A Study of Errors and Their INSTITUTION Go
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 072 681 FL 003 695 AUTHOR Olsson, Margareta TITLE Intelligibility: A Study of Errors and Their Importance. INSTITUTION Gothenburg School of Education (Sweden). Dept. of Educational Research.; Gothenburg Univ. (Sweden). Dept. of English. SPONS AGENCY National Swedish Board of Education, Stockholm. REPORT NO R-Bull-12 PUB DATE' May 72 NOTE 153p. ERRS PRICE MF -$0.65 HC-$6.58 DESCRIPTORS Communication (Thought Transfer): Comprehension; *Educational Experiments; *English (Second Language); *Error Patterns; Language Research; Language Skills; Learning Difficulties; Literature Reviews; Mutual Intelligibility; *Oral Communication; Second Language Learning; *Teaching Methods; Vocabulary IDENTIFIERS GUME Project; Sweden ABSTRACT This experiment continues the GUME experiments investigating methods for teaching English to Swedishschool pupils. The aims of this particular studyare twofold: (1) to analyze and classify the errors made by Swedish pupils inan oral English test in an effort to establish error patterns; and (2) to describe how the twelve most frequent errors in a systematic classificationof errors are used to form the basis of an acceptability andan intelligibility test, which is subsequently submitted to native Englishmen.Such an experiment raises the possibility that the objectivesof intelligibility and communicative comprehensionmay be more important than grammatical correctness. Included hereare reports on the oral tests administered to Swedish students, the analysis oferror patterns, the intelligibility experiment with English informants, conclusions, and discussion of implications. Appendixesprovide additional details. (M) 1 , , `.\ I '4 ; . ; , 4 ''S,1 ,',1! 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"4 l''.; tilgri"r"'Zilellglae; in-, .0 ,/,,ia.:;:,,iaitiS53KOZAWMittesa-444'4.tM n '''I, ...: '''' ...1"A, ::*l'.' 4 '1 I*1'174C.j: ,I-'-': ''..,,::r;:`.:i''C'1-3' ; N. ''''1,';'6; '4' '''I''t.-,' $;,,' ( t.. : : .O 03 ':' '' 4. :'AO.. an.' *4' :i..044.1e. , 4....n.'',.n, 4...,.. .7.74:-" - ,J.', ' , ,_,... ...1,0" 1-AKwvanr11 . , warn," awn. ofter.T.m.........,....,,,.. 4 '4' eelVe e I The GUME Project INTELLIGIBILITY A Study of Errors and Their Importance by Margareta Olsson Gothenburg School of Education Department of Educational Research ane University of Gothenburg Department of English May, 1972 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion of this study has involved support, guidance, and co- operation from many quarters. I am indebted to the National Board of Education, Bureau L 4, whose grant relieved me partially of teaching duties in 1971, and to the Hierta-Retzius Stipendiefond for support luring the final stages of the work. My sincere thanks are due to Fil.may. Hillevi Eriksson, who dealt admirably with unruly 14 year-olds during the oral testing in the Gothenburg schools and to Fil.mag. Margit Hoverfalt, who transcribed the testees' responses with great patience. I also wish to express my gratitude tone Principals of the Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and of the Derby and District College of Technology, respectively, who so obligingly allowed me to make the informant experiment at their institutions.I should also like to thank the unknown informants. My co-researchers in the GUME-project, Lennart Levin and Torsten Lindblad, have been generous with valuable advice and help with statistics, and my colleagues, Torborg Norman and Marja Smith, have made useful comments on the "intelligibility!' of my manuscript. My thanks are also due to Roy Fox and Valerie Jenkins-Heden, who revised my English, to Bert Nilsson, who performed many calculations, and to Kersti' Stahl, who so skilfully transformed my manuscript into a report. During a visit to London in June, 1971, I had the opportunity of discussing the informant experiment with Professor Randolph Quirk. I am extremely grateful to him for giving me of his valuable time and I am similarly indebted