A Corpus Based Study of the Errors Committed by Pakistani Learners of English at Graduation Level

Abstract

Man is bound to make mistakes. Language learning is totally a process of trial and error. As language errors are the topic of this paper, let us provisionally define language errors first as an unsuccessful bit of language. Though errors were considered a sin in the past, now the linguists stress the importance of learners’ errors. These errors are helpul to teachers, researchers, and learners themselves (Corder 1967).  Error analysis is the process that determines the incidences, nature, causes and consequences of the unsuccessful language i.e. errors. Keeping in mind the recent trends in language teaching, studying learners’ output is important to define the parameters of learning second language.

The present corpus based work intends to find errors made by Pakistani learners of English at graduation level, when their production is in written form. The learner corpus used for this research Pakistani component of ICLE (International Centre for Learner English). It contains 0.2 million words in total, written in the form of argumentative essays, by the learners of English at the graduation level and is POS tagged using CLAWS7 POS tagger.

Keywords: Error Analysis, Learner Errors, Corpus Based Error Analysis, Learner Corpora, Pakistani English