Introduction
Nowadays, a great many people learn English as their mother tongue or as a second or foreign language. Japanese people also learn English as a foreign language at least for three years in a junior high school. What should they do to develop their English ability? To find one answer to the question, in this thesis we will focus on the mistakes people make.
Anyone who learns English will make different types of mistakes such as grammar, word choice, word order, pronunciation and spelling. When a mistake occurs, the mistake can make learners feel some frustration about English learning because it troubles learners many times. The mistake also may give the other person some displeasure and confusion in their communication because it makes the other person misunderstood and it breaks communication.
Many learners may think that it is bad to make mistakes. Although there are of course some disadvantages in making mistakes, we should do something positive to develop learners’ English abilities because we necessarily encounter some mistakes and they can not be avoided if we continue to learn English.
As we have learned English for a long time, we have experienced many kinds of mistakes from simple ones to complex ones. If learners make a simple mistake, they must understand the cause of mistake soon and go to the next stage in learning. But, if they encounter a complex mistake for which they do not understand the cause, what do many learners do? In my opinion, if learners ignore such mistake, they will commit the same mistake which will increase the difficulty in the future, even though they can resolve the mistake temporarily. So, it is necessary for learners to go through the next stage of acquisition by understanding the cause of mistakes properly, and try not to repeat the same mistake or make useless mistakes.
To do something positive to develop learners’ English abilities, we need to see some examples so we can understand the causes of their mistakes and help them. Therefore, Chapter One of this thesis shows why learners make mistakes. In Chapter Two we will look at what kinds of mistakes learners make and in Chapter Three we will look at what types of mistakes Japanese learners make. In Chapter Four we will think why Japanese learners often make such mistakes. In the end, we must find good ways to help learners to deal with mistakes successfully.
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Chapter One
Why do learners make mistakes?
1.1. Introduction
No one can learn a language without making any mistakes. In Japan, students only read correct language and only hear correct language from their teachers and textbooks. So why do they make mistakes? When we think of the reason simply, we can say that mistakes must mean something to learners. If mistakes mean something to learners, what is the something? To be able to answer this question, we must first know the process of making a mistake, the definition of the mistake and the significance of the mistake. In the next chapters, we will look at the various kinds of mistakes, their causes and the sources of the mistake.
1.2. When does a mistake occur?
Learners go through some stages when they learn a language, and they make mistakes at certain stages, so it is essential to know these learning stages and process which they go through. Figure 1 shows the learning stages and the process which foreign language learners, including Japanese people, go through. We are not concerned here with the difference with the first, second and foreign language learning. We explain the general idea of language learning in this chapter, and we will examine more detailed conditions like the learners’ environment in Chapter Four.
Figure 1: The stages and process of foreign language learning
Learners get language input by listening and reading. In most cases, they can automatically understand the input and successfully produce it. If they meet unknown language, they should observe it carefully and hypothesize what it means and how to use it. For example, they may guess what a new word means. The hypothesis about what the new word means needs to be tried out to see if the hypothesis is correct. Thus, learners produce it in their speaking and writing. At this time, the learner makes a mistake if the hypothesis is wrong.
Learning happens when the learner knows whether the hypothesis is right or wrong and this comes from feedback from the other person. For example, if the learner says I goed to school and the listener says Pardon me, you should say went not goed. After this the learner knows a mistake has been made. Learners have to go back to the previous stages such as input and hypothesize and successfully produce it in other ways. After successful production, they also should go back to other stages for confirmation and put this in memory, and continue to develop their abilities by repetition.
Hence, learners always go through these stages little by little, and they come to develop their English abilities. From the stages and process which foreign language learners go through, it is clear that the hypothesis learners make is very important in finding their mistakes. In short, we found simply that a mistake occurs when learners can not make the correct hypothesis. But, we do not know whether learners successfully or correctly can process the input, both in their observing and committing it to memory. Therefore, we will turn to how learners make a hypothesis and know what a mistake is in the next section.
1.3. What is a mistake?
Although a mistake is produced from an incorrect hypothesis, we first should know the meaning of a mistake clearly. A mistake is defined as “something that is not correct, that you do, say, or write without intending to.” [1] and it is synonymous with fault, error, lapse and slip. These synonyms sound almost the same, but their meanings are very different when we talk about the types of mistakes in a foreign language. In this thesis, we will refer to mistakes and errors in different senses.
According to the dictionary, an error is “a mistake, especially one that causes problems.”[2] So, we need to focus on two aspects of these definitions a) that they are not “intended” and b) that an error “causes problems”. We will explain the two words in the framework of unit 1.
1.3.1. How does a mistake occur?
First, a mistake goes through these stages.
Figure 2: The process of making a mistake
Input Output
*goed went Successful
learners recognize it is wrong
ⅰ)self-correct
ⅱ)correct by other person
A mistake can be immediately corrected by learners or other person after producing something wrong in the output. For example, a learner may say the sentence *I goed to school yesterday.[3], but he or she is aware of the mistake by himself or herself at once and the learner can correct it and say Oh sorry, I meant I went to school yesterday. In this case, it is said the learner made a mistake. Even if a learner is not aware of the mistakes soon, it is also said the learner made a mistake when other person says “what is goed?” and the learner corrects the verb goed by saying I went to school.
