The Role of Error Analysis in Language teaching and Learning.
In language learning the study of the learners has become very important and has always been a cause of much concern to the teacher and text-book writers alike. It has been used as indicator of learning and guide in teaching. The study or learners errors are known as error analysis. Error analysis shows the significance of learner’s errors and three ways:
(1) They tell the teachers how far the learners have progressed and what remains for them to learn.
(2) They provide evidence to researchers of how language is learned of acquired and what strategy or procedure the learner is employing to learn the language, and
(3) They serve as feedback to the learner of hypothesis she is using
Further more, Sue loarch (1984: 11) states that error analysis is not confronted with the complex theoretical problem encountered by contrastive analysis, e/q/ the problems of equivalence.
According to Soetikno (1996: 187) contrastive analysis has in many case, failed to predict learning problems, despite the claim that contrastive analysis has not only predicated difficulties in the areas where the mother tongue and foreign differ but also in the case of linguistic features that are unknown in the sources language.
However, there are weaknesses of error analysis are also started by Zuchrudin Surya Winarta and Hariyanto in their book “Translation” (2003: 17)
The points out of their major weaknesses of error analysis are:
(1) The confusion of error description with error explanation (the process and product aspect of analysis).
(2) The lack of precision and specificity in the definition of error categories and
(3) Simplistic categorization of the causes or learning’s errors.
As stated by Baradja (1990: 96), there are three major difficulties in conducting error analysis. There are:
(1) Difficulty in giving meaning to the student utterances. If often happens that the researcher are usually and other activities that she does not have time to make reconstruction of students wring utterances or to return them to their original sentence or corpus, These often cause mistake and produce unmeaning finding.
(2) Difficulty in creating instrument, which can be used to obtain the information that we need. If the instrument we make is not good and systematic, we will get invalid and unmeaning data. In other words the information Data we do not contain error since students may avoid using difficult items.
(3) Difficulty in classifying the errors.
To classify errors into types is not easy work and it takes much time.
Sometimes students are wrong utterance cannot be regarded as ‘error’.
2.2.2. Categories of Errors in Error Analysis
To categorize error into classification based on the types or the sources of errors is not easy work. Many times error cannot be traced back into one source. More over, the boundaries between different sources of error many sometimes be unclear that the arbitrary classification decision unavoidable
According to the process editing written by Sue Loarch in her book (1984: 181) the writer concludes that there are two categories of errors, global and local errors.
Global errors are thus which affect the over all sentence organization significantly, while local errors are those affect single element (constituent) in a sentences.
Suotikno (1996: 181) made a classification of errors in comparative taxonomy based on comparisons between the structure of L2 errors and certain other types of constructions there comparisons result in four types of errors; developmental, inter-lingual, ambiguous and other errors Further more, based on surface strategy taxonomy, Soetikno (1996: 181) give emphasis on the ways surface structure is altered. Learners may omit necessary items or add unnecessary ones, they may misfire item or miss order them. Thus, the errors may be in the form of omission, addition, miss formation, and miss ordering errors types.
Omission errors are characterized by the absence of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance. Although any morpheme or word in a sentence is a potential candidate for omission, some types of morpheme are omitted than others.
Additional errors are the opposite of omission. They are characterized by the presence of an item, which must not appear in a well-formed utterance. Additional errors include double marking, regularization and simple addition that is an addition that is not double marking or regularization.
Misformation errors are characterized by the use of the wrong from of morpheme or structure, while in omission errors the items is not supplied at all, in miss-formation errors the learners. Supplies something although it is in correct.
Misordering errors are characterized by the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group morphemes in an utterance.
This study has the same purpose as Dulay’s statement in the classification of error types. The error classification is intended as an aid to present data rather than to create a basic for extensive speculating concerning the source of errors.
In language learning the study of the learners has become very important and has always been a cause of much concern to the teacher and text-book writers alike. It has been used as indicator of learning and guide in teaching. The study or learners errors are known as error analysis. Error analysis shows the significance of learner’s errors and three ways:
(1) They tell the teachers how far the learners have progressed and what remains for them to learn.
(2) They provide evidence to researchers of how language is learned of acquired and what strategy or procedure the learner is employing to learn the language, and
(3) They serve as feedback to the learner of hypothesis she is using
Further more, Sue loarch (1984: 11) states that error analysis is not confronted with the complex theoretical problem encountered by contrastive analysis, e/q/ the problems of equivalence.
According to Soetikno (1996: 187) contrastive analysis has in many case, failed to predict learning problems, despite the claim that contrastive analysis has not only predicated difficulties in the areas where the mother tongue and foreign differ but also in the case of linguistic features that are unknown in the sources language.
However, there are weaknesses of error analysis are also started by Zuchrudin Surya Winarta and Hariyanto in their book “Translation” (2003: 17)
The points out of their major weaknesses of error analysis are:
(1) The confusion of error description with error explanation (the process and product aspect of analysis).
(2) The lack of precision and specificity in the definition of error categories and
(3) Simplistic categorization of the causes or learning’s errors.
As stated by Baradja (1990: 96), there are three major difficulties in conducting error analysis. There are:
(1) Difficulty in giving meaning to the student utterances. If often happens that the researcher are usually and other activities that she does not have time to make reconstruction of students wring utterances or to return them to their original sentence or corpus, These often cause mistake and produce unmeaning finding.
(2) Difficulty in creating instrument, which can be used to obtain the information that we need. If the instrument we make is not good and systematic, we will get invalid and unmeaning data. In other words the information Data we do not contain error since students may avoid using difficult items.
(3) Difficulty in classifying the errors.
To classify errors into types is not easy work and it takes much time.
Sometimes students are wrong utterance cannot be regarded as ‘error’.
2.2.2. Categories of Errors in Error Analysis
To categorize error into classification based on the types or the sources of errors is not easy work. Many times error cannot be traced back into one source. More over, the boundaries between different sources of error many sometimes be unclear that the arbitrary classification decision unavoidable
According to the process editing written by Sue Loarch in her book (1984: 181) the writer concludes that there are two categories of errors, global and local errors.
Global errors are thus which affect the over all sentence organization significantly, while local errors are those affect single element (constituent) in a sentences.
Suotikno (1996: 181) made a classification of errors in comparative taxonomy based on comparisons between the structure of L2 errors and certain other types of constructions there comparisons result in four types of errors; developmental, inter-lingual, ambiguous and other errors Further more, based on surface strategy taxonomy, Soetikno (1996: 181) give emphasis on the ways surface structure is altered. Learners may omit necessary items or add unnecessary ones, they may misfire item or miss order them. Thus, the errors may be in the form of omission, addition, miss formation, and miss ordering errors types.
Omission errors are characterized by the absence of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance. Although any morpheme or word in a sentence is a potential candidate for omission, some types of morpheme are omitted than others.
Additional errors are the opposite of omission. They are characterized by the presence of an item, which must not appear in a well-formed utterance. Additional errors include double marking, regularization and simple addition that is an addition that is not double marking or regularization.
Misformation errors are characterized by the use of the wrong from of morpheme or structure, while in omission errors the items is not supplied at all, in miss-formation errors the learners. Supplies something although it is in correct.
Misordering errors are characterized by the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group morphemes in an utterance.
This study has the same purpose as Dulay’s statement in the classification of error types. The error classification is intended as an aid to present data rather than to create a basic for extensive speculating concerning the source of errors.
