The Definition of Error

CHAPTER II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

A. Error

When the students write in English, they can make a lot of errors. It seems impossible if the learners or students have never been made some errors in their language learning process, because do some errors is human and natural.

1. The Definition of Error

There are many definitions of errors. According to Geographical Webster , Revised Home and Office Dictionary of the English Language, “Error is a mistake made in writing or other wise, a wondering or deviation from the truth, 3 it means that error can be found in the writing covering a phoneme, a word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, a paragraph, a discourse. While in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition, “Error is an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy”. 4 Dullay stated, “Errors are the flawed side of learner speech or writing.” 5 It means that there is something wrong in norms of language performance. As the writer said before, that making errors are unavoidable in learning process. Besides making errors are parts of learning and no one can learn language without hisher first making errors. 3 Geographical Webster Revised Home and Office Dictionary of the English Language Chicago, p. 384. 4 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Eleventh Edition Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Inc, 2003, p. 425. 5 Heidi Dullay, et. al., Language Two New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, p.138. Littlewood stated, “Errors are signs of learning failure and, as such, not to be willingly tolerated. 6 Error cannot always be easily identified. First of all, the notion of ‘error’ presupposes a norm, and norms, in their turn, are dependent on, amongst other things, the medium spoken or written language, the social context formal or informal, and the relation between speaker and hearer symmetrical or asymmetrical. Furthermore, it is quite possible for something which seems an error in isolation to be perfectly acceptable in context, and vice versa. 7 Error and mistakes are not the same. But most of the people still misunderstand about definition of both. To be more clarified between error and mistakes, Hubbard et.al., said “Errors caused by lack of knowledge about the target language English or by incorrect hypothesis about it; and unfortunate mistakes caused by temporary lapses of memory, confusion, slips of the tongue and so on”. 8 A mistake refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a “slip,” in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly. It is the result of some sort of breakdown or imperfection in the process of producing speech. These hesitations, slips of the tongue, random ungrammaticalities, and other performance lapses in native-speaker production also occur in second language speech, and when attention is called to it, mistake can be self corrected. 9 Such mistakes must be carefully distinguished from errors of a second language learner, idiosyncrasies in the interlanguage of the learner that are direct manifestations of a system within which a learner is operating at the time. 6 William T. Littlewood, Foreign and Second language Learning, Cambridge: Cambridge Univrsity Press, 1988, p. 22. 7 Theo van Els, et. al., Applied Linguistic and the Learning and Teaching of Foreign Languages London: Edward Arnold, 1991, p. 47. 8 Peter Hubbard et. al., A Training Course for TEFL, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 134. 9 H. Douglas Brown, Principle of Learning and Teaching, New York: Prentice Hall Regents , p. 205. An error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner. 10 Julian Edge, in Harmer 2001, suggested that mistake can be divided into two broad categories: ‘slip’ and ‘attempts’. Slips are mistakes which students can correct themselves once the mistake has been pointed out to them, while attempts are mistakes committed when a student tries to say something but does not yet know the correct way of saying it. 11 For this paper the writer adopt the definition of genuine errors that caused by lack of knowledge about English or by lack of incorrect hypothesis about English. So, if the student can not correct himself when he was challenged, it means he made an error, but he made mistake if he can correct himself when he was challenged because a mistake is caused by temporary lapses of memory, confusion, slips of the tongue and so on.

2. The Error Analysis