|
A Perspective of Error Analysis and English Language Teaching
English is currently a main means of intercultural communication among people with diverse linguistic backgrounds. Therefore, English language education has played a significant role in connecting people internationally (Cystal, 2003; Kirkpatrick, 2007). Yet, one attempt in a traditional teaching that has still been persistent is to uphold the language norms of the native speakers with the misconception that successful communication can always be assured if one can approximate to the native speakers competence. To achieve this goal, errors which are mainly interfered by learners L1 must be removed (Rajagopalan, 2004). From my perspective, if error analysis is used to reach such goal, the development of English language teaching will be impeded. This is due to the fact that this traditional paradigm flatly contradicts the sociolinguistic reality of todays world communication which rather, nowadays, recognizes international intelligibility and diversity than conserves the idea of one single standard use of English. In this essay, the concept of error in the original sense will be questioned, and to what extent its new contribution has been made towards English language teaching will be proposed. Concepts on error analysis are presented differently over years. Van Rensenburg (1983) stated that the idea of understanding the needs of error correction among pupils is essential. Teachers should not re-teach and re-correct what they have already known over and over just becausethe course syllabus says so. Fang and Xue-mei (2007) said the relation o fpsycholinguistics and error analysis is closely related. The teacher should consider all factors relevant to correcting errors such as the teaching goal and students level of proficiency and so on. Hasyim (2002) and Phettongkam(2013) similarly emphasized on the benefits of error analysis that it enables students to use English more correctly, and effective teaching materials could be created. These concepts are absolutely true. However, they, in my opinion,are still treated in a very broad, neutral sense, and no further interesting explanations and investigations of what kind of errors we should deal with has been addressed. Apart from the aforementioned, error analysis has been criticized for its invalidity in several aspects and this leads to its unpopularity in analyzing more complex language phenomena. Some unfavorable criticisms are as follows. First, error analysis is ambiguous and incomplete in terms of its terminologies, explanations, and classifications. Therefore, it needs to be re-examined in other new different perspectives (Mahmoud, 2013), For example, when it is used to describe the spoken discourse among non-native speakers in an international setting, is the English language that non-native speakers use considered as error or variation when successful communication among them has been established? Second, According to khansir (2012, p. 1030),error analysis has a flaw in depriving learners of using the avoidance strategy when they try to correct the way they speak. This is regarded as an unfair judgment. Also, due to its restriction to a particular norms upheld by the error checker, other feasible corpora of language use have been ignored. Thus, errors identified could be biased and misleading (Schachter and Murcia 1977,cited in khansir, 2012). This argument is utterly convincing since this criterion is no longer justified if we consider the extensive use of English as an international language and the existence of world Englishes today. Communication is all about negotiating meanings. Some forms of English which is decisively rejected in one setting may be perfectly acceptable in another one. Even the native speakers realize this as they speak differently in their own communities.Why cannot non-native speakers do the same if they can maintain comprehensibility among themselves? The point here is that the concept of error in effective communication should be judged by both native and non-nativespeakers corpora because English is now the property of anyone who can use itto serve any specific communicative purposes. Since the teaching of the English language should be reconsidered based on its real use of socio-culturally diverse communicative situations where one-size-fit-all English is no longer applicable, I suggest that we should promote the use of error analysis in correcting the areas of language use which only hinders the mutual understanding between people across nations instead of following merely the original use of any so-called native speakers, the former owners of the language. For instance, in the pronunciation teaching, Jenkins (2000) demonstrated that the native speakers phonological features can cause a lot of problems for learners of English, and they are unnecessarily complicated for international communication. In fact, the core phonological items based on mutual understanding are more important for making the learners understood universally. From this theoretical framework, it is the reason why we have to reshape the concept of learners error in an up-to-date manner. That is to say, our global community really needs a new paradigm in English language teaching so that we can truly communicate, exchange, and learn each others countless domains of activities such as cultures, business, technology, and other intellectual matters without national boundaries with respect of international diversity we all have. References Cystal,D. (2003). English as a Global Language. (Second edtion). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jinkins,J. (2000). The phonology of English as an international language. OxfordUniversity Press.
Kirkpatrick,A. (2007). World Englishes. Implications for international communication and English language teaching. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. Rajagopalan,K. (2004). The concept of World English and its implications for ELT. ELT Journal. 58/2: 111-117.
| Create Date : 25 กรกฎาคม 2559 |
|
41 comments |
| Last Update : 25 กรกฎาคม 2559 11:32:04 น. |
| Counter : 4141 Pageviews. |
|
 |
|
ฝากข้อความหลังไมค์
Rss Feed
ผู้ติดตามบล็อก : 39 คน [
