List the most typical English learner errors

 

 

The process of learning a language is never error free. The term erroris employed to mean regular deviations in the learner language from the rules of morphology and syntax, stemming from the acquired competence. The term mistake is used to refer to language inaccuracies, which unlike errors stem from lack of competence in morphology or syntax and occur in the very process of speech production, i.e. during performance. The term slip is mentioned in the context of this paper to denote occasional inaccuracies caused by language processing failures. (Ellis R.1994.P. 47-68). There are several theories, explaining the occurrence of errors in learner language performance (D.Larsen-Freeman and M.Long 1991. R.Ellis 1994). They include exposure to the language environment filled with errors (faulty language of the teacher and peers), negative transfer from the native language, developmental sequences and the stage of language acquisition. Slip causing factors are processing failures such as blends ( two identical in meaning words form one in an utterance as in "torrible = terrible and horrible") (Garman, M. 1994. Psycholinguistics. CUP). A typical learner error phenomenon is "error persistence". The errors once corrected do not necessarily disappear for the learners' speech. A good amount of errors persist and the learners continue to "make errors" no matter how hard the teachers try to eradicate them. The graph shows the relationship between the errors made, repeated and improved: