Toward a Taxonomy of Written Errors Investigation Into the Written Errors Of

Toward a Taxonomy of Written Errors:Investigation Into the Written Errors ofHong Kong Cantonese ESL Learners

ALICE Y. W. CHANCity University of Hong KongHong Kong SAR, China

This article examines common lexicogrammatical problems found inCantonese English as a second language (ESL) learners writtenEnglish output. A study was conducted with 387 student participants,who were asked to do two untutored and unaided free-writing tasks ofabout 200300 words each. A range of lexicogrammatical error typescommonly found among Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners wasidentified. Errors from the lexical level included vocabulary compensa-tion and inaccurate directionality; errors from the syntactic levelincluded calquing, existential structures, incorrect ordering of adver-bials, and independent clauses as subjects; and those from thediscourse level included periphrastic-topic constructions. Mother-tongue influence was inevitably an important source of the problems,but inadequate mastery of correct usage of the target language anduniversal processes were also important factors. The results of the studyhave potential for enhancing our understanding of the interlanguagegrammar of learners and the nature, sources, and prevalence of learnerproblems. The results also have promising pedagogical implications, asthey inform teachers of the levels, nature, sources, prevalence, andgravity of learner errors and equip them with the key ingredientsneeded for the design of appropriate remedial instructional materials.A discussion of how the taxonomical classification would be useful forlanguage teachers is also given.doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.219941

E nglish is a value-added language in Hong Kong, indispensable forboth upward and outward mobility, rather than a typical second orforeign language (Li, 1999, p. 97). It is compulsorily taught at allsecondary and primary schools and is the medium of instruction ofabout one third of the total number of secondary schools and themajority of tertiary institutions. Despite its official status and addedvalue, it is used in Hong Kong only in the formal domains ofgovernment, business, education, and law, typically in the presence of

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native English speakers or non-Chinese speakers (Li, 1999). Forintraethnic communications, Cantonese or Cantonese-English mixedcode is preferred, and many Hong Kong Cantonese are under greatsocial pressure not to switch entirely to English when communicatingamong themselves orally (Li, 2000). Many informal written exchangesare conducted in Chinese-Cantonese,1 standard written Chinese, orEnglish-Chinese mixed code. Cantonese English as a second language(ESL) learners exposure to English is very limited.

Many Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners encounter problemsin learning the morphology, lexis, syntax, and semantics of English(e.g., Budge, 1989; Chan, 2003, 2004b, 2004c, 2004d; Chan, 1991;Chan, Kwan, & Li, 2002, 2003; Chan, Li, & Kwan, 2003; Gisborne, 2002;Green, 1991; Li, 2000; Webster & Lam, 1991; Webster, Ward, & Craig,1987; Yip & Matthews, 1991; Yu, 1988a, 1988b). Despite claims thatHong Kong English should be viewed as a legitimate new varietybecause of the existence of unique, systematic features (Bolton, 2002;Bolton & Lim, 2002; Hung, 2002), it has been argued that Hong KongEnglish is not appropriately characterized as a new variety of English,because of its limited social role and the predominance of StandardEnglish as the norms of reference (Li, 2000). Li contends that features inHong Kong English can be more appropriately viewed as interlanguagefeatures.

ESL teachers need to have a good understanding of the cognitive andpsycholinguistic mechanisms at work in learners learning process inorder to help them overcome their second language (L2) problems.Because errors are indicative of a learners interlanguage2 and the errorsmade along a learners interlanguage continuum are often due to acomplex interplay between both first language (L1)- and L2-relatedfactors (Li & Chan, 1999), there is a need to investigate the writtenoutput of Cantonese ESL learners in order to uncover the extent ofnegative transfer and the interaction between transfer and other nonL1-related factors. Results of such research should have considerablepotential for alleviating English language teachers workload and forquickening students learning process. Despite various attempts todiagnose Hong Kong ESL learners writing problems, there is a lack ofsystematic, large-scale studies which scrutinize a full range of writtenlexicogrammatical errors, analyze the possible causes, and establish a

1 The word Cantonese used in this article refers to the variety per se, which may be spoken orwritten. The word Chinese refers to standard written Chinese. The written Chinese used inHong Kong is a mixture of spoken Cantonese and standard written Chinese (Snow, 2004),and the term Chinese-Cantonese is used to refer to this special medium.

