APPLIED LINGUISTICS for BA Students in English
FEEDBACK AND ERROR CORRECTION
Types of errors
According to the above-mentioned causes of errors we can distinguish between two groups of errors: interlingual/transfer errors, which are due to the interference of the learners’ mother tongue, and intralingual/developmental errors, which are due to the new language learned.
Errors can be grouped according to their gravity and treatment, as well. Krashen (1982) speaks about three kinds of errors, which he considers the most relevant errors that are to be dealt with: global errors, stigmatized and the most frequent errors. Global errors, which make communication impossible because they disable the comprehension of the communicative message, are necessary to be corrected. Stigmatized errors (use of taboo words, socially unacceptable words or violent language) are to be treated immediately. The group of the most frequently occurring errors includes errors which are to be corrected no matter which group they belong to.
Bárdos (2000) groups the written errors on the basis of their gravity: Qualitative errors are errors that are so serious they impede communication or distort the information transferred. Quantitative errors are errors (misspelled words, misused structures, synonyms, style) that do not affect communication. However, if any of these quantitative errors distort the meaning they may become qualitative errors.
