Error Analysis

Error analysis comprises a variety of linguistic analyses of the errors language learners make in producing or comprehending a new language. The two questions that guide this analysis are as follows: (1) what types of errors do they make? And (2) what are the sources of these errors?

Error analysis is a learner-centric approach. S. Pit Corder claimed that through this approach, the developmental process of language learning could be better understood, and teachers would be able to build a syllabus meet language learners' needs. The assumption here is that each learner's mind has a built-in syllabus for language learning.

To find this learner-generated sequence and adapt instruction to it is more efficient than to follow an instructor-generated sequence and impose it upon the learners, which was the method that dictated language teaching in the past. The instructor-generated syllabus is associated with the behaviorist approach to language learning and uses a contrastive analysis method that predicts difficulties the learner would have, by comparing the linguistic structures of the target language and the native language. Using error analysis, it was expected that teachers would build a syllabus on these assumptions, without actually observing and analyzing the language being produced.

Error analysis was the first important attempt to study the learner's language in itself, and thus some researchers believe it to be the beginning of the field of second-language acquisition research.

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