This can help researchers understand the
cognitive processes the learner is using, and help teachers decide which might be targeted for correction.
Researchers have worked out the following procedure for doing an error analysis Corder (1975).

1. Identify all the errors in a sample of learner language

For each error, what do you think the speaker intended to say, and how they should have said it? For
example, an English learner may say, "*He make a goal." This is an error. However, what should the learner
have said? There are at least two possible ways to reconstruct this error: (1) He MAKES a goal, and (2) He
IS MAKING a goal. In this first step of an error analysis, remember that there may be more than one
possible way to reconstruct a learner error. Tarone & Swierzbin (2009, p.25) offer another example from an
English language learner:

Learner: …*our school force us to learn English because um it’s, it’s a trend.

Here are three different possible reconstructions:

a. Our school forced us to learn English because it was a trend.

b. Our school required us to learn English because it was a popular language.
c. Because everyone felt it was important, English was a requirement at our school.

The way you reconstruct a learner error depends on what you think the intended message is. An added
complication is that any given learner utterance may contain errors at many levels at once: phonological,
morphological, syntactic, lexical.

Finally, determine how systematic the error is. Does it occur several times, or is it just a performance slip (a
mistake)? Even native speakers of a language make one-off mistakes when they're tired or distracted.

2. Explain the errors

Once you've identified systematic errors in your sample of learner language, think of what might have
caused those errors. There are several possibilities. Some errors could be due to native language transfer
(using a rule or pattern from the native language). Some could be developmental—errors most learners
make in learning this language no matter what their native language. Induced errors may be due to the way
a teacher or textbook presented or explained a given form. Communication strategies may be used by the
learner to get meaning across even if he or she knows the form used is not correct (Selinker 1972 discusses
these and other possible causes of systematic learner errors). Explaining errors in learner language isn't
always straightforward; for example, sometimes an error may appear to have more than one cause. As
Lightbown & Spada (2013, p. 45) say, "... while error analysis has the advantage of describing what learners
actually do … it does not always give us clear insights into why they do it."

What error analysis misses

Error analysis is a good first step, but it also can miss important features of learner language. First, in
focusing only on errors, you may miss cases where the learner uses the form correctly. For example, you
may notice that a learner makes errors in pronouncing a TL sound before consonants, but not notice that
she is producing the sound correctly before vowels. The second thing an error analysis misses is avoidance.
Schachter (1976) pointed out that learners can avoid using features of a TL that they know they have
difficulty with. For example, you may see very few errors in relative clauses in a sample of English learner
language, but then realize that's because the learner simply isn't producing many relative clauses—correct
OR incorrect. Avoidance can lead to the absence of errors—but absence of errors in this case does NOT
mean the learner has no problems with relative clauses. Finally, error analysis focuses only on accuracy.
Accuracy is just one of three ways of describing learner language: accuracy, complexity and fluency. If
teachers judge learner language only in terms of accuracy, the learners' development of complexity and
fluency can suffer. (See the section on Complexity)

Definition
Error analysis is a branch of applied linguistics. It is concerned with the compilation, study and
analysis of errors made by second language learners and aims at investigating aspects of second
language acquisition.
Closely related to error analysis is the concept of interlanguage.

Some researchers distinguish error analysis from transfer analysis, which compares the
learner’s data with the respective first language, whereas error analysis compares the learner’s
data with the target language norm and identifies and explains errors accordingly (cf. James
1998).

Development
Error analysis was first used as a way of studying second language acquisition in the 1960s.
Corder’s seminal paper "The Significance of Learner’s Errors" (1967) had shifted researchers’
attention from the teaching perspective to the learning perspective – and therefore also away
from contrastive analysis, behaviorism and structuralism towards cognitive psychology. This
development went hand in hand with the turn towards a communicative approach in language
teaching.

Drawing on knowledge about first language acquisition, Corder posited that second language
learners discover the target language by hypothesizing about it and testing their hypotheses more
or less like children do. This process does not happen randomly, but follows the learner’s built-in
syllabus, so that errors will necessarily be made.

