Republic of the Philippines

CENTRAL MINDANAO UNIVERSITY

College of Arts and Sciences

ELS 44

ERROR ANALYSIS

Submitted by:

Ojales, Ma. Abbygale B.

Mariscal, Jemeah Ann

Ong, Tamarra Jamme V.

Pelenio, Ryneir Jae

BAELS 1B

Submitted to:

PROF. AMITA B. SUSUSCO

Department of Languages and Literature

March 2020
Error Analysis

A website called Glottopedia (2009) referred the error analysis as a collation and the
study of errors made by second language learners. Errors are an integral part of language
learning; this further elaborates that the learner of English as a second language is unaware of
the existence of the particular system or rule in English language, thus the formation of errors.

Identify the Errors

The first thing that we need to do for error analysis is to identify the errors present. This
is classified into two parts: the systematic error and the predictable error. Systematic error is
the kind of error that occurs at most once. They are referred to, or as what we call it, a mistake.
They are made because the learner is unable to perform what she/he already knows. They
reflect the occasional lapses or slips by the learners, who either corrects it or not. Predictable
errors, however, are the kind of errors that are recurring and continual. They happen to exist
because the learner himself/herself doesn’t know the correct form of what he/she is implying, be
it the grammar, punctuation, prepositions, etc.

Below is a pie chart that shows the systematic and predictable errors that occurred on
the papers assigned to us (a total of 20 papers).

Identifying Errors

43% Systematic
57%

Predictable

Figure 1. A pie chart for systematic and predictable errors

 In this pie chart, we can see that the systematic errors are more dominant rather than
the predictable. For systematic (the blue pie), the errors observed happen to occur only once,
thus indicate that the learners of the English Language might’ve had an occasional slip in their
minds, whilst writing. Because as we have read further, we noticed that they tend to correct the
mistake. It occupies the 57% of the total number of systematic errors present on the papers.
Some of the systematic errors observed were the use of are instead of is, misspellings of words
that were corrected right after, and many more. On the other hand, predictable errors (the
orange pie) composed the 43% of the pie chart. Surprisingly, on the papers that were given to
us, there was a huge number of incorrect usage of words that kept on occurring until the end.
One great example for this is the word myself and themselves. A student kept on writing “my
self” and which is an error on the rule of reflexive pronouns. Also, a lot of students do not know
how to place the correct punctuation on every statement that they have made.

Describe the Errors

After the identification of errors, the next thing that we need to do is to describe them.
Below are the 2 ways on how to describe the errors: by grammatical categories and by
mechanics.

grammatical categories and mechanics

48
Series 1

37
34
32
27 26
23 22
19
16

un n rb ve rb on on n g s n
ou Ve ve tio lin on tio
No on je
cti d os
iti cti c el ti a
Pr d A un rj e
Sp tu
a liz
A e p nj te nc ita
Pr Co In u p
P Ca
Figure 2. A bar graph of the grammatical categories and the mechanics for describing errors
(We counted the number of errors, and not its percentage according to its category for the basis
of our data).

On the data above, we can distinguish each of the categories by the number of errors
present on them. The most errors committed were the errors on punctuation. This is because a
lot of people don’t know how to use commas, periods, and even question marks. These errors
were mostly observed on the yellow papers presented. Students are eager to point out their
ideas, however, they failed to separate one idea from another one through the correct usage of
punctuations. Another error that needs to be emphasized is the spelling. Some students don’t
know how to spell certain words like judgment (spelled as “judgement”), appreciation (spelled as
“appriciation”) and especially (spelled “especialy”). These errors, though it didn’t entirely affect
the whole point of what someone is saying, it is still important for us to correct such. The least
(and on this case, none) error to be committed was interjection, because on the papers
presented to us, there weren’t any usage of punctuation marks to express someone’s strong
feelings.

Explain the Errors

In explaining errors, one must determine what type of error they committed. There are
four types of error that can occur, namely: misinformation or the use of the wrong form of the
morpheme or structure, another is misordering or the incorrect placement of a morpheme or a
group of morphemes in an utterance, the third one is omission or the absence of an item that
should appear in an utterance, and the last one, overgeneralization, when a language learner
applies a rule or pattern in a situation where it does not apply in the utterance.
 Below is a table that shows the types of error that were committed on the papers
given to us.

TYPES OF ERROR

OVERGENERALIZATION

MISORDERING

OMISSION

MISINFORMATION

0 5 10 15 20 25

Figure 3. Types of Error and Frequency

The table above shows that misinformation is most committed error of the students.
This findings show that the students have a hard time in using the proper form and tenses of the
word they used. The table also shows that omission and misordering are the second and third
most frequent error committed by the students, respectively. This directs that some students
omit words that can be used for their sentence to be coherent and also that students have
sentence that are jumbled and cannot be understood. The error that was the least committed is
overgeneralization. This indicates that most students know what rule or pattern is applicable in
the sentence they made.

Evaluate the errors

The last process for the error analysis is to evaluate them. This is critical because some
errors can be considered more serious than others because they are more likely to interfere with
the eloquence of what someone might say. There are two types of errors, namely: the local
error and global error. For local error, this is a type of error that is less likely to create any
processing problems, as it affects either one or two constituent in a statement. Global error,
however, interrupts the sentence structure, which makes it more difficult to process, and results
to poor comprehension.

Percentage of the global and local errors

22%

Local error

Global error

78%

Figure 4. The percentage of the local and global errors for the totality of 20 papers

Based on the data presented above, we can determine which has the most errors
committed, and that is the local error. We have observed that the papers presented have more
local errors that doesn’t entirely affect the idea of what someone is saying. For example, “For
me, I grew up believing that true beauty is in character.” This is a local error for it doesn’t
entirely lose its comprehension. However, the sentence is still invalid to be considered as
correct. To make this right, we ought to put the word “on” before the word “believing” to make it
sound more appropriate. For the global error, a great example is this one: “No, because beauty
is the best example of a beautiful woman and based on culture there is no wrong thing to be
percept.” This line is confusing to read, and we found it hard to contemplate on what the writer
meant when he/she wrote this. There may be a misordering on words, or perhaps,
misinformation took place.

Conclusion
 The number of errors on the data presented is based on the 20 papers given to us for
the error analysis. All of the information is based on the students’ errors that were committed on
his/her finished paper. In conclusion, error analysis plays a vital role in improving a learner’s
knowledge on his/her second language. It is important for us to know the process of correcting
the errors, for a more accurate usage of the language.