Error Analysis of TEFL Students in their Written Production

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M e d B i o T e c h J . 2 0 1 7 ; 1 ( 3 ) : 1 5 3 - 1 5 7|153 Journal of Humanities Insights 1(3): 153-157, 2017

Research Paper

Error Analysis of TEFL Students in their Written

Production

Seyyed Hassan Seyyedrezaei*

Department of English Language Teaching, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran

Received: 27 Jun 2017 Accepted: 07 August 2017 Published: 01 September 2017

Abstract

There are plenty of errors made by language learners in their production whether written or spoken. They are, in fact, so frequent, more noticeably; in written production that they have turned heads of so many specialists and language teachers especially who are at the front. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the errors made by 60 TEFL students at Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul Branch in their written production from Error Analysis perspective. This analysis is for finding the sources of the

errors to see how many errors are the results of negative transfer from students’ native language and how many from other possible sources. The findings show that students’ native language (Farsi) is an important source of the errors in the students’ written production that accounts for 46% of all their errors, i.e. half of their errors. In other words, it is a major source of errors but not the only source. Therefore, this study takes a middle approach neither total role nor no role to NL as the source of error.

Keywords: Error Analysis; Written Production; Contrastive Analysis; Negative Transfer

How to cite the article:

S. H. Seyyedrezaei, Error Analysis of TEFL Students in their Written Production, J. Hum. Ins. 2017; 1(3): 153-157, DOI: 10.22034/jhi.2017.86969

1. Introduction

Foreign language teachers even from 2000 years ago were obsessed with the practical question that what the sources of learners errors in their production were. In an attempt to find an answer to this question, a lot of voices in disagreement have been arisen: some consider just learner’s native

language as the source of errors (Contrastive Analysts), but some distinguish other possible sources [1,2]. They wrote contrastive observations about students` native language and the language they were learning as early as the schools of the ancient world. Then, the idea of the influence of native language on the second language acquisition

was inspired by Fries (1945) who “subscribed to

the behaviorist analysis of linguistic competence as a series of habits [3]. Errors considered to be the

result of transfer of L1 “habits” but the transfer of

some habits are useful and some others harmful [4]. It was a time, according to Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991), when structural linguistics and

*_{Corresponding author Email: [email protected]}

behavioral psychology were rather dominant in the study of language learning [5]. CA proponents came to advocate that L2 instructional materials could be prepared more efficiently by comparing two

languages and, in the process, predict learners’

behaviors and difficulties. Some researchers even believed that when similarities and differences between an L1 and an L2 were taken into account, pedagogy could be more effective and useful. Such arguments gave birth to the basic ideas of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH), upon which CA is based. Lado’s Linguistics across Cultures is the

landmark work which paved the way for CAH. According to this hypothesis, L1 transfer affects second language acquisition. Lado (1957) states that "Those elements that are similar to the [learner's] native language will be simple for him, and those areas that are different will be difficult" [4].

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of pendulum toward a rationalistic view of language ability led many language teachers to discredit the behavioristic language learning style and emphasize cognitive-code learning approach. Hence, learners were encouraged to work on more conscious grammar exercises based on certain rules and deductive learning began to be focused again. This application of new linguistic insights, however, did not bear much fruit since Chomsky himself commented that a linguistic theory of the kind he pursued had little to offer for actual language learning or teaching [6]. While contrastive analysts start from the comparison and contrast of two languages and then go to prediction of errors, after the collapse of CA by the emergence of cognitivism, EA reversed the direction (starting from errors) and obviously it can give us a more complete picture of L2 learning. Therefore, more careful studies on these errors, actually, are essential and of great value to find the sources of these errors in the production of Iranian English learners. Elaborating on the learner language in terms of the errors is something that teachers have always done for very practical reasons. Through the results of tests and examinations, the errors that learners make are a major element in the feedback system of the teaching-learning process. For this reason, it is important that the teacher should be able to not only detect and describe the errors from a linguistic view, but also un error treatment. The sources and the sorts of the errors are determiners for the sort of feedback. In conclusion, the inevitable existence of errors has led researchers to study on them and find out the natural steps for language learning. Findings of error analysis function as facilitator in language teaching in many ways only if the teacher is aware of them and able to make use of them in the teaching process appropriately. Error analysis helps teachers to find out the sources of errors and take pedagogical precautions towards them. Thus, the analysis of learner language has become an essential need to overcome some questions and propose solutions regarding different aspects. Considering the high frequency of errors in Iranian English learners` production regardless of their levels, a systematic analytic survey of the sources, introduced by Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982), can provide a more comprehensive picture of language learning of Iranians and help teachers to elaborate on the sources and help them to eliminate the errors in learners` production [7].

The purpose to carry out EA is twofold: (i) to identify strategies which learners use in language teaching, (ii) identify the causes of learner errors, and (iii) to obtain information understand the psychological reasons for their occurrences. Therefore, the diagnoses and treatment of errors is

one of the fundamental skills of the teacher. It is as important as identification and description of them. In fact, the last two are preliminary for non common difficulties in language learning as an aid to teaching or in development of teaching materials [8]. In fact, the first two are also useful for the third aim, which includes the teaching-learning process. Thus, it can be inferred that language teaching cannot stand away from the findings of error

analysis. Students’ errors have always been of

interest and significance to teachers, syllabus designers and test developers. This may lead educators to devise appropriate materials and effective teaching techniques, and constructing tests suitable for different levels and needs of learners. Hence, the implication of error analysis to language teaching can be viewed from the aspect of language teachers and syllabus designers.

