Essay On Interlingual Errors

"Humans are prone not only to commit language errors themselves but also to err in their judgments of those errors committed by others"-James, 1998

Errors were seen as a sin long ago and its consequences were dreadful. It was an unforgivable act which cannot be compensated with correction but followed by painful punishments only. In Pakistan, when children start their religious education in madarassa’s (religious institutions) they receive strict and extreme teaching responses like being beaten by the teacher upon committing a mistake. Similarly when they enter in schools they have similar kind of fear of being scolded if they would commit a mistake while learning. This fear eventually makes them reluctant or hesitant whether they are asked to write or speak. However, Pit Corder (1976) brought a new concept regarding errors by saying “errors are an inevitable part of language learning” and is “important in and of themselves” because they reflect a learner’s learning.

As highlighted by Abi Samra (2003), error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors

Errors need to be explained as to whether they are Interlingual or Intralingual. Generally Interlingual errors can be identified as transfer errors which result from a learner 's first language features (e.g., lexical, grammatical, or pragmatic, etc.). Intralingual errors are subdivided as overgeneralizations, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules, and false concepts hypothesized (i.e., learners fail to comprehend fully). Overgeneralization errors occur when learners yield deviant structures based on other structures of the target language. Ignorance of rule restrictions refers to the application of rules to inappropriate contexts. Incomplete application of rules arises when learners fail to develop a structure fully. False concepts hypothesized occur when learners do not completely understand a distinction in the target language. (Ellis,1996;