Historical Overview of Error Analysis

The potential benefits of looking at learners' errors had not been recognized until the 1960s. In the behaviorist approach, which had been a prevailing learning theory since the 1930s, it was believed that children learned their first language by imitating and forming a habit of connecting stimulus and response. Within this framework, learning a second language was viewed as developing a new set of language habits and transferring the language habits from the first language.

Contrastive analysis, therefore, was a way to predict a learner's difficulty or ease of establishing a new language habit. More similarities between the two languages meant an easier transition in learning the target language, because learners could transfer a beneficial habit from their first language to the target language. Errors were considered bad habits that needed to be prevented and could be predicted, reduced, and eventually eliminated.

In the 1960s, the behaviorist theory of language learning was challenged by the growing recognition that children acquire their first language not by imitating or being reinforced, but by playing active roles in creating their linguistic rules. Children's incorrect forms in their mother tongue during their first-language acquisition is demonstrated evidence that children set hypotheses and test them, and construct linguistic rules. This new perspective in child language acquisition had an impact on the field of second-language learning.

A second-language-learner's errors began to be viewed in the same way, regarded as a window through which teachers and researchers could see what strategies a learner employs while learning a language. In this view, errors were no longer regarded as bad habits, but as the logical steps in constructing and testing rules for the new language.

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