2. Review of Literature

As mentioned before, Lado (1957) formulated the theoretical foundations of Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis [4]. However, this claim could not be sustained by empirical evidence that was accumulated in the mid- and late 1970s. It was soon pointed out that many errors predicted by Contrastive Analysis were inexplicably not observed in learners' language. Even more confusingly, some uniform errors were made by learners irrespective of their L1. It thus became clear that Contrastive Analysis could not predict learning difficulties, and was only useful in the retrospective explanation of errors. These developments, along with the decline of the behaviorist and structuralist paradigms considerably weakened the appeal of Contrastive Analysis. The main assumption of CAH is that language learning can be more successful when the two languages – the native and the foreign – are

similar. Some linguists call this situation “positive transfer”.

There are a couple of arguments in the literature

regarding Lado’s CAH. For instance, Wardhaugh

(1970) states that the hypothesis could be classified into two versions: strong and weak [9]. The strong version predicted that the majority of L2 errors were due to negative transfer. The weak version, on the other hand, merely explained errors after they were made. Wardhaugh (1970) goes on to point out

that, “CAH was also criticized on the ground that it

could not take into account relative difficulty among L2 segments that shared the property of being different from the L1” [9]. Oller and Ziahosseiny (1970) also proposed a moderate version of the CAH to explain the hierarchy of difficulty [10].

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predictive power of CA. We cannot deny that CA may have some potential in certain fields. For example, Sheen (1996) is all for exploiting contrastive analysis in teaching and learning a foreign language, though he confesses that recently

there doesn’t seem to be much interest in the

pedagogical applications of CA [11]. He regrettably

reports, “Judging from an examination of currently

available text books, CA input therein continues to be conspicuous by its absence.

Although CA contributed to language teaching and learning a lot, it has been criticized according to Abbas (1995) due to overwhelming emphasis on one type of error, i.e. interference [12]. Many researchers feel that such emphasis has distorted

CA’s ability to predict correctly a host of other

important errors which second language learners are prone to commit. With the emergence of cognitive psychology and collapse of CA, the direction of the analysis reversed.CA gave way to EA and it starts from errors but the problem is that classification of errors is controversial and Corder (1974) [1], Krashen (1982) [7] and Taylor for instance, introduce different classification. As it is cited in Ellis (1994) [13], it was not until the 1970s that EA became a recognized part of applied linguistics.

In the literature, there are ample data on CA and EA and their contribution in language learning and/or teaching but not sufficient in writing. Specifically speaking, evidence of analyses regarding Persian learners of English is scant. Strain (1968) has worked on a contrastive sketch of the Persian and English sound systems [14]. Schachter (1974) examined the production of English relative clauses by Persian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese students [15]. She found that Chinese and Japanese produced far fewer relative clauses than did the Persian and Arabic students. Then she goes on saying that it was because of the differences between Chinese and Japanese on the one hand and English on the other. But Ghafar Samar and Meechan (1998) did the same study and showed that it accounted for only 4% of the data and concluded that it is not transfer [16]. Their findings were different because of their different sources of the data: the former took from grammar prescriptive books but Ghafar Samar and Meechan took the data from the real situations. Faghih (1997) also focuses on Iranian students' difficulty in learning the English definite article,

"the." He concluded that “CA reveals that in Persian,

there is no single word corresponding exactly to the

English definite article”. Meanwhile, Edalat (2005)

worked on the influence of different elements within Farsi on the final production of their L2 (English). The corpus was examined from two aspects: Sentence-level errors and paragraph level errors. The findings of this study reveal that the differences between sentence patterns in English

and Persian force students to employ structures in positions quite alien to English language sentence pattern. Students' word choice affected by the style of word choice in Persian constitutes another area responsible for the production of unnatural English sentences. Despite its shortcomings, EA is still alive and in the recent studies there is no mention of any of the methodological problems involved in EA [13]. It has made a great contribution to SLA research. And some (e.g. Mirhassani, 2003) even

believe that “CA with all its limitations is useful in

teaching….” [19].

3. Methodology

3.1 Subjects

Subjects of this study were 60 TEFL students at Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul branch. First, some 102 students (TEFL) were randomly selected. They were all from similar academic backgrounds, i.e., all of them had passed three semesters. After administering the proficiency test [20], the students’ scores were ranked and from

among them, 60 students whose scores were ranged between 30 and 55 out of 90 were chosen as the main participants for the study.

