in more than one place in the sentence, as in: They are all the time late.
10
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.
11
2. Error Analysis
Making errors is human being and natural; as natural as the movement of the sun and the moon. In learning process, errors have been
perceived as a device a learner uses in order to learn. Indeed, human learning is fundamentally a process that involves the making of mistakes. Mistakes,
misjudgment, miscalculation, and erroneous assumption form an important aspect of learning virtually any skill or acquiring information.
12
In 1994, Gass and Selinker defined errors as ‘red flags’ that provide evidence of the learner’s
knowledge of the second language.
13
10
Heidi Dulay et.al., Language Two, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, p.138- 139
11
Rod Ellis, The Study of Second Language Acquisition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 p.48
12
Brown 1987, op.cit., p.216
13
http:abisamrat03.tripod.comnadalanguageacq-erroranalysis.htmltheo. Accessed on December 7, 2007.
For some researchers, errors are valuable for they contain information on the strategies that people use to acquire a language.
14
This positive perception of errors can be traced back to the article entitled ‘The
Significance of Learner errors’ written by the ‘father’ of Error Analysis, Pit Corder, in 1967. Errors used to be ‘flaws’ that are needed to be eradicated.
Corder presented a completely different point of view. He contended that those errors are ‘important in and of themselves’.
According to Harimurti Kridalaksana, Error Analysis is a technique to measure the progress of language learning by marking and classifying the
errors committed by someone or a group. “Analisis kesilapan: Teknik untuk mengukur kemajuan belajar bahasa dengan mencatat dan mengklasifikasikan
kesalahan-kesalahan yang dibuat oleh seseorang atau kelompok”.
15
Error Analysis is a process based on analysis of learner’s error in the process of second language learning. Sharma stated: error analysis is defined as
a process based on analysis of learner’s with one clear objective; evolving a suitable and effective teaching learning strategy and remedial measures
necessary in certain clearly marked out areas of the foreign language.
16
Error Analysis EA was born in 1967 initiated by Pit Corder to challenge the behaviorists’ theory on learner’s error, i.e. contrastive analysis
14
Dulay et.al. 1982, op.cit., p.138
15
Harimurti Kridalaksana, Kamus Linguistik, Jakarta: PT. Gramedia, 1982 p.11
16
S.K. Sharma, Error Analysis: Why and How, English Teacher Forum, April 1982 Vol. XXX p. 21
CA.
17
The CA treatment of errors rested on comparison of the learner’s native and target languages. Differences between the two were thought to
account for the majority of an L2 learner’s errors. The behaviorist view of learning at that time provided the theoretical justification for CA. It held that
learning was basically a process of forming automatic habits and that errors should therefore result from first language habits interfering with the learner’s
attempts to learn new linguistics behaviors. It was thought that contrastive analysis of the learner’s two languages would predict the areas in the target
language that would pose the most difficulty.
18
Attentive teachers and researchers, however, noticed that a great number of student errors could not possibly be traced to their native
language.
19
Error analysis emphasizes the significance of errors in learners’ ‘interlanguage’ system.
20
The term interlanguage refers to the systematic knowledge of an L2 which is independent of both learner’s L1 and the target
language. It is the separateness of a second language learner’s system, a system that has structurally intermediate status between the native and target
language.
21
Error analysis became distinguished from contrastive analysis by
17
Dulay 1982, op.cit., p.140
18
ibid.
19
ibid.
20
ibid.
21
Brown 1987, op.cit., p.215
its examination of errors attributable of all possible sources, not just those resulting from negative transfers of the native language.
22
Studying learners’ errors serves two major purposes: 1 It provides data from which inferences about the nature of the language learning process
can be made; 2 It indicates to teachers and curriculum developers which part of the target language students have most difficulty producing correctly and
which error types detract most from a learner’s ability to communicate effectively.
23
3. Model for Error Analysis
