Points to Remember About Errors

Spelling errors are troublesome for beginners and intermediate learners. Advanced learners may make spelling errors as well, but they are much less frequent.
Beginners make more errors at the word level than at the sentence or discourse levels. They are focused on getting the words or meaning in. They use more formulaic chunks of language that appear more advanced but are not analyzed by the learner.
Intermediate learners make errors spanning word, sentence, and discourse levels, but they make a majority of their errors at the word and sentence level.
Advanced learners make more sentence and discourse errors, with a majority of their errors falling in the range of complex sentences and sentence relationships.
Related words are a problem for learners. These words share the same root or word family origins, but have different meanings. Often advanced learners use the right word, but the wrong form of the word (institution/ institute; insulation/insulator; emotion/emotionalism). Beginners are more likely to use a word in the wrong part of speech (kind/kindly; easy/easily; to grow/growing).
The number of errors decrease as proficiency increases.
More errors are likely when languages are more closely related (Spanish-English) in comparison to more distantly related languages (Japanese-English).

Sources:

Teemant, A., (2000). Analyzing Student Work. Unpublished manuscript, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

Teemant, A. (1988). Lexical Errors in ESL Compositions. Unpublished master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.

Adapted with permission from:

Teemant, A. & Pinnegar, S. (2007). Understanding Langauge Acquisition Instructional Guide. Brigham Young University-Public School Partnership.

Annela Teemant

Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI)

Annela Teemant is Professor of Second Language Education (Ph.D., Ohio State University, 1997) at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Her scholarship focuses on developing, implementing, and researching applications of critical sociocultural theory and practices to the preparation of K-12 teachers of English Language Learners. Specifically, she has collaboratively developed and researched the Six Standards Instructional Coaching Model and pedagogy. She has been awarded five U.S. Department of Education grants focused on ESL teacher quality. She has authored more than 30 multimedia teacher education curricula and video ethnographies of practice and published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Urban Education, Teachers College Record, and Language Teaching Research. Her work describes how to use pedagogical coaching to radically improve the conditions of learning needed for multilingual learners. She has also taught adult intensive English in the United States, Finland, and Hungary.

Stefinee E. Pinnegar

Brigham Young University

A St. George native, Dr. Pinnegar graduated from Dixie College (now DSU) and Southern Utah State (now SUU). She taught on the Navajo Reservation then completed an M.A. in English at BYU. She taught for 5 years in Crawfordsville, Indiana. She then completed a PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Arizona (1989). She was faculty at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, before coming to BYU. She helped develop and now directs the TELL program. She is Acting Dean of Invisible College for Research on Teaching, a research organization that meets yearly in conjunction with AERA. She is a specialty editor of Frontiers in Education's Teacher Education strand with Ramona Cutri. She is editor of the series Advancements in Research on Teaching published by Emerald Insight. She has received the Benjamin Cluff Jr. award for research and the Sponsored Research Award from ORCA at BYU. She is a founder of the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices research methdology. She has published in the Journal of Teacher Education, Ed Researcher, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice and has contributed to the handbook of narrative inquiry, two international handbooks of teacher education and two Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices handbooks. She reviews for numerous journals and presents regularly at the American Educational Research Association, ISATT, and the Castle Conference sponsored by S-STTEP.

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