This study examines future teachers' theoretical reflections on Critical Incidents and how these link to Costa Rica's English teaching system. Participants included 30 senior college students from an English teaching program. Using narrative research techniques, the authors have concluded that: (1) spaces for reflection must be created in EFL so…

This case study analyzed data from an asynchronous written mediated exchange between a native speaker and nonnative speaker of English. Three methods of analysis-error analysis, propositional complexity (idea units), and qualitative analysis were used to analyze learner performance over time. The results from these methods were visualized and…

Rapid advances in computing have enabled the integration of corpora into language teaching and learning, yet in China corpus methods have not yet been widely adopted. Corpus Linguistics in Chinese Contexts aims to advance the state of the art in the use of corpora in applied linguistics and contribute to the expertise in corpus use in China.

Lexical selection is often difficult for second language students. When, in the case of errors not covered in grammar books, the teacher is able to work out the explanation (feature cooccurrence, for example), the student will have a means of avoiding the error in the future. (POP)

Results of a diagnostic test revealed that Thai students have no more trouble in learning English prepositions than others learning English as a second language; all the groups had difficulty. Error analysis was found to be just as effective in explaining mistakes as contrastive analysis. (AG)

It is proposed that error patterns in acquisition of a second language can provide otherwise unavailable evidence for testing linguistic hypotheses about the second language itself. Three types of production and perceptual error patterns found in the learning of English by native Arabic speakers are outlined to support this suggestion. The error…

This paper evaluates the pedagogic aspects of the Yugoslavian Serbocroatian-English Contrastive Project. The project carried out a contrastive analysis of the phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical structures of English and Serbocroatian, and an error analysis in the use of English parts of speech and sentence parts. The investigation…

Error analysis concerns the investigation of negative influences on the foreign language learning process. Errors are usually thought of as caused by interference from the native language to the target language. In this article it is shown that interference occurs in the other direction as well, i.e. from language 2 to language 1. Jakobovits has…

A major problem in learning a second language is the interference of a structurally different native language. Contrastive analysis (CA) combined with learner error analysis (EA) provide an excellent basis for preparation of language instructional materials. The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project proved that full application of CA…

This paper attempts to provide guidelines for writers who are preparing new materials as well as to offer suggestions to language teachers who must use prescribed texts. The basic assumption is that scientific grammars only describe the production of language by native speakers, while pedagogical grammars are sets of rules ordered in such a way as…

This book contains eight papers. (1) "The Uses of Error Analysis and Contrastive Analysis." Use of error linguistics may illuminate normal language processes. This paper outlines procedures and applications of error and contrastive analysis. (2) "The Identification and Evaluation of Errors in Foreign Languages: A Functional Approach." The concern…

This study tests three aspects of the problem of validity of contrastive analysis as a means for predicting errors or problems for second language learners: the constancy of foreign-language errors, the objectivity of the methods and procedures of contrastive analysis, and the capacity of contrastive analysis to make accurate predictions. Japanese…

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the theoretical concept of a syllabus by specifying important variables and priorities in its preparation and application. The scope and nature of the syllabus are discussed, followed by an examination of learning processes and strategies. The focus of the syllabus is seen as being fluency and flexibility,…

The influence of mother-tongue interference is examined on the basis of data from two tests at different levels of English proficiency: a commercial-college level, covering 4-5 years of English studies, involving a composition and translation test, and a preuniversity level, covering 7-8 years of English studies, with a multiple-choice test. A…