2 There have been some criticisms of the term interlanguage. Cook (1993) points out thatthe term is often used to refer both to the learners knowledge of the second languageand to the actual speech of L2 learners (p. 19). No such distinction is made in this article.

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taxonomical classification. The present study aimed at bridging such aresearch gap.

ERROR ANALYSIS AND TRANSFER ANALYSIS

The approach used in the study could be seen as arising from theparadigms of error analysis (EA) and transfer analysis (TA) in L2acquisition (SLA) research. EA (Corder, 1967) compares learnersinterlanguage with the target language to locate mismatches. Errors areseen as evidence of learning and could be described without the need torefer to a learners native language. Earlier interest in error analysiswaned, because it was thought that, even if learner errors could bepredicted and understood, such errors could not be ameliorated. EA wasalso attacked as a pseudoprocedure in applied linguistics (Bell, 1974,p. 35) and was insufficient because of its biased practice of analyzingout the errors and neglecting the careful description of the non-errors(Hammarberg, 1974, p. 185). Despite these criticisms during the 1970sand early 1980s, this paradigm has been revitalized followingsignificant research in the past decades, such as James (1998),Kellerman (1995), Kellerman and Sharwood Smith (1986), and Odlin(1989), leading to the redefinition of the concept of TA. Though EA isnot a theory of acquisition, it is argued as a methodology for dealing withdata (Cook, 1993), and teachers are attracted to this paradigm by itspromise of relevance to their everyday professional concerns (James,1998, p. x).

TA (James, 1990) compares learners interlanguage strings with theirmother tongues. It is a subprocedure in the diagnostic phase of EA anddeals with interlanguage and target language mismatches assumed to bethe results of mother-tongue interference. Crosslinguistic influence isacknowledged, and learner errors are seen as a register of learnerscurrent perspective on the target language (James, 1998). Althoughstructural comparisons of two languages are often uncertain correlatesof learner behavior (Kellerman, 1995), with the data-handling method-ology in EA and the acknowledgement of crosslinguistic influence in theidentification of target languageinterlanguage mismatches in TA, thesetwo paradigms still remain useful means to understanding the cognitiveand linguistic complexities involved in SLA.

PREVIOUS RESEARCH INTO WRITTEN ERRORS MADE BYCHINESE SPEAKERS

Numerous small-scale studies have been carried out to investigate thewritten errors made by Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners. Among the

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problems documented include those with relative clauses, pluralmarking, and topicalization. Mother-tongue interference has often beenargued as the major cause. Webster et al. (1987) present various localESL errors and conclude that all the errors may be attributed to mother-tongue influence. Green (1991) examined the overuse of topic-comment structure in Hong Kong English and argues that the structureis evidence of typological transfer. Budge (1989) attributes Hong Kongstudents failure to mark plural nouns with -s in writing to the influenceof Cantonese phonology. Outside of Hong Kong, Deterding (2000), Tan(2005), and Zhu (2007) examined the influence of Chinese on writtenSingaporean English. Poedjosodarmo (2000) investigated the influencesof Malay on the written English of university students in Singapore.Although Tan (2005) argues that Singlish arose due to the influences ofthe students mother tongues on all the lexical, syntactic, and discourseaspects of English, Zhu (2007) claims that not all errors can beattributed to Chinese influences. To the authors knowledge, none ofthese studies has attempted to establish a systematic taxonomy oflexicogrammatical learner errors to arrive at a generalizable conclusionabout the cognitive and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying thelearning process.

OBJECTIVES

The present study aimed to identify a range of lexicogrammaticalerrors commonly found in Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners writtenoutput and to establish an error taxonomy. The underlying belief wasthat the nature and the causes of the errors could be more systematicallyand reliably generalized, if similar errors are classified into the sametype.

PROCEDURE

Data Collection: Phase I

A study was conducted with 387 Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners,including 65 students from three local universities and 322 studentsfrom five local secondary schools (124 students from Form 6 and 198students from Form 33). The Form 3 students (about 50% of the totalnumber of participants) and Form 6 students (about 30%) could becategorized as lower intermediate (L-I) and upper intermediate (U-I)learners, respectively, whereas the university students (about 20%) could

3 Form 3 and Form 6 students in Hong Kong are comparable to Grade 9 and Grade 12students in the United States, respectively.

