This report, the fifth in a series of working papers issued by the Project on Applied Contrastive Linguistics (PAKS) at the University of Stuttgart, is dedicated to a consideration of error analysis in language learning, here seen as relevant not only for the teacher but for the text book writer and the curriculum planner as well. An introduction…

Five reports from a 2-year study are presented. Frequencies and descriptions of systematic errors in the four algorithms in arithmetic were studied in upper-middle income, regular, and special education classrooms involving 744 children. Children were screened for adequate knowledge of basic facts and for receiving prior instruction on the…

The nature and extent of errors in the oral language of pupils in elementary and secondary school years was investigated. One hundred and eighty subjects were selected from public schools and were administered the Experimental Form B of the new Gray Oral Reading Test. Obtained data were analyzed with descriptive techniques and tests of statistical…

Piaget explains the stage IV error as a failure to assimilate the new place of hiding rather than a forgetting of it. His hypothesis predicts that the likelihood of error should not vary with the length of the delay interval. Nine-month-old infants delayed 0, 1, 3, or 7 seconds before having the opportunity to search. Infants in all conditions,…

Each of two experimenters taught one set of 32 prekindergarteners to discriminate four different letter combinations (R-P, Y-V, C-G, and K-X). Each set of children was randomly selected and assigned to two treatment conditions. The treatment consisted of three warm-up trials, 10 actual training trials, and four post-test trials on a…

Sixth graders wrote solutions to the word problems in the Metropolitan Achievement Test. Errors were analyzed and classified. At least 52 percent of errors were computational or clerical and could not be attributed to reading difficulties. (SD)

The properties of four different tests of the treatment effect in experiments using linguistic materials are examined. (Author/RM)

Concludes that subjects are misled by errors they make on earlier items in cloze tests. (RL)

Four examples of student misunderstandings from algebra and trigonometry are presented, and their implications are discussed. (MP)

Based upon the concept that the psychological meaning of a syllogism depends upon the order of the premises in addition to the formal logic expressed, the analogical theory of the interpretation of syllogisms is developed, experimentally tested, and implemented as a computer program. (CTM)

The author lists and discusses nine patterns of errors that students in an inner city secondary English class exhibited during a six week writing skills development session. (Author/RK)

Distortion of data is caused by purposeful, goal-oriented activity of people who produce data, as well as by attempts to cheat or manipulate social service delivery systems. Failure to recognize a constructive motivational component is attributed to an over-reliance on positivism in the social sciences. (Author/CTM)

Discusses student errors occurring on the New York Regents Examinations given over the last ten years. (SL)

Analyzes oral reading errors made by 20 children during their second year of formal reading instruction. (JM)

Evaluated the technical aspects of three Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) administrations of five psychology graduate students using the WISC-R Administration Observational Checklist (WAOC) to evaluate interrater agreement. Students performed significantly better on the second than on the first observation, with…