proposal ' error analysis of Iranian English learners in the written production'

Introduction

Errors made by language learners in their production are so frequent that they have turned heads of so many specialists and language teachers especially who are at the front. More noticeably are the errors observed in learners writen production that are more eye-catching may be just because of non-transitory, let us say, permanent nature of writing . Even at upper –intermediate level, these errors do not disappear.

But from the five to six decades before, it has been seriously questioned that “what are the sources of these errors?” In an attempt to find an answer to this question, a lot of voices in disagreement have been arisen: some consider just learner’s native language as the source of errors (Contrastive Analysts), but some (Corder: 1975; Dulay and Burt: 1972) distinguish other possible sources.

The former consider errors as evil signs of failure, but latter consider them significant and signs of learning (Richards: 1971; Jain: 1974). Regarding the role of native language in a second language context, there is not any consensus. As Gass (1996) says it “ … has been debated for over 2000 years.” Some(Lado:1957)consider NL as the primary source of errors and accordingly give the utter role to NL (the first extreme).On the other extreme, Dulay and Burt (1974a) stand who give no role to NL. In Gass’words again, “In both cases, extreme positions were taken in that the native language was seen as having either a major or a minimal role in the learning on an L2.”

While Contrasive Analysts start from the comparison and contrast of two languages and then go to prediction of errors, after the collapse of CA by the emergence of cognitivism, EA reversed the direction (starting from errors) and obviously it can give us a more complete picture of L2 learning. More careful studies on these errors, actually, are essential and of great value to find the sources of these errors in the production of Iranian English learners.

In pursuit of this goal, in this paper that is actually an Error Analysis, I elaborate on the errors made by some 40 Iranian English learners at pre- intermediate level in their written production and then analyze them based upon taxonomy of errors introduced by Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982). An attempt is made to find all the errrors (grammatical and lexical) and mark them with codes to gauge the effect of each category and percentage of it. In the end, I will show how many errors are the results of native transfer and then contribution and percentage of each category in this regard will be presented statistically and discussed followingly.


Delimitations of the study:

in this study, only the production of the students is investigated.
Comprehention has been neglected.