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be categorized as advanced (A) learners. Elementary learners were notincluded, because they are not accustomed to doing free writing inEnglish.

The participants did two free-writing tasks administered at twodifferent time slots of 40 minutes at an interval of about 2 weeks. Aword limit was set at 200, 250, and 300 words for students at the threeproficiency levels, respectively. The participants produced 696 pieces offree writing (totaling about 158,000 words). Of these, 187 pieces, 116pieces, and 47 pieces of narrative writing (a total of 350 pieces) werefrom the Form 3, Form 6, and university students, respectively; and 157pieces, 124 pieces, and 65 pieces of descriptive writing (a total of 346pieces) were from the students at the respective levels.

Data Analysis

A research assistant, very proficient in English and holding a mastersdegree in English, was engaged in identifying anomalous structures fromthe corpus. The errors were then assigned to a working error taxonomyunder the supervision of the researchers (the author and hercollaborator). To ensure that the research assistant could extend thepatterned anomalies to the entire corpus, the researchers coached theassistant in a series of error identification and categorization sessions.Accuracy and consistency were maximized by having a second researchassistant with similar linguistic background and training double-checkthe error taxonomy. Where the two assistants judgments diverged,either one or both of the researchers reviewed the categorization tomake a third judgment (see appendix).

A comparison between the interlanguage strings and equivalentstrings in the learners mother tongue was then carried out to determinewhether crosslinguistic influences (Kellerman, 1995; Kellerman &Sharwood Smith, 1986) may have been at work. Attempts were alsomade to ascribe the errors to possible sources where mother-tongueinterference could not be observed.

Data Collection: Phase II

The error taxonomy established (see Results: Phase I) gave primafacie evidence of syntactic transfer from Chinese to English. In thesecond phase of the study, five error types thought to be the results of L1interference, namely, omission of copulas, incorrect order of adverbials oradverbs, existential structures, misuse of relative clauses, and transitivity patternconfusion, were isolated, and the extent of syntactic transfer was furtherinvestigated with the use of individual interviews (including translation


tasks [from L1 to L2], explanations of translations, and self-reports)and group tests (including grammaticality judgment questionnairesand translation tasks [from L1 to L2]). The individual interviewswere administered to a focus group of 42 students, and the group teststo a large sample of 710 students. Differences between the performanceof different age groups were also examined (for details, see Chan,2004c).

RESULTS

Phase I

Altogether, 4,997 tokens were identified and classified under 32 errortypes (see appendix).

Morphological Level. Twenty-one error tokens were associated withmorphology.

Inappropriate selection of affixes (10 tokens: 10% from L-I, 30% fromU-I, 60% from A). Inadequate mastery of English word-formationprocesses was probably the major cause, because the learners wereapparently aware of the need for an affix and the meanings of thechosen affixes were often close to those of the target affixes. Mother-tongue interference did not seem to have been at work, because affixesare rarely used in Chinese or Chinese-Cantonese.

1. *their academic results are still dissatisfactory.

Overuse of affixes (11 tokens: 18% from L-I, 27% from U-I, 55% from A).Overuses of affixes were exemplars of overgeneralization, where theneed for an affix in word formation had been overgeneralized.Inadequate knowledge of the word class of a stem word was probably areason for such overgeneralizations, because the learners did not seemto be aware that the original stems without the unwanted affixes sufficefor the meanings conveyed.

2. *The happiness we have now cannot enlast.

Lexical Level. Altogether, 617 error tokens belonged to the lexical level.

Inaccurate directionality (9 tokens: 22.2% from L-I, 66.7% from U-I, 11.1%from A). Such confusion was probably the result of mother-tongueinterference, as the substitution words and the target words often havesubstitutable L1 Chinese-Cantonese equivalents with no directionalitydifferences.

