Get premium membership and access questions with answers, video lessons as well as revision papers.

How can you explain errors?

      

How can you explain errors?

  

Answers


Francis
After categorizing the errors, the next phase in error Analysis is to give an explanation as to the causes of these errors. Errors arise from several sources. McLaughlin (Pg 206) identifies the following two main sources:

Interlingual (errors of interference from the native language,) this is where the learner tries to impose the rules of LI on to L2 ,for example if a learner whose LI is Kiswahili says* ‘We jumped down into the ditch and took the ball of John’. We can account for this error by looking at the structure of Kiswahili which is his L1. So the above error (in learner language) reflects the structure of the learner‘s L1 and is therefore interlingual. Interlingual errors are also referred to as interference errors.

Intralingual (errors within the target language). These are errors that arise from within the target language. The errors are also referred to as developmental errors and may occur in any LL situation irrespective of whether the language being learnt is an Ll, L2, or FL. An example of an intralingual error:
- We ate all the foods. (We ate all the food). In the above example the cause of the error is obviously overgeneralization. The learner in this case has mastered the rule of plural formation making (thus, add – s to a noun when making plural) but he overuses the rule and applies it onto any noun. Such errors are common to all language learners (be they LI learners, L2 learners or foreign language learners).
francis1897 answered the question on March 8, 2023 at 13:32


Next: What is the description of errors?
Previous: What are the limitations of Error Analysis?

View More Second Language Acquisition Questions and Answers | Return to Questions Index


Learn High School English on YouTube

Related Questions