Error Analysis,Theories of Language,and the Teaching of Writing

Abstract

Teachers of writing have currently been showing an interest in error analysis, a device that has been used informally for some time but has received serious attention from linguists and language teaching methodologists only recently. This interest in error analysis seems strange because this type of analysis possesses many of the characteristics of structuralism and few (if any) of the characteristics of tranformationalism. As a result, the objections to error analysis are partly theoretical in nature. Because the number of sentences in a language is infinite, the number of different kinds of errors that students can make is infinite or, at least, indefinitely large. Because of this, the chance of a student producing a particular sentence exhibiting a particular error is very small. This is the principal reason behind the creation of vague, general, and subsequently rather meaningless categories in the taxonomies that are used in error analysis. For this reason, it would seem to be appropriate for teachers to abandon error analysis and lead students through the use of creative language exercises into the writing of creative sentences.

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