Corder used the term transitional competence for what has since become a widely accepted and
often used concept: that of interlanguage (cf. Selinker 1972), the learner’s individual, dynamic
approximation of the target language. According to this view, errors indicate that a learner
actively learns the target language, as they occur whenever a hypothesis tested by the learner
does not work. In error analysis, the language learning process is regarded as being influenced
by the learner’s first language, his or her interlanguage and the target language. Thus, all of these
three language systems have an influence on which errors a learner makes. But the gap between
the interlanguage and the target language is considered the most important factor of the three.
Even more importantly, however, the learner makes errors because of the learning strategies he
or she employs to ‘discover’ the target language.

For all these reasons, inductive error analyses were carried out in order to arrive at
generalizations about errors, interlanguage and, ultimately, second language acquisition. Error
analysis reached its zenith in the 1970s, but soon turned out to be deficient as a research tool. By
the late 1970s, it was merely contributing to broader second language acquisition theory and
research, as it still does today.

Aims
The primary aims of error analyses were (i) to identify types and patterns of errors and (ii) to
establish error taxonomies. These were supposed to be used to describe interlanguage and its
development, i.e. the learner’s internal syllabus. Common difficulties in second language
acquisition were to be identified. On this basis, error analysis was supposed to contribute to a
comprehensive knowledge about processes of second language acquisition -- always assuming
with Chomsky that there is something like a language acquisition device.

In addition, results were intended to be used for a revision of theories of language learning as
well as help to evaluate and improve language teaching.

Results
The main achievement of error analysis consists in a change of perspective. Firstly, it let
learners’ errors appear in a new light. They were no longer regarded as "signs of inhibition"
(Corder 1967) that needed to be eradicated. Instead, they were regarded as useful “evidence of
[...] strategies of learning” (Corder 1967) and as perfectly natural aspects of second language
acquisitin. Secondly, it widened the perspective on possible causes of errors. Researchers
recognized that the first language is not the only – in fact, not even the most important - factor
that can lead to errors.

Common errors typical of different target languages were identified and, in search of reasons
why those errors were made, they were classified in a new way. Errors were distinguished from
mistakes or lapses, which are performance errors that are not determined by the interlanguage
but rather by situational factors such as tiredness. Only ‘true’ errors are connected to the state of
the interlanguage, or the learner’s competence. Interlingual errors, a result of interference from
the native language, were differentiated from intralingual errors, occuring for example when a
target language rule is applied to areas where it is not applicable. Corder also pointed out that an
utterance which is seemingly correct but does not mean what the speaker or writer intended it to
mean contains, in fact, a covert error.

Error analysis also played an important role in the development of the interlanguage hypothesis.

Criticism
Error analysis has been criticized for a number of practical problems, all of them connected to
the fact that it tries to gather knowledge of language learning processes by examining the
learner’s output. First of all, it has proved difficult to determine whether there is an error at all,
and if so, what exactly constitutes it. The distinction between error and mistake cannot easily be
made either. Secondly, there is usually more than just one way to classify an error. Thirdly,
causes of errors are difficult to identify; there is a multitude of possible causes (e.g.
communication strategies, personal factors, external factors), and since the learner’s output is the
only source of evidence used, found causes are necessarily unreliable. In addition, “error
taxonomies often confuse description with explanation” (Johnson & Johnson 1998:112), thus
providing little to help learners.

Other criticism has aimed at the simplistic approach that error analysis takes toward second
language acquisition. Only looking at incorrect output and ignoring correct output as well as any
other aspects of the learning process means leaving out important sources of information that
could be used to describe the acquisition process. This is related to the fact that correct output
does not necessarily imply that something has been learned – among other reasons, because the
learner’s language production varies in several ways.

As a result, error analysis has been subject to criticism. For example, it has been claimed that
what was called ‘universal’ errors (errors that are made by any learner of a given target language,
no matter what the first language) might in fact be interference errors (Byram 2004, cited in
James 1998).

References
 Cherrington, Ruth. 2004. Error Analysis. In: Byram, Michael (ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of
Language Teaching and Learning. London/New York: Routledge. 198-200.
 Corder, S.P. 1967. The Significance of Learner’s Errors. In: IRAL 5/1967. 161-170.
 Ellis, Rod. 2008. The Study of Second Language Acquisition (2nd edition). Oxford: OUP. 47; 60-
65.
 James, Carl. 1998. Errors in Language Learning and Use – Exploring Error Analysis. Essex:
Pearson.
 Johnson, Keith & Johnson, Helen (ed.) 1998. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Applied Linguistics – A
Handbook for Language Teaching. Oxford/Malden: Blackwell. 110-114.