An error is something that has been done in the wrong way, or an opinion or statement that is incorrect. However perspicacious teachers may be, students commit errors; it is something inevitable and it is part of the learning process. It is teachers’ duty not to ignore these errors because students risk acquiring the language in an erroneous manner.
First of all, we have to detect the errors students commit; from this perspective, it is important for a teacher to compare what students say and write with what a native speaker would say or would write. In order to know what a native speaker would say or write, teachers should consult the corpus evidence (the native words and texts); they have to compare the students’ output with the information provided by the corpus evidence. If possible, the corpus evidence has to be consulted before starting working with students.
After detecting the errors, the teacher has to decide quickly what group these errors belong to. There are situations in which students do not choose the right word (These are called “economics” problems) or the right form (I “thing” you are right).
Students may also combine lexical items in the wrong way; for example, instead of saying “last Saturday afternoon”, they may say “the Saturday afternoon past”. These types of errors are called “lexical errors”.
Learners also commit “grammar errors”; they do not know how to use different parts of speech or different structures; they say, for example, “the girls sangs” or “he drived the car” instead of saying “the girl sings” or “he drove the car”.
Lexical and grammar errors can be reduced if teachers know how to highlight the correct form of words, to transmit meanings of words properly (through definitions and communicative situations), and to involve deductive and inductive approaches to teaching grammar; rules and examples need to work together so students can both induce and deduce when performing logical reasoning.
There are also types of errors which are not easy to identify and require much attention on the part of the teacher. They are called “discourse errors”. Once I asked a student: “What time was it?” and he answered “Was ten past eleven” instead of saying “It was ten past eleven”.
Another student used to mistake “possibly” with “eventually” in the middle of her narration and she said: “Mary thought it would take three days, eventually four…..”. Another student always began his speech with “so”: “So” I will begin with the poem.
Discourse errors can be reduced and even eliminated if teachers involve students in speaking and writing activities; students should take part in communicative situations and role plays or they may be asked and guided to write as many compositions, articles and essays as possible. Feedback is vital when involving students in these activities.
Everyone knows that the most obvious and widespread errors are the “pronunciation errors”. These errors can gradually be eliminated if students listen to their teachers’ pronunciation or look at the phonemic transcription of the words found in the dictionary.
It is not easy for teachers to divide errors into different types. From their experience, teachers know that an error can belong to more than one group; once a student said: the man “which” I saw; this error can be seen both as a grammatical error and a lexical error. Vocabulary and grammar are learnt together; they are not isolated from each other.
During the teaching process, it is important for teachers to detect the cause of the errors students commit. One of the main causes is represented by the interference of the mother tongue in the foreign language (for example, the interference of the Romanian language into English).
A student once said: My mother is “engineer”; when saying that, she had in mind the equivalent Romanian construction in which the indefinite article (“un”; “o”) is not used. This is called “transfer”, more exactly negative transfer also named native language interference.
Thus the above correct sentence is “My mother is an engineer”. There are also examples of positive transfer. When studying the definite article, one student said: “The lion is a ferocious animal”. The student has borrowed the Romanian equivalent construction in which the definite article “the” has a generic function.
There are errors which are not caused by the native language; they are caused by the specific character of the foreign language; these errors are called “developmental” errors; they resemble the errors committed by children when acquiring the native language. During an English lesson, a student said: My father “cames” to me, “saids” goodbye and “lefts”.
In the above case, the student generalized the present tense rule for the third person singular and used this rule in the past tense. The student also interwove past tense narration with the historical function of present tense. The present tense rule for the third person singular is over-applied and it is systematic.
The above paragraph proves that we have to deal with a “systematic error”. But during the teaching process, teachers also come across “random errors” such as “The Saturday afternoon past” instead of “Last Saturday afternoon”. The question is: “Which errors can be corrected more easily?”
The errors which can be corrected more easily are the systematic errors because these errors imply that students know certain rules of the foreign language, but these rules are not automatisms yet. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between systematic errors and random errors; teachers can do it by asking students to correct themselves.
When that student said: My father “cames” to me, “saids” goodbye and “lefts”, the teacher told him that the verbal forms “cames”, “saids” and “lefts” are wrong. The student himself told the teacher that the right forms are: “came”, “said” and “left”.
The above situation proved that the student knew the rules but those rules had not turned into automatisms; the above error did not affect the meaning of the message and everyone understood what the student wanted to say.
Nevertheless, there are situations in which the message is severely affected. In one of her compositions, one of the students wrote: “Tom and John took the money and left. The “farmer” lost his money on his way to the car.” The error is: “farmer” instead of “former”. This serious lexical error distorts and affects the message; the teacher could not understand what the student really wanted to say. Such errors should not go unnoticed.
But errors also should not go uncorrected. The negative feedback and the positive feedback should co-exist. Negative feedback means that the teacher says to the student what the mistake is. Positive feedback takes place when the student is told that they are right.
If negative feedback does not exist, students integrate the wrong new knowledge into their old mental knowledge; hence, learners are not given the opportunity to correct what is wrong and to integrate the corrected form and meaning into the old mental linguistic structures. This is nothing but the process of restructuring knowledge.
In conclusion, students should not be afraid of errors; being afraid of errors leads to lack of creativity, to inhibition. What students have to do is to learn from errors, to take care not to repeat them in official exams, in class tests or in important social contexts. Students needn’t be afraid but they need to be careful.
Bibliography
Jones, L. 2007. The Student-Centered Classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rodgers, T. 2001. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University.