CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
A. Error and Error Analysis
1. The Definition of Error
According to Hornby in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, error is a thing done wrongly or mistake.
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On the contrary, in the study of Error Analysis, experts distinguish error from mistake. Errors are caused by lack of
knowledge about the target language or by incorrect hypothesis about it. Errors are a noticeable and cannot be self-corrected. They are deviations from the
adult grammar of a native speaker, and reflect the competence of the learner. Errors reveal the portion of the learner’s competence in the target language.
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Mistakes are caused by temporary lapses of memory, confusion, slips of the tongue and so on.
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A mistake refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a ‘slip’. It is the result of some sort temporary breakdown or
imperfection in the process of producing speech. And when attention is called to it, mistake can be self-corrected.
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Julian Edge, in Harmer 2001, suggests that we can divide mistake into two broad categories: ‘slip’ and ‘attempts’.
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A S Hornby, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p.390.
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H. Douglas Brown, Principle of Language Learning and Teaching, New York: Prentice Hall Regents, 1987, p.217.
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Peter Hubbard et.al., A Training Course for TEFL, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, p.134.
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Brown, loc.cit.
Slips are mistakes which students can correct themselves and which therefore need explanation, while attempts are mistakes committed when students try to
say something but do not yet know the correct way of saying it.
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There are distinguished types of errors the learners made, among the most common errors are:
a. Omitting grammatical morphemes, which are items that do not
contribute much to do meaning of sentences, as in He hit car. b.
Double marking a semantic feature e.g. past tense when only one marker is required, as in She didn’t went back.
c. Regularizing rules, as in womans for women.
d. Using archiforms -one form in place of several- such as the use of
her for both she and her, as in I see her yesterday. Her dance with my brother.
e. Using two or more forms in random alternation even though the
language requires the use of each only under certain conditions, as in the random use of he and she regardless of the gender of the
person of interest. f.
Misordering items in constructions that require a reversal of word-order rules that had been previously acquired as in What
you are doing?, or misplacing items that may be correctly placed
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Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, London: Longman, third edition 2001, p.99
in more than one place in the sentence, as in: They are all the time late.
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Corder 1967 noted that errors could be significant in three ways: 1 they provided the teacher with information about how much the learner had
learnt, 2 they provided the researcher with evidence of how language was learnt, and 3 they served as devices by which the learner discovered the rules
of the target language.
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2. Error Analysis
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