Another concept of error by Brown, he defined “error as the process to
observe, analyze, and classify the deviation of the rules of the second language and then to reveal the systems operated by learner
”.
3
It seems this concept is the same by Crystal, he defined
“error is a technique for identifying, classifying and systematically interpreting the unacceptable
forms produced by someone learning a foreign language, using any of the principles and procedures provides by linguistics
”.
4
On the other hand, Richards states that “error is the study of errors
made by the second and foreign language learners. Error may be carried out in order to find out how well someone knows a language, find out how
a person learns a language, and obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid in teaching or in the preparation of teaching
materials ”.
5
The definitions above clarify that error is an activity to identify, classify and interpreted or describe the errors made by someone in writing
and it is carried out to obtain information on common difficulties faced by someone in writing English sentence.
2. Types of Errors
Error fall into four categories: “omission of some required element;
addition of some unnecessary or incorrect element; selection of an incorrect element, and misordering of the elements. Nevertheless, Corder
in Erdogan’s journal adds that this classification is not enough to describe
3
H. D Brown, Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, New jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1994, p. 206
4
D.Crystal, A.Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, second edition, New York: Basil Blackwel Inc, 1987, p.43
5
Jack C. Richards, Error Analysis, London:Longman, 1973, p.172
errors. That is why he includes the linguistics level of errors under the sub- areas of morphology, syntax, and lexicon
”.
6
On other hand, in Erdogan’s journal, Ellis maintains that “classifying
errors in these ways can help us to diagnose learners’ learning problems at any stage of their development and to plot how changes in error patterns
occur over time. This categorization can be exemplified as follows: omission, addition, selection, ordering
”.
7
Omission:
Morphological omission A strange thing happen to me
yesterday Syntactical omission
Must say also the names?
Addition:
In morphology The books is here
In syntax The London
In lexicon I stayed there during five years ago
Selection:
In morphology My friend is oldest than me
In syntax I want that he comes here
Ordering:
In pronunciation Fignisicant for „significant’;
prulal for „plural’
6
Vacide Erdogan, Contribution of Error Analysis to Foreign Language Teaching, Journal of the Faculty of Education Mersin University, 2005, p. 264
7
Ibid.
