SOURCES OF ERRORS
„Mistakes are akin to slip of the tongue. That is they are generally one-time-only events. The speaker who makes a mistake is able to recognize it as a mistake and correct it if necessary. An error, on the other hand, is systematic. That is, it is likely to occur repeatedly and is not recognized by the learner as an error"
Gass, Susan M. And Larry Selinker. 2001
An Introductory Course to Second Language Acquisition
MISTAKE
Is an error of performance; one knows the rule but one doesn't apply it and knows what should be corrected. They are usually caused by lack of attention or carelessness
ERROR
A result of incorrect or inaccurate learning; one is not able to apply the rule. They are usually caused by interference
Sources of errors according to:
»Behaviourists:
the main source of errors is their mother tongue and errors should be corrected immediately after occurring.
» Contrastive analysis:
suggests that errors will occur when the structures in students' mother tongue are different from the structures in the target language (negative transfer) e.g. ,, When I will be back". There is also the term of positive transfer which tells that if LI and L2 have the same structures, errors shouldn't occur.
•Error analysis:
„A guide to inner workings of the language learning process". (Ellis, 1990:53) These errors occur when students simplify the learning process by: l.Overgeneralisation of rules: e.g. Mouses, goed.
2.0mision errors: students omit elements with no meaning
e.g. „He listening to radio now".
3. Addition errors: „He doesn 't goes to school every day"
4. Misformation errors: e.g. „She havedher dinner at 7p.m. "
5. Misordering: „He is all the time late "
OTHER SOURCES:
•Poor teaching (misleading explanation, faulty presentation)
•Students' inattention
•Poor memory
•Something internal which disables people to learn a foreign language.
Types of errors
1. Overt - ungrammatical utterance at the sentence level (sentence level errors) e.g. John cans sing
2.Covert - utterances are grammatically well-formed at the sentence level but are not interpretable within the context of communication
3.Global - they hinder communication which means they prevent the hearer from comprehending some aspects of the message. e.g. Well, it's a great harry around.
4.Local - don't prevent the message from being heard; there's only a minor violation of one segment of a sentence and the hearer can make an accurate guess about the meaning.
RobertSosik