This report consists of two major sections. The first describes the theory and methodology of the Romanian-English Contrastive Analysis Project (RECAP), and the second section presents the first aberrant corpus in RECAP. Also provided are a list of signs and abbreviations and three annexes consisting of two translation exercises and one…

Error analysis has consistently neglected to give any treatment of the phonological aspects of non-native linguistic performance. Using Selinker's Interlanguage model as a starting-point, an attempt is made here to develop a descriptive apparatus capable of accounting for the phenomena of "foreign accents." The data of one such…

A method of teaching writing to adult students of English as a second language is presented. The method emphasizes the first-person point of view. For an individual in a new culture with limited vocabulary and uncertain knowledge of structure, beginning with the self and observed events can be reassuring. With this method, described as being a…

Reports on research seeking to isolate and analyze high frequency errors in secondary students of German, to identify learning tactics, and to apply the research results to improving language instruction. (AM)

This volume on second language learning contains the following eleven articles: "The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis," by Ronald Wardhaugh, "Students' Errors and the Learning of French as a Second Language," by Magdelhayne F. Buteau, "Error Analysis and Second Language Strategies," by Jack C. Richards, "Induced Errors," by Nancy Stenson, "Global…

It has been claimed that error analysis (EA) has two broad aims and two levels of application: pedagogical (relevant to syllabus design and second language teaching) and psycholinguistic (relevant to language learning studies). At the moment, EA's pedagogical claims are stronger than its psycholinguistic ones. In its early days, EA defined its…

The report describes an analysis of errors yielded by a written test in English given to 424 Swedish 14-year-olds from 24 different classes in the comprehensive school. The analysis discusses the difference in attainment between pupils of high and low proficiency, frequencies and types of errors for regular and irregular verbs, and the occurrence…

This paper presents and illustrates a technique for analyzing the communicative effect of errors produced in spoken and written communication samples by students of English as a second language (ESL). First, a method is demonstrated for eliciting a representative communication sample of a student's speech or writing, using pictorial stimuli.…

An experiment was carried out to investigate errors in translation exercises done by French students studying English as a second language. A code was devised to rate errors as being: (1) lexical or grammatical, and (2) related to the signifier or the signified, with further subdivisions within these groups. While this method has the advantage…

Types of hierarchies of pronunciation difficulty are discussed, and a hierarchy based on contrastive analysis plus informal observation is proposed. This hierarchy is less one of initial difficulty than of error persistence. One feature of this hierarchy is that, because of lesser learner awareness and very limited functional load, errors…

An analysis of Kanji errors made by students of Japanese at International Christian University over a period of a year, as well as answers to a questionnaire on Kanji study, indicate that the learning of Kanji relies greatly on individual work outside of class. A method is presented which uses slides to enable students to study Kanji on their own.…

Articles in this volume relate to the Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project: (1) "The Yugoslav Serbo-Croatian-English Contrastive Project at the End of its Second Phase (1971-1975)," Rudolf Filipovic: Pedagogical goals and application of contrastive analysis are best achieved when accompanied by error analysis. Reports,…

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…

A project designed to gather information about similarities and differences that may be important for teaching English to Finnish learners, and, to a certain extent, for teaching Finnish through English, was conducted through a systematic comparison of the two languages and an analysis of instances where the two languages come into contact. In the…

Twelve Spanish-speaking adults learning English as a second language were tested using the Bilingual Syntax Measure and their errors were analysed. Eight of them were subsequently presented with their errors in written form and asked to correct them. The 12 adults produced a total of 451 errors, of which 20.6% were due to interference from…