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3. *I borrowed money from my friends and borrowed the money to him [cf. lend;Chinese-Cantonese employs the same word ze3 for both borrow and lend.4]

Synonym confusion (73 tokens: 58.9% from L-I, 35.6% from U-I, 5.5% fromA). These errors showed learners difficulties in differentiating theappropriate uses of near synonyms and the contexts in which they shouldbe used. L1 influence may have been at work, as the confusable Englishsynonyms often share the same or similar Chinese-Cantonese equivalents.

4. *My mother is nice, she didnt fight me [cf. beat; the Chinese-Cantoneseequivalents of fight and beat are daa2 gaau1, and daa2, respectively, which aresimilar.]

Vocabulary compensation (199 tokens: 37.7% from L-I, 47.2% from U-I,15.1% from A). For this error type, the synonymy relation between thesubstitution words and the target words holds only in the learnersmother tongue. The substitution words (groups) and the target words(groups) have very different meanings and usage in English. Mother-tongue influence was one probable cause.

5. *Open TV and open the playstation [cf. turn on; the Chinese-Cantoneseequivalent of turn on is hoi1, the same as the Chinese-Cantonese equivalent ofopen.]

Synforms (336 tokens: 54.5% from L-I, 33% from U-I, 12.5% from A).Synforms are lexical mis-hits selected because of formal resemblance toother L2 forms (Hall, 2002, p. 71; Laufer, 1997). The learners insecureknowledge of both the target forms and their corresponding mis-hits wasprobably the major cause of the problem. No mother-tongue inter-ference was observed.

6. *I sleep on the bed, my mother also sleep nearly [cf. nearby].

Syntactic Level. Altogether, 4,295 error tokens were found at thesyntactic level.

Pseudotough movement (11 tokens: 9.1% from L-I, 81.8% from U-I, 9.1%from A). Characterized by the use of a tough adjective (e.g., easy) in anerroneous structure (Yip, 1995), pseudotough movement has been regardeda high-frequency erroneous structure for Cantonese ESL learners (Li &Chan, 1999).

4 All Chinese characters in this article are transliterated using the Jyutping system (Tang et al.,2002). The number at the end of each romanized Cantonese syllable is a tone mark,indicating one of the six distinctive tones in Hong Kong Cantonese.


7. *Up to now, we are not easy to work together [cf. ngo5 mun4 bat1 jung4 ji6 jat1hei2 gung1 zok35 (we not easy together work)].

The Chinese-Cantonese equivalents of the English erroneous structuresare both acceptable and common. Mother-tongue interference wasprobably a major cause. Acceptable sentences in the target language,such as John is not easy to convince, may also have led the learners intobelieving that these sentences with tough movement were positiveevidence in support of their interlanguage hypothesis for the pseudo-tough movement structure (Chan & Li, 2002).

misuse of until (33 tokens: 6.1% from L-I, 75.8% from U-I, 18.2% fromA). Rather than using the preposition to show that something happensduring a period before a particular time and stops at that time (Quirk,Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985), the learners used it with timeadverbials like forever or now to emphasize the truth of the precedingstatements at the time of speaking, including the time periods specifiedby the time adverbials, traceable to Chinese-Cantonese expressions zik6zi3 or zik6 dou3 (Chan, 2003).

8. *Until now, I enjoy the school life.

Misuse of conjunctions (42 tokens: 31% from L-I, 59.5% from U-I, 9.5% fromA). Many of these errors had correlative pairs attached to both clauses of acomplex sentence. The influence of Chinese was evident: Chinesecomplex sentences are symmetrical and allow double conjunctions(correlative pairs). The Chinese equivalents of because and so, althoughand but are good examples of such correlative pairs (Chan, 2004a).

9. *Although we cant have our own life there, but now we are happy.

Duplicated comparatives or superlatives (47 tokens: 44.7% from L-I, 51.1%from U-I, 4.3% from A). Comparable constructions in Chinese-Cantonese may have affected the learners use of a redundant more ormost, because the corresponding comparisons in Chinese-Cantonese areformed by the addition of the words bei2 (than) or gang3 (more) and zeoi3(most) preceding the comparative adjectives and superlative adjectives,respectively (Li & Thompson, 1981; Matthews & Yip, 1994).Overgeneralization of the use of English more or most may also havebeen a probable cause, because the two words are used for makingcomparatives and superlatives for all polysyllabic English words andmany bisyllabic English words.

5 All the Chinese-Cantonese sentences used for comparison are grammatical Chinese-Cantonese sentences acceptable to native speakers of Cantonese.

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10. *That is the most happiest time in [cf. naa5 si6 ngo5 zoi6 haai4 tung4 si4zeoi3 faai3 lok6 dik1 si4 hau6 (that is I in childhood most happy NOMINALIZERtime)].

Misordering of constituents in indirect questions (47 tokens: 23.4% from L-I,70.2% from U-I, 6.4% from A). The incorrect placement of subjectfollowing operator mirrored the order of the two constituents in a directwh- question:

11. *I dont know where is it.

L1 interference was not evident, because in Chinese, wh- words occur inthe same position in a sentence as do non-question words having thesame grammatical function (Li & Thompson, 1981). No reordering ofsubject and operator is required in an indirect wh- question. Inadequatemastery of the correct ordering of constituents in English indirectquestions was probably the main cause.

In-prepositional phrases (49 tokens: 73.5% from L-I, 24.5% from U-I, 2%from A). These consisted of the preposition in, either used redundantlyor chosen inappropriately, in an in-prepositional phrase. Such structurescould be traceable to equivalent Chinese prepositional phrases, whichoften require the presence of the word zoi6 (in).

12. *In many years ago, my father [cf. zoi6 han2 do1 nin4 cin4 (in many years ago)].

Independent clauses as objects or subjects (54 tokens: 53.7% from L-I, 31.5%from U-I, 14.8% from A). L1 effects should have been at work, because itis acceptable to have two or more verb phrases or clauses in the samesentence (i.e., serial verb constructions) and for the first verb phrase orclause to be the subject of the whole sentence in Chinese (Li &Thompson, 1981; Matthews & Yip, 1994). A lack of awareness that anindependent clause cannot be the object or subject of an Englishsentence may also have been a reason (Chan, Kwan, & Li, 2003).

13. *You dont need to worry about the problem will struck at you [cf. nei5 bat1seoi1 jiu3 daam1 sam1 man6 tai4 wui5 jing2 hoeng2 nei5 (you not needworry problem will affect you)].

Be + -ed (99 tokens: 29.3% from L-I, 50.5% from U-I, 20.2% from A). Inthese sentences, the verb to be coexists with the past participle (or pastform) of the main verb. This error can be traceable to Chinese-Cantonese structures with si6 (is) serving as a marker of specialaffirmation (Li & Thompson, 1981, p. 151), linking the two major


constituents of the sentences to mean It is true that. However, it isunclear whether the forms of the verbs were past forms or pastparticiples, because most of the words ended with -ed. It is also unclearwhy the -ed form instead of the base form was used (see be + base form).

14. *She is always cried [cf. taa1 si6 si4 seong4 huk1 dik1 (he IS always cryPARTICLE)].

Pseudopassives and undergeneration of passives (110 tokens: 29.1% from L-I, 53.6% from U-I, 17.3% from A). Many of these could be regarded aspseudopassives (cf. Yip, 1995), which are one reflection in theinterlanguage of the Chinese typological characteristic of topic-prominence (p. 97). Because the learners failed to generate the fullrange of English passive constructions, these errors could also be seen ascases of undergeneration of the target passive (Yip, 1995). Mother-tongue interference was apparent.

15. *The floor can automatic clean [cf. ze5 dei6 baan2 ho2 ji5 zi6 dung6 cing1git3 (the floor can automatic clean)].

Omission of subjects (114 tokens: 64% from L-I, 22.8% from U-I, 13.2%from A). This was often associated with compound or complex sentenceswhere both clauses shared the same subject, the subject was present inone of the clauses, the missing subject could be identified with thesubject present in the other clause, or the missing subject wasunderstood in the immediate context.

16. *First, talk about the traffic [cf. sau2 sin1 taam4 taam4 gaau1 tung1man6 tai4 (first talk talk traffic problems)].

Mother-tongue interference was observed, because a coreferential nounphrase in the second clause of a sentence or in subsequent sentences ofa discourse is not normally mentioned in Chinese. A coreferentialpronoun may be used, but it is not obligatory (Li & Thompson, 1981).Subjects (and objects) may be omitted in Chinese when the constituentshave been the topics of previous utterances, or when the reference isclear from the context (Matthews & Yip, 1994).

Existential structures (118 tokens: 61% from L-I, 26.3% from U-I, 12.7%from A). Mother-tongue interference may have been at work, becausethe corresponding existential meaning in Chinese-Cantonese isexpressed using jau5 (have). Students inadequate mastery of thedifferent forms of the verb to be in English may also have been aprobable cause. Given that the perfect forms have been and has been of the

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verb to be are orthographically similar to the verb have, probableconfusion because of such acceptable structures as There may have beensome problems may also have led to the anomaly (Chan et al., 2002).

17. *There had many people at there [cf. daan6 naa5 leoi5 jau5 han2 do1 jan4(but there have many people)].

Misuse of prepositions (126 tokens; 45.2% from L-I, 36.5% from U-I,18.3% from A). In these sentences, an inappropriate preposition waschosen in place of an appropriate one, a superfluous preposition wasadded, or a required preposition was omitted.

18. *We played card games on the bus although it was crowded of people.

19. *I could meet more new friends and play with them besides from mybrothers.

No L1 interference could be identified. Direct translations of sentencessuch as Examples 18 and 19 do not suggest the need for such inaccurateconstituents. Because the uses of English prepositions are not easy togeneralize and choices of prepositions are often lexically determinedand idiosyncratic, inadequate mastery of the choice and use of Englishprepositions was probably the major cause.

However, mother-tongue interference may have been at work for theproduction of sentences with missing prepositions:

20. *Which kind of examination system is appropriate the situation now?[cf. naa5 jat1 zung2 haau2 si5 zai3 dou6 si6 sik1 hap6 jin6 zoi6 dik1 cing4 fong3(which one kind exam system appropriate now NOMINALIZER situation)].

Sentences such as Example 20, which had an adjectival complement(e.g., appropriate) used with a postmodifier lacking an appropriatepreposition (e.g., the situation), were actually direct Chinese translations,because the corresponding Chinese constituents for the adjectives areoften used as transitive verbs in Chinese (e.g., sik1 hap6 [appropriate]).

Verb form selection (144 tokens: 36.8% from L-I, 47.2% from U-I, 16% fromA). In these sentences, an -ing participle was used in place of a present-tense verb, a past form in place of a base-form verb, and the like. Verbs inChinese do not exhibit different verb forms, so insufficient mastery of verb-formation processes in English was probably a major cause.

21. *Every day he driving his car.

Misuse of relative clauses (158 tokens: 18.4% from L-I, 53.2% from U-I,28.5% from A). No direct L1 interference could be traceable for some


relative clause errors, because there are no relative pronouns in Chinese:Relative clauses in Chinese are formed by the nominalizer dik1 (e.g., oi3[love] ngo5 [me] dik1 [NOMINALIZER] jan4 [person] [the person who lovesme]). The erroneous English sentence errors (e.g., Example 22) and theChinese translations do not resemble each other.

22. *She will cook the food what I like to eat.

Other errors identified were erroneous reduced relative clauses with amissing finite verb (e.g., Example 23). Inadequate mastery of therestrictions that a finite relative clause requires the co-occurrence of arelative pronoun and that a nonfinite relative clause precludes anexplicit relative pronoun was probably the major reason.

23. *I have a large family which including grandmother,

The omission of relative pronouns, especially subject relative pronouns(e.g., Example 24), however, could be seen as resulting from L1. Directtranslations of the English sentences showed great resemblance toChinese relative clauses without the nominalizer dik1.

24. * You are the first come to Hong Kong [cf. nei5 si6 dai6 jat1 go3 loi4heong1 gong2 (You are the first CLASSIFIER come Hong Kong)].

Incorrect order of adverbials or adverbs (172 tokens: 91.3% from L-I, 7%from U-I, 1.7% from A). Most of these errors were associated with theincorrect placement of the adverb very, though other adverbs, such asnever, were also sometimes misplaced.

