CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER II

THE NATURE OF LEARNER LANGUAGE

A.    Errors and error analysis

The advantages on focusing an error of learners:

·         It raises important question of “Why do they make errors?

·         It is useful for teacher to know the reason

·         It is useful for helping learners to learn they self-correct the errors they make

-          Error reflects gaps in a learner’s knowledge, they occur because the learner does not know what is correct

-          Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance; they occur because, in particular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows

Describing error:

1.      Omission: leaving out an item that is required in grammatical utterances

2.      Misinformation: using grammatical form in place of other grammatical form

3.      Miss ordering: putting words in utterances in a wrong order

Explaining errors

1.      Omission: leave an item

2.      Overgeneralization: think that all system is the same

3.      Transfer error: learners create their own rules

B.     Developmental patterns

·         Silent period: they make no attempt to say anything to begin wish, they use the time to read and listen

·         Acquisition order: do learners acquire the grammatical structure of an L2 in a definite order? ( ex. They learn progressive features before past tense)

·          Sequences of acquisition:  do learner learn such structure in a one step or proceed it through a number of interim stages before they master the target structure?

The order of acquisition:

Using accuracy order: teacher rank the features according to how accurately each feature is used by the learners/ by collecting samples of the learners

Sequence of acquisition                                         

Ex:

Stage	Description	Example
1	Learners fail to mark the verb past time	eat
2	Learners begin to produce irregular past tense form	ate
3	learners overgeneralize the regular past tense form	eated
4	Sometimes learners produce hybrid forms	ated
5	Learners produce correct irregular past tense form	ate

Variability in Learner Language:

·         Linguistics context: in one context the use one form while in the other context they use alternate form.

·         Situational context: learner more likely to use the correct target language form in formal context and non target form in informal context

·         Psycholinguistics context: learners are more likely to use target language forms when they have time to plan.

·         Form function mappings: which learners make do not always conform to those found in target language.

·         Free variation: learners likely learn about the basic form of an item in target language and then use it for variety of function.

Fossilization: not all learners reach the completion stage for every grammatical structure. Many will show non target language variability in at least some grammatical features

CHAPTER II

QUESTIONS:

1.      As a leaner in English, what should we do when we attempt to get a silent period in our learning? As a teacher next time, what should we do when our students get this silent period?

2.      What is your opinion when someone is using free variation in English language? And do you think when this person talk to others, people will understand his/hers speech?