1. The Nature of Learner Language
Ulfah Nur Farida

2. Errors and Error Analysis
There are good reasons for focusing on errors
Third, paradoxically, it is possible that making errors may actually help learners to learn when they self-correct the errors they make
Second, it is useful for teachers to know what errors learners make
First, they are a conspicuous feature of learner language, raising the important question of ‘Why do learners make errors?’

3. Analysing Learner Errors
Identifying errors
Describing errors
Explaining errors

4. Identifying Errors
We have to compare the sentences learners produce with what seem to be the normal or ‘corrrect’ sentences in the target language which correspond with them
Example : ‘A man and a little boy was watching him’, it should be ‘ a man and a little boy were watching him
Distinguish errors and mistakes, by checking the consistency of learners’ performance
Example : He wrote ‘the big of them contained a snake’. However, in the last sentence he wrote ‘the basket contain a snake’. Then, it might be considered a mistake

5. Classify errors into grammatical categories
Describing Errors
Gather all the errors relating to verbs
Identify the different kinds of verb errors in our sample
Classify errors into grammatical categories
omission
Misinformation
misordering
Identify general ways in which the learners’ utterances differ from the reconstructed target-language utterances

6. Explaining Errors
The identification and description of errors are preliminaries to the much more interesting task of trying to explain why they occur
Errors are :
Systematic
Some of them universal, and some other not
Have different sources

7. Error Evaluation
Some errors can be considered more serious than others, because they are more likely to interfere with the intelligibility of what someone says
Some errors, known as global errors, violatethe overall structure of a sentence and for thiss reason may make it difficult to process
Other errors, known as a local errors , affect only a single constituent

8. Developmental Pattern
The early stages of L2 acquisition :
Undergo a silent period. That is, they make no attempt to say anything to begin with
Proporsitional simplification, learners find it difficult to speak in full sentences so they frequently leave words out.

9. In time, though, learners do begin to learn the grammar of the L2
In time, though, learners do begin to learn the grammar of the L2. This raises other questions. One concerns the acquisition order.
Another question concerns the sequence of acquisition.

10. The order of acquisition
To investigate the order of acquisition, researchers choose a number of grammatical structures to study ( for example, progressive –ing, auxiliary be, and plural –s)
They then collect samples of learner language and identify how accurately each feature is used by different learners

11. Sequence of acquisition
When learners acquire a grammatical structure they do so gradually, moving through a series of stages en route to acquiring the native-speaker rule. The acquisition of a particular grammatical structure, therefore, must be seen asa process involving transitional constructions.

12. Learners are likely to pass through the different stages shown in Table
Description
Example 1
Learners fail to mark the verb for past time
‘eat’ 2
Learners begin to produce irregular past tense forms
‘ate’ 3
Learners overgeneralize the regular past tense forms
‘eated’ 4
Sometimes learners produce hybrid forms
‘ated’ 5
Learners produce correct irregular past tense forms

13. Acquisition follows a U-shaped course of development ; that is initially learners may display a high level of accuracy only to apparently regress later before finally once again performing in accordance with target-language norms.
As learners restructure their grammatical systems, they may appear to regress whereas in fact they are advancing

14. Some implications
The discovery of common patterns in the way in which learner language changes over time is one of the most important findings of SLA
It provides further support for the conclusionsreached from the study of learners errors, namely that L2 acquisition is systemic, to a large extent, universal, reflecting ways in which internal cognitive mechanisms control acquisition, irrespective of the personal background of learners or the setting in which they learn

15. Variability in learner language
At any given stage of development, learners sometimes employ one form an sometimes another. Thus, one type of error may alternate with anither type
Or an error may alternate with the correct target-language form:
Yesterday the thief steal the suitcase
Yesterday the thief stealing the suitcase
Yesterday the thief steal the suitcase
Yesterday the thief stole the suitcase

16. Summary
In this section, we have examined a number of properties of learner language and, in so doing, traced the way in which SLA has envolved as a field of enquiry
Early on, researchers focused on leraners’ errors, developing procedures for identifying, describing, explaining, and evaluating them
Subsequently, researchers focused on exploring the regularities of L2 acquisition by searching for ‘orders’ and ‘sequences’ of acquisition

17. Research on variabilty has sought to show that, although allowance should perhaps be made for some free variation, variability in learner language is systematic
Furthermore, variability plays an integrative part in the overall pattern of development, with learners moving through a series of stages that reflect different kinds of variability

18. Thank You