The Nature of Learner Language

Chapter 2

Rod Ellis 2003, pp. 15 - 30

By MULYOKO/ 2201410151/ ROMBEL 06

Three Areas in Investigating L2 Acquisition:

Kinds of errors learners make and how

these change

Identifying development pattern by

describing the stages in the acq. pattern

Examine the variability found in learner

language
 A. Errors and Error Analysis

There are good reasons for focusing on errors:

They are a conspicuous feature
of learner language

It is useful for teachers to know

what errors learners make

It is possible that making errors

may actually ‘help learners’
 Identifying Errors

To identify errors we have to compare the sentences

learners produce with what seem to be the normal
one.

A man and a little boy was watching him.

The correct one should be:

A man and a little boy were watching him.

Sometimes, learners produce sentences that are
possible target-language sentences but not preferred
ones.

… went in the traffic.

A native speaker would probably prefer to say:

… went into the traffic.

It is difficult to reconstruct the correct sentence
because we are not sure what the learner meant to
say.

The big of them contained a snake

It might be:

The bigger of them contained a snake.

The distinction between errors and mistakes.:

Errors reflects gaps in a learner’s knowledge; they

occur because the leaner does not know what is
correct.

Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance;

they occur because, in a particular instance, the
learner is unable to perform what he or she knows.
 Describing Errors

There are several ways of making classification of

errors into types:

Classifying errors into grammatical

categories

Trying to identify in general ways the

errors
 Explaining Errors

Three main explanation of errors:

Errors are, to a large extent, systematic and, to a certain extent, predictable.

Errors are not only systematic; many of them are also universal

not all errors are universal

 Error Evaluation

1. Some errors can be considered more serious than

others.

2. Some errors, known as global errors, violate the

overall structure of a sentence
 B. Development Patterns

All learners, no matter whether they are learning

naturalistically or in a classroom, and irrespective of
their first language (L1), make omissions,
overgeneralization, and transfer errors
 The Early Stages of L2 Acquisition

When learners do begin to speak in the L2 their

speech is likely to manifest two particular
characteristics. They are:

1st The kind of formulaic chunks, and

2nd Proportional Implication

 The Order of Acquisition

To investigate the order of acquisition, researchers

choose a number of grammatical structures to study
(for example, progressive –ing, auxiliary be, and
plural –s). They then collect samples of learner
language and identify how accurately each features is
used by different learners.
 Sequence of Acquisition

The example of how L2 learners acquire irregular past tense forms.

Stage Description Example

1 Learners fail to mark the verb for past time. ‘eat’

2 Learners begin to produce irregular past tense forms. ‘ate’

3 Learners over generalize the regular past tense form. ‘eated’

4 Sometimes learners produce hybrid forms. ‘ated’

5 Learners produce correct irregular past tense forms. ‘ate’

 Some Implications

The work on developmental patterns is important for

another reason. It suggests that some linguistic
features are inherently easier to learn than others.
This has implications for both SLA theory and for
language teaching.
 C. Variability in learner language

Language is systematic since it is possible that

variability is also systematic. That is, we may be able
to explain, and even predict, when learners use one
form and when another.
THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION