Introduction.

The theme of my diploma work is “Nature of Errors and Ways of their Correction in ELT”. The topicality of the paper is connected with the fact , that errors play an important role in the study of language acquisition in general and in examining foreign language acquisition in particular. Errors are also associated with the strategies that people employ to communicate in a language. The following methodologists dealt with the problem of error correction: Corder, Claire, Krashen, Larsen – Freeman, Dekeyser.

Errors are believed to be an indicator of the learners' stages in their target lan­guage development. From the errors that learners commit, one can determine their level of mastery of the language system. The investigation of errors has thus a double purpose: it is diagnostic and prog­nostic. It is diagnostic because it can tell us if the learner is at a given point during the learn­ing process and prognostic, because it can tell course organizers to reorient language learning materials on the basis of the learners' current problems.

This paper is concerned with the anal­ysis of the notion of errors and their correction. Errors are eas­ily detected by language teachers, but they are not always interpreted in the same way. In this paper we make an attempt to clarify phenomena that occur when we are faced with what are called errors in relation to English language learners. The following methodologicts investigated errors and ways of their correction:

The aim of this diploma work is to study the nature of errors and to work out the techniques of their correction.

Objectives:

1.to give the theoretical survey on errors and their nature.

2.to find out different classifications of errors.

3. to identify types of errors in oral and written speech.

4.to work out the necessary techniques for errors correction in written speech.

Problem: the importance of obtaining a profile of pupils’ errors in oral and written speech is obvious. Without some knowledge of the errors they make, researchers have no way of tapping into a learner’s foreign language acquisition mechanism, and teachers have no basis on which to devise error-elimination strategies for the learner. There are two justifications for studying learners’ errors: theoretical and practical. Theoretically, the study of errors can offer some insights into the process of second language acquisition and the phenomenon of inter language –the foreign language learner’s idiosyncratic language and its relation to other languages. Practically, the study of errors can contribute to foreign language teaching methodology with the ultimate goal of error reduction and elimination.

Theoretical value: The results and materials may be used for conducting lectures and practical classes on methods of teaching English.

Practical value: The paper contains practical recommendations on classifying the errors and ways of their elimination in teaching process. Also the result of this study can provide concrete suggestion of practical measures to improve pupils’ English. In fact, this study aims to be more descriptive than prescriptive. Instead of looking at pupils’ written errors with a judgmental eye, it attempts to only identify the errors and categorize them in a systematic way. It is hoped that, after the identification and the categorization of the errors, we can observe emerging patterns and trends out of the common errors committed by pupils. By analyzing these particular patterns and drawing upon foreign language acquisition theories we may start to understand why and how pupils come to produce certain errors – sometimes obviously and consistently. From that point onwards, it may be possible to devise some effective teaching methods and learner strategies aimed at reducing learner errors.

Methods: analysis of errors in oral and written speech, observation and experiment.

Structure of the paper: the diploma work consists of Introduction, two Chapters, Conclusion, Bibliography and Appendix.

Introduction presents theme, topicality, aim, objectives, problem, theoretical value, practical value, method and structure of the paper.

The first chapter presents definition of error, classification of errors and different approaches to errors study. The second chapter presents ways of errors correction in oral and written speech and different approaches and techniques in error correction.

Conclusion sums up the results of research. Bibliography includes the list of literature, 22 in number.

Chapter 1 The nature of errors and ways of their study.

Before any discussion of error categorization schemes, it is important to clarify the very concept of ‘error’ first. On the surface it seems that the term is straightforward enough; everyone knows that ‘error’ means ‘something wrong’. Also, in daily life we tend to use the terms ‘error’ and ‘mistake’ interchangeably, but according to foreign language acquisition, an ‘error’ is a reflection of a learner’s ‘transitional competence’, which is different from ‘mistake’ or ‘performance error’. The major difference between ‘error’ and ‘mistake’ lies in the distinction that the “error” is systematic while “mistake” is non-systematic and likens mistakes to slips of the tongue, which do not indicate the competence or the proficiency of the second language learner, because even a native speaker can exhibit these slips; whereas errors are an indicator of a learner’s level of linguistic competence. [1; 161]

The attitude towards errors was a prescriptive and authoritarian one, when grammarians were in authority and strict rules governed what was acceptable and what was not. But now, at the opposite extreme are liberal and open-minded people who oppose the very notion of ‘correctness’, saying that it is a misleading concept that should give way to ‘acceptability’ and ‘appropriateness’. The difficulty is in trying to strike a balance between both extremes, because, on the one hand it would be unrealistic to stick to outdated grammatical rules, on the other hand, it would be unhelpful if one were to adopt an open “anything goes” attitude.

Another area of difficulty lies in the fact that an utterance can be acceptable, but inappropriate. An acceptable utterance is one that can be recognized by a native speaker as being a sentence of his or her language, which satisfies the criteria of well - formedness. But the appropriateness of the utterance is another matter – that is, the context in which the utterance is produced. Even if an utterance is judged to be perfectly well-formed, it may not be appropriate with regards to the register or the social situation or even the material truth value. In that case, one could argue that only an utterance that is both acceptable and appropriate could be called error-free. [2; 169]

Latest development in English Language teaching has seen a show in focus from teaching individual components such as reading, writing, speaking, and grammar toward teaching these components integratively as they are being used in daily communication. This change in methodological approach subsequently affects the way teachers perceive learners' errors in writing. Teachers no longer view errors only as those which affect discreet grammatical, lexical, or structural items, but also as errors, that affect the discourse of a written text. In other words, teachers today are also concerned about a particular piece of writing communicating effectively and meaningfully by means of its coherence and its conforming to the expectations of its prospective readers.

The experience in teaching writing to pupils at the school shows that incoherence is a recurring problem in the pupils writing and can be a major obstacle to their success in writing classes. Unfortunately, unlike grammatical errors which can be easi­ly corrected, errors in coherence are often more difficult to handle as they involve a chunk of units, such as a series of sentences or paragraphs. Because of the difficulties in correcting errors, pupils sometimes do not get sufficient insight into their errors. Teach­ers find it impractical to correct the whole erroneous section. [3; 44]

This paper is initiated also because of the need for pupils to be made aware of and to understand what coherence is in their writing. Although initially understanding coherence is self-exploration, it will be beneficial to other teachers who encounter similar problems in teaching writing. This paper is based on the convictions that coherence is an area that deserves attention, for problems can easily arise from coherence or cohesion either in read­ing or writing.

As a result of the above factors, pupil does not have a clear understanding of the concept of coherence, often focusing only on errors at sentence level, when asked to revise his own work or that of his co-students.

Therefore, there is a need for a simple definition of the concept and examples of typical mistakes made in coherence. This paper is to be based on previous literature on coherence illustrated with samples of pupils' errors.

Foreign language learners commit errors largely, because of the lack of their knowledge of the target language, whereas different forms of errors pro­duced by native speakers are dismissed as slips of the tongue or slips of the pen. That is, they originate not from deficient competence but from performance phe­nomena such as changes of plans. It should be noted, however, that the vagueness of the notion of “native speaker” does not allow us to make an objective examination of deviant forms. Intuitively, it seems that there are degrees of native speakership, as there are degrees of for­eign language proficiency. Native speak­ership in literate societies would tend to be related to the level of education. [2; 46]

Many of the deviant forms produced by uneducated and less educated native speakers are regarded as non-standard, while foreign language learners' errors are mostly accounted for in terms of their learning stages. They cannot be termed non-standard, because learners do not be­long to a particular geographical or social group in the target language; conse­quently, their utterances are tested against the norm for the standard variety of the target language.

The notion of control is an important one in learners' language use. Control is a term introduced in second and foreign language acquisition literature to explain for the discrepancy between competence and performance. That is, learners may well have acquired certain forms of the target language, but they may not be able to produce them correctly because they have not mastered their use. For this rea­son, the proponents of the notion of con­trol believe that performance does not re­flect competence in a sufficiently trans­parent way.

There is variation in learners' perfor­mance depending on the task. Learners may have more control over linguistic forms for certain tasks, while for others they may be more prone to error. Compared to spontaneous speech, planned discourse allows for greater use of metalinguistic knowledge and results in fewer error. An error can vary in magnitude. It can cover a phoneme, a morpheme, a word, a phrase, a clause, a sentence, or even a paragraph. Some errors exhibited by foreign lan­guage learners are context-bound. They largely depend on the linguistic context wherein the forms produced appear. [9; 20-21]