25. *I was very work hard to read [cf. ngo5 han2 nou5 lik6 duk6 syu1 (I veryhard read book)]

In Chinese, han2 (very) is typically placed before verbs (e.g., han2 hei2fun1 [very like]) and predicative adjectives or adjectival verbs (e.g., han2jau5 jung6 [very useful]; Chan, Li, & Kwan, 2003; Matthews & Yip, 1994).Such resemblance between the syntactic behavior of Chinese verbs andadjectives, together with the acceptability of a similar very + ADJECTIVEstructure in English, such as very good, may have led the students to thinkthat the structure very + VERB was acceptable in English.

The acceptability of expressions such as I very much want to go may alsoexplain the error. Overgeneralization resulting from their inadequateunderstanding of the differences in forms and functions between thedegree adverb very and adverbials such as very much and of the contextwhich allows fronted adverbials may also have been the cause.

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Serial verb constructions (190 tokens: 78.4% from L-I, 18.4% from U-I,3.2% from A). These sentences had two or more verbs or verb clausesjuxtaposed without any intervening marker. The juxtaposed clauses inthese constructions normally shared the same subject. As serial verbconstructions are widely acceptable in Chinese and the structure of theerroneous English constructions mirrored that of the corresponding L1translations, mother-tongue interference was probably a major cause.Inadequate mastery of the distinction between finite and nonfiniteclauses in English was probably another cause. English nonfiniteinfinitive clauses without the infinitive marker to (e.g., She helped medo it) may also have been mistakenly taken as positive evidence,misleading the learners into using two finite verbs in the same sentence.

26. *My mother was angry. And took a stick beat me [cf. jin4 hau6 naa4 hei2 jat1zi1 paang5 daa2 ngo5 (then take up one CLASSIFER stick beat me)].

Inappropriate case selection (193 tokens: 73.5% from L-I, 18.1% from U-I,8.3% from A). Mother-tongue interference may not have been at work,because Chinese does not exhibit case distinctions: The same form isused for pronouns used as subjects and objects, and the nominalizer dik1is added for showing possession (e.g., ngo5 dik1 baa1 baa1 [my father]).Inadequate mastery of the distinct forms for the different cases inEnglish was probably the major cause of the problem.

27. *My sister always laugh of our.

Punctuation problems (204 tokens: 56.9% from L-I, 35.2% from U-I, 7.8%from A). Some of these errors were comma splices, and others weresentence fragments. The comma splices consisted of independent clausesseparated by commas, whereas the sentence fragments were all stand-alonesubordinate clauses introduced by a subordinator such as because, until, or if.

28. *I saw her face, I will know that she was very angry, so I will go to my room, and.

29. *I have a very happy childhood. Because, my friend, my parents are very good.

No particular L1 interference could be traced, and it was hard to decidewhether such mistakes were careless mistakes or whether they reflectedthe learners interlanguage features.

Transitivity pattern confusion (259 tokens: 40.5% from L-I, 40.5% from U-I, 18.9% from A). Mother-tongue influence was probably the mostimportant factor (Chan, 2004c), because the erroneous transitivitypatterns of the verbs in question often coincided with the transitivitypatterns of the corresponding Chinese equivalents.


30. *We will not listen him [cf. ngo5 mun4 bat1 wui5 ting3 taa1 (we not willlisten him)].

Be + base form (323 tokens: 72.4% from L-I, 23.2% from U-I, 4.3%from A).

31. *My father was always buy a toy. [cf. ngo5 baa1 baa1 si6 si4 soeng4 maai5wun6 geoi6 kap1 ngo5 dik1 (I father is always buy toy give me PARTICLE)].

In these sentences, the verb to be coexisted with the base form of themain verb, with an optional adverb in between the two verbs. This errorcan be traceable to Chinese-Cantonese structures with si6 (is) serving asa marker of special affirmation (Li & Thompson, 1981, p. 151), linkingthe two major constituents of the sentences to mean It is true that (seeBe + -ed earlier).

Omission of copulas (426 tokens: 71.6% from L-I, 23.7% from U-I, 4.7%from A).

32. *They will very happy [cf. taa1 mun4 wui5 han2 faai3 lok6 (they will veryhappy)].

Mother-tongue interference was undoubtedly a major cause: TheChinese copula si6 (be) is similar to the English verb to be when usedas a linking verb between the subject and its nominal complement.However, it does not co-occur with many auxiliary verbs such as nang4(can) and wui5 (will) (Li & Thompson, 1981), especially when thesubject complement is not nominal and there are no particularaffirmative or emphatic functions.

