انجمن علمی زبان دانشگاه آزاد یزد

The Focus of Error Analysis Research

Not all errors are a focus of error analysis. In his chapter “The Significance of Learners' Errors” in the edited book Error Analysis (1974), Corder distinguished “errors” from “mistakes.” Mistakes are any nonsystematic errors that language speakers make because of fatigue, slip of the tongue, or emotion.

Speakers know when they have made mistakes and, if asked, can correct them easily, because they know the rules. These are also called errors of performance. Errors in error analysis are errors of competence, which are systematic and occur repeatedly. These errors show the learners' transitional competence, which is in the process of moving toward the competence of native speakers. They are not errors to the language learners who make them, only to the native speakers who hear them.

Therefore, learners cannot correct the errors by themselves, because according to their linguistic systems, they are using the correct rules. These systematic errors of competence are the focus of error analysis. The utterances of language learners should be observed regularly by the teacher in order to differentiate errors from mistakes.

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