to Professor Jan Svartvik of the University of Lund, who kindly read my manuscript and made valuable comments. The GUME-project is privileged in having Professors AlvarEllegard and Karl-Gustaf Stukat as research advisors. I haveprofited very much from their expert advice on education andlinguistics and am particularly in their debt. Gothenburg in May, 1972 Margareta Olsson ii NOTE This study discusses the results of two different kinds of tests. In order to distinguish between them, thereare two different designations. If reference is made to the oral proficiency test administered in form 8 to Swedish pupils, the expression "oral criterion" will be used. Its written counterpart in the GUME 5 test battery will be called the "written criterion". The pupils who took part will be called the "testees" or quite simply the "pupils". The word "test" will be reserved almost exclusively for the different types of acceptability and intelligibility tests discussed. The native Englishmen on whom the acceptability and intelligibility of the testees' responses were tried out, will be called "informants". In the systematic classification of errors the words "class" and "sub-class" will be used. The word "category" will be retained for the 12 categories of deviances which were found to be the mnst frequent in the error classification. In this study "syntax" stands for both syntax and morphology. In other works discussed here, the respective author's grammatical terminology will be used. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS NOTE TABLE OF CONTENTS iii List of Figures vi List of Tables .vii INTRODUCTION 1 GUME Activities 1 Objectives of the Present Study 2 Rationale of an Intelligibility Investigation 3 On the Concept of Error 7 THE ORAL CRTIERION 10 The Pilot Study 11 Preliminary Classification of Errors 11 The Experiment Proper 12 Technical Arrangements 12 Transcribing the Test 13 Principles Used for the Marking 14 Evaluation of the Test 14 Reliability 15 Validity 15 Method Differences in the Oral Criterion 16 Conclusion 17 THE ERROR ANALYSIS 18 General 18 Theories on the Genesis of Errors 19' Review of Related Work 20 DakovA 20 Buteau 21 Grauberg 22 Schwartz 22 Stendahl 23 The UMT-Project 23 PAKS 24 iv Summary 25 The Present Analysis of Deviances 25 The Corpus 25 Principles 26 Classes and Sub-Classes 26 Problem areas 29 30 Results Results in the Three Main Classes 30 Types of Deviances 31 39 Mistakes interference from the Source Language 39 Correct Responses and Omissions for theNine Verbs 41 Frequency of the Nine Verbs 43 Distribution of Deviances in the TwoCourses 44 Which Deviances are the Most Common? 48 Discussion of Some Errors 51 53 Summary 55 THE INFORMANT EXPERIMENT 55 Informant Testing Attitudes to Linguistic Problems 55 The University College Experiments 56 The Juh&sz Experiments 57 Intelligibility Testing 57 58 The First Bournemouth Experiment 58 Design of the Test Test Items 58 60 Presentation 61 Tasks 61 Instructions 62 Timing Administration of the Test 62 62 Informants' Comments 62 Scoring Criteria 63 Result r 63 Differences in Performanc? 63 Informant Concordance 65 Results for the Tasks Correspondence Between Operation and Interpretation Tests 65 Comments on Intelligibility 66 The October Experiments . 67 Comparison of the Two Bournemouth Tests 67 Results of the Conflated Bournemouth 1 and 2 Experiments 68 Results for the Repeat Test Items 69 Result for the Individual Test Items 69 Category Order Reflected in Scores of the Test Items 69 Relationship of the Categories in the Two Tests 72 The Practice Effect - A Skewing Effect? 77 The Derby Experiment 78 Results 78 Operation Tasks 79 Category Order in the Interpretation Test 80 The Streamlined Hypothesis 84 Conclusion 86 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS_ 88 Summary 88 Discussion and Implications 91 Future Research 92 BIBLIOGRAPHY 94 APPENDICES A - J vi List of Figures Fig. 1: Distribution of Responses in the Two Courses 31 Fig. 2: Success of the Individual Test Items Excluding Those With the Task "Negation".