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A DEVELOPMENTAL ANALYSIS OF ERRORS OF ADULT IRANIAN STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Author(s) -
Henning Grant H.
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1978.tb00142.x
Subject(s) - psychology , verb , error analysis , linguistics , class (philosophy) , foreign language , sample (material) , rank (graph theory) , mathematics education , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , philosophy , chemistry , chromatography , combinatorics
A method was devised for eliciting responses from learners which enabled a comparison between expected and observed frequencies of errors against a standard of native English frequency of usage. A 69,113‐running‐word sample gathered from 22 Iranian college students over a four‐month period of instruction yielded 2,402 errors. Errors were analyzed into 27 lexical categories and 16 verb operations according to five comprehensive dimensions. Syntactic class and verb operational categories were then rank‐ordered for difficulty. Developmental error trends were plotted in five regular developmental stages according to the five dimensions of error elicited. Paradigmatic‐semantic errors were found most predictive of general language acquisition when error rates were examined for predictive validity.