3.2 Procedure

In order to tap the students’ general proficiency in

English, a proficiency test consisting of two parts was administered [20]. The first part contained 30 items on structure and written expressions and the second part consisted of 30 items on vocabulary and 30 items on reading comprehension. Then, the selected more homogeneous students were asked to attend a free composition (Appendix) to write essays on some topics. The students` writing was analyzed using the taxonomy of errors introduced by Dulay and Burt (1974) [21]. After that, the percentage of errors in each category was identified and the percentage of errors made by negative transfer from their mother tongue was also identified in each category respectively. The procedure to identify and classify the errors followed the procedure introduced by Corder (1974): 1. Collection of a sample of learner language, 2. Identification of errors, 3. Description of errors, 4. Explanation of errors, 5. Evaluation of errors [1].

Then in order to find the kind and the percentage of errors made by negative transfer of the students` mother tongue, the following steps were also undergone:

1.Analysis of the source of the errors (e.g. mother tongue interference, over-generalization, inconsistencies in the spelling system of the target language, etc.);

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error in terms of communication, norm, etc.). [22] (Sridhar, 1980:222) Having found all the errors in the students` free composition, the researcher used Dulay and Burt`s (1974) taxonomy of errors to classify the errors in to the following categories. 1. Omission, 2. Addition, 3. Misinformation, 4. Misordering [21].

After that, Sridhar`s (1980) procedure was implemented to identify the effect of negative transfer of students` mother tongue as the source of errors. The percentage of the percentage of errors in each category was identified and the percentage of errors made by negative transfer from their mother tongue was also identified in each category respectively [22].

4. Results

Having found the students` errors and classified them, the researcher came across in different errors in the four categories. Some examples of errors in the four categories and those made as the result of negative transfer from students` mother tongue are also given as shown in table 1.

Having classifies all the errors in four categories according to Dulay and Burt`s (1974) taxonomy of errors, the researcher identified the percentage of errors of students in each categories (Dulay and Burt`s (1974) taxonomy of errors) and that of errors made as the result of negative transfer from their mother tongue as shown in table 2 [21].

4.1 Answers to research questions:

1- Is students’ native language (Farsi) any source of the errors in the students’ written production?

The data show that students’ native language

(Farsi) is an important source of the errors in the

students’ written production that accounts for 46%

of all their errors, i.e. half of their errors. The finding of research is middle between the extremes. It is somehow in line with Lado`s (1957) but the point is that Lado considers NL as the primary source of errors and accordingly give the utter role to NL (the first extreme) [4]. On the other extreme, Dulay and Burt (1974a) stand who give no role to NL [21].

2- Is students’ native language (Farsi) the only source of the errors in the students’ written

production?

The findings show that students’ native language

students’ written production that accounts for 46% of all their errors, i.e. half of their errors. Unlike Lado (1957), this study shows that it is a major source of errors but not the only source [4]. There are other sources of errors such as Misinformation.

Lennon (1991:180) distinguishes between ‘global’ and ‘local’ errors [24].

3-What are the other possible sources and kinds of

errors in students’ written production?

The findings of the study show that in addition to students` mother tongue (Farsi), there are other sources of errors in the students` writing such as misinformation. There found also systematic an non-systematic errors as Corder (1981) made his well-known distinction between the systematic

‘error’ which the learner is unable to correct, and

the non-systematic ‘mistake’ or slip which even

native speakers are capable of making, and which can be corrected without help [23].

Table 1. The examples of errors of students in the four categories (Dulay and Burt`s (1974) taxonomy of errors) and those made as the result of negative transfer from their mother tongue [21].

Types of errors Examples _transferExamples from negative

Omission *The factories the main problems. * There are two view.

Addition * They goes to colleges. _{their situation.}* They should discuss about

Misordering *The athlete achievements made. _found.* The owners the employees

Misinformation _{economical problems.}* The government cannot solve _{any fines.}* The factories did not received

Table 2. The percentage of errors of students in each categories (Dulay and Burt`s (1974) taxonomy of errors) and that of errors made as the result of negative transfer from their mother tongue [21].

Types of error Percentage in all the errors Percentage made by negative transfer

Omissions 23% 9%

Additions 27% 18%

Misinformation 22% --

Misordering 21% 19%

Other sources 7% --

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M e d B i o T e c h J . 2 0 1 7 ; 1 ( 3 ) : 1 5 3 - 1 5 7|157 5. Conclusion

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the errors made by TEFL students in their written production from Error Analysis perspective. This analysis was for finding the sources of the errors to see how many errors are the results of negative transfer from students’ native language and how

many from other possible sources. In the end, the percentage of each category was presented statistically.

The data show that students’ native language

students’ written production that accounts for 46% of all their errors, i.e. half of their errors. The finding of research is middle between the extremes. It is somehow in line with Lado`s (1957) but the point is that Lado considers NL as the primary source of errors and accordingly give the utter role to NL (the first extreme) [4]. On the other extreme, Dulay and Burt (1974) stand who give no role to NL. The

findings show that students’ native language (Farsi) is an important source of the errors in the students’

written production that accounts for 46% of all their errors, i.e. half of their errors [21]. Unlike Lado (1957), this study shows that it is a major source of errors but not the only source [4]. There are other sources of errors such as Misinformation. There are also some signs of systematic and nonsystematic errors. To put in a nutshell, the findings of this study showed that students` native language (Farsi) is an important source of errors that account for approximately half of all the errors but there are other sources of errors as well.

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