recognize it unless other people or their teacher corrected them and it cannot be self corrected. While mistake happened because temporary laps of memory and
also slip of the tongue, actually the students have known about what they write but they just
“slip up” and they can correct and recognize their own mistakes.
C. ERROR ANALYSIS
1. The Understanding of Error Analysis
Learning a target language English is different from learning one’s mother tongue. There are some opinions about error analysis.
Brown
in his book stated that “Errors can be observed, analyzed, and
classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner, led to a surge o
f study of learner’s errors, called error analysis”.
8
It
seems this concept is the same as the one proposed by Crystal
“Error Analysis 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 provided by
linguistic”
9
Ellis
explained in her book that “Error analysis was one of the first methods used to investigate learner language”.
10
From the definitions above, the writer summarize that error analysis is an activity to identify, classify, and interpreted or describe the
errors made by someone in speaking or in writing and it is carried out to obtain information on common difficulties faced by someone in
speaking or in writing English sentences.
2. The Procedure of Error Analysis
There are some procedures in analyzing the learner errors. Corder suggests in Ellis the following steps in error analysis;
collection of
8
Brown 1987, op.cit., p.259
9
D. Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987, p. 78
10
Ellis 2008, op.cit., p.68
sample of learner language, identification of errors, description of errors, explanation of errors and evaluation of errors.
11
First, collection of a sample of learner language. It is deciding
what sample of learner language to use for the analysis and how to collect these samples. We can identify three board types of error analysis
according to the size of the sample. Second,
identification of errors. After the learner language has been collected, the errors have to be identified. To identify errors we
have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be normal or ‘correct’ sentences in the target language which correspond
with them.
12
Third, description of errors. When the errors have been identified,
they can be described. There are several ways of doing this. One way is to classify errors into grammatical categories. Another way might be to
try to identify general ways in which the learner’s utterances differ from the reconstructed target language utterances.
13
As Ellis stated that “The
description of learner errors involves a comparison of the learner’s idiosyncratic utterances with a reconstruction of those utterances in the
target language ”.
14
Fourth, explaination of errors. After the errors have been identified
and described, the next step is to try to explain them. Explanation is concerned with establishing the source of the error, i.e. accounting for
why it was made.
15
At last, evaluation of errors. Because the purpose of the error
analysis to help learners learn second language, so there is a need to evaluate errors. It involves a consideration of the effect that errors have
11
Ellis 2008, op.cit.,p. 48
12
Rod Ellis, Second Language Acquisition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997,
p.16
13
Ibid p. 18
14
Ellis 2008, op.cit, p. 54
15
Ellis 2008, op.cit, p. 57