Concord problems (444 tokens: 44.1% from L-I, 37.6% from U-I, 18.2%from A). No direct L1 interference was traceable, because Chinesenouns and verbs are not marked for number, tense, or person. A lack ofcomparable equivalents in the mother tongue, leading to a lack ofpositive evidence in the L2, may probably have been the cause.Inadequate mastery of target language constituent combinations wasalso likely.

33. *I found a lot of shop but.

Word class confusion (450 tokens: 38% from L-I, 38.4% from U-I, 23.6%from A). This error type revealed the effects of a lack of distinct forms orderivations for different word classes in Chinese-Cantonese. Suchsyntactic behavior may have led the learners to believing that Englishwords behave similarly to Chinese.

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34. *Its so interest.

Calquing (482 tokens: 64.1% from L-I, 29.3% from U-I, 6.6% from A). Acalque is a type of borrowing in which each morpheme or word istranslated into the equivalent morpheme or word in another language(Richards, Platt, & Platt, 1992). The individual target language wordsused semantically match the individual words in the native language.

35. *My mother usually cooks something nice eat to me [cf. ngo5 maa1 maa1 si4soeng4 zyu2 jat1 se1 hou2 hek3 dik1 dung1 sai1 kap1 ngo5 (me motherusually cook some nice eat NOMINALIZER thing to me)].

Discourse Level (64 Error Tokens). Discourse-related errors wereassociated with how the learners combined sentences or clauses into abroader text and their use of expressions within a text to refer to someportion of the discourse containing that text.

Periphrastic-topic constructions (25 tokens: 44% from L-I, 28% from U-I,28% from A). These sentences had a topic-comment structure with theredundant use of a subject noun phrase or pronoun to repeat a frontedtopic (Yip, 1995). A significant cause was L1 interference, because, inChinese, topic-comment structures are very common.

36. *Hong Kong in the year 2047, it will have [cf. hoeng1 gong2 zoi6 2047 nin4taa1 wui5 jau5 han2 do1 dung1 sai1 (Hong Kong in 2047 years it will havemany things)].

Use of it as discourse deixis (39 tokens: 48.7% from L-I, 30.8% from U-I,20.5% from A). These sentences showed an inappropriate use of itwithout a clear referent, as a discourse-deictic expression to refer to apreceding or following portion of a discourse.

37. * When I was talking to her, I feel it was so good.

L1 interference may not have been at work, because the structures of theerroneous English sentences were not comparable to those of theirChinese translations. The Chinese third-person singular personal pronountaa1 (it) also behaves differently from the use of it in such sentences.Inadequate mastery of the pronoun and confusion resulting from thefrequent use of dummy it in subject positions were probably the causes.

As can be seen from the above taxonomy, errors at all themorphological, lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels are found fromthe written output of students. Despite the different populations ofparticipants at the different proficiency levels, it can be seen that some


errors, such as incorrect order of adverbials or adverbs and in-prepositional phrases, are more typical of lower-intermediate students(with a much higher proportion of errors made by this level of studentsthan the proportions of errors made by students at other levels), whereasthese errors are rarely found in advanced students writings. Othererrors, such as pseudotough movement and misuse of until, are moreprevalent at the upper-intermediate levels but are rarely found in lower-intermediate students. Morphological errors, though few in total, areprevalent at the advanced level of students.

Phase II

The results of the second phase presented confirmatory evidence forsyntactic transfer from Chinese to English with regard to the fivesyntactic patterns selected, indicating that, for those structures, manyChinese ESL learners tended to think in Chinese before they wrote inEnglish. The extent of syntactic transfer was particularly large forcomplex target structures (e.g., relative clauses) and among learners of alower proficiency level, though advanced learners may also have reliedon the syntax and vocabulary of their previous linguistic repertoire whenencountering difficulty in producing output in the target language (forfurther details, see Chan, 2004c). Alternative explanations were notruled out, including developmental sequences, similar but correctstructural patterns found in the L2, and learners avoidance behavior.

POSSIBLE SOURCES OