Errors encouraged by teaching material or method

c. Errors encouraged by teaching material or method

Errors appear to be induced by the teaching process itself that it has any positive contribution to make to the learning of any skill. Error is evidence of failure, of ineffective teaching or lack of control. If material is well chosen, graded and teaching presented with meticulous care. There should never be any error. It is fairly easy to accept this in the early stages of language learning when controls are applied in the shape of substitution tables, conversion exercises of a mechanical nature and guided sentence patterns, but more difficult at later stages. However, it might be salutary for us to bear in mind the possibility of some of our students’ error being due to our own teaching. Unfortunately, these errors are much more difficult to classify. 16 Learners of foreign language made errors or mistakes. Mistakes must be distinguished from errors because both of them are different. It is really important to know the distinctions between them because some teachers don’t know the differences between errors and mistakes. It will be useful to distinguish between error and mistakes. Jacek Fisiak distinguished between error and mistake as follows: “Mistakes are deviations due to performance factors such as memory limitations e.g. mistakes in the sequence of tenses and agreement in long sentences, spelling pronunciations, fatigue, emotional strain, etc. Errors, on the other hand, are systematic consistent deviances characteristic of the learner’s linguistic system a given stage of learning. 17 Furthermore, H. Douglas brown explains that; A mistake refers to performance error that is either a random guess or a “slip” in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly. All people make mistakes, in both native and second language situation. While error 16 Peter Hubbard, et al., A Training Course for TEFL, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 140-143. 17 Jacek Fisiak, Constructive Linguistics and the Language Teacher, New York: Pegamon Press, 1981, p. 224. is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflects the competence of the learner and an error that reveals of a portion of the learner’s competence in the target language. 18 In line with Douglas explanation above, John Norrish stated that; Error is a systematic deviation, when a learner has not learnt something and consistently ‘gets it wrong’. As mentioned above, a child acquiring his own language sometimes consistently makes the same error. In the same way, when a learner of English as second of foreign language makes an error systematically, it happened because he has not learnt the correct form. Meanwhile, mistake is the inconsistent deviation. Sometimes the learners ‘get it right’ but sometimes he makes a mistake and uses the wrong from. 19 Corder made a distinction between a mistake and an error. Whereas a mistake is a random performance slip caused by fatigue, excitement, etc., and therefore can be readily self-corrected, an error is systematic deviation made by learners who have not yet mastered the rules of the L2. A learner cannot self- corrected an error because it is a product reflective of his or her current stage of L2 development, or underlying competence. 20 James says as quoted from H. Douglas Brown that an error cannot be self- corrected, while mistakes can be self corrected if the deviation is pointed out to the speaker. The learner’s capacity for self-correction is objectively observable only if the learner actually self corrects. 21 From the explanation above the writer concludes that error is deviations made by the learners systematically and consistently which showed the language 18 Brown, Principle of Language Learning and Teaching New Jersey: Prentice hall, Inc,1987, p. 205.. 19 John Norrish, Language Learners and Their Errors, London: The Macmillan Press Limited, 1983, p. 7-8. 20 Diane Larsen-Freemen and Michael H. Long, An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research, England : Longman,1991, p.59 21 Brown, Principle of Language Learning and Teaching New Jersey: Prentice hall, Inc,1987, p. 206 competence of learners. Meanwhile, the mistake is deviations made by learners unsystematically and it happened just in the performance.

B. ENGLISH WRITING