A mistake is produced from an incorrect hypothesis, but it can happen if a learner is tired or excited, or rather the learner is disturbed by tiredness and excitement and he or she notices and observes language incorrectly. In this way, the learner tends to make an incorrect hypothesis and a mistake occurs. Over and above that, the mistake is caused when learners do not produce correctly what they had already learned, and it is not caused when learners practice what they have not learned yet.[4] A mistake can also be accidental and can not be seen many times because the mistake can occur through the carelessness of learners. Moreover, Corder insists that mistakes have nothing to do with the learning development.[5] All in all, a mistake is made unintentionally.
1.3.2. How does an error occur?
On the other hand, an error goes through these stages.
Figure 3: The process of making an error
Input Output ⅰ)feedback
*goed Unsuccessful Input Output
learners do not recognize soon went Successful
ⅱ)leave it unsolved
An error occurs because there is a problem with the language system. Learners are not aware of their error just after they produced it, but when learners are aware of their mistake because of a misunderstanding or a breakdown in communication with other person in their speaking and writing, they try to find out why it is wrong and go back to the previous stages. They have then observed the wrongful production and can now hypothesize about an alternative explanation which they can experiment in output again.
Otherwise, they can not go back to the previous stages and it will remain the wrong form if learners are not aware of their mistake. As an example, learner A writes *I goed to school yesterday and knows that learner B could not understand it, learner A checks it carefully and remembers that the correct form of *goed is went. Thus learners can correct it and communicate successfully. However, if B ignores the mistake and A does not check it, then learner A is unaware of the mistake. In those cases, it is said the learners made an error. For these reasons, an error is caused without intending to, but it is caused a problem.
By comparison with a mistake, an error is caused when learners try something new and unsuccessful which they have not learned.[6] In other words an error is a problem with the knowledge in the system, whereas a mistake is like a slip of the tongue. Errors are furthermore systematic, and errors which a learner makes are common to errors which other all learners make, and their errors are necessarily repeated.[7] Therefore, errors are related to learning development in the language system.
1.4. Is a mistake or an error significant in language learning?
We now know when, how and why a mistake and an error occur roughly. Table 1 below, shows them clearly.
Table 1: The differences between Mistakes and Errors
Mistakes / ErrorsWhen it occurs / When producing something with an incorrect hypothesis / When producing something with an incorrect hypothesis
Why it occurs / Carelessness or a slip / Immaturity of the language system
When it’s corrected / Recognized soon after producing it / From feedback
Intention / Not intended / Not intended
Learning / The features has already been learned / Not learned yet
From Table 1, we can understand an error is more significant than a mistake in terms of developing learners’ English abilities. Let us now focus on an error.
Figure 4 : The cycle of learning
As we can see in Figure 4, learners usually make a guess at the meaning of a new word when they meet it, and they should try to find out whether the guess is right or not. “Errors” are thus an unsuccessful result of the learners’ attempt to guess. In most cases, learners have to go from input to output for learning to take place. They can not learn anything without guessing, except in special cases. If they do not use guessing as a strategy, they may not be able to produce anything and they may not be able to speak and write anything correctly. This is because the cycle of learning is broken and without feedback on success they cannot tell if their production is correct. At these points, an error is very necessary and indispensable for learners.[8]
In addition, an error is significant for learners as well as teachers and researchers.5 This is because teachers and researchers can see and know their learners’ abilities and their development from their errors. This analysis is useful for teachers so they can teach their learners better. Researchers also can see and know some characteristics about errors which are seen with many learners, and it is useful for them to develop their knowledge of this. As a result, it is said that an error is significant for learners, teachers and researchers, though a mistake is not very significant in language learning.
1.5. Conclusion
Why do learners make mistakes? What does a mistake mean to learners? In this chapter, we could find the answers to those questions. Learners make a mistake when they can not produce the hypothesis successfully, and to be exact, the mistake is different from an error. They work differently, and from the above we can see that we need to check learners’ errors in detail and know from their errors how learners deal with their input and remember it and what observations and hypotheses they made. Besides, we should look at whether an error reflects immaturity and development of learners. In Chapter two, we will look at kinds of errors in more detail.
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Chapter Two
What kinds of errors do learners make?
2.1. Introduction
In Chapter One, we came to know the mechanism of learners’ mistakes, and yet, the mistakes which learners make can not be easily explained only by the two patterns of a mistake and an error as they are shown in Figures 2 and 3. They were only the basic and superficial idea of what constitutes a mistake. So, what kinds of errors can we see? This chapter introduces seven kinds of errors which learners make in two categories that have been discovered through research on errors conducted by many researchers.
2.2. What have researchers found about errors?
Many errors appear in many forms in language learning, so learners, teachers and researchers have had many chances to recognize different errors. So, what do scholars think of the mistakes? What is more, how do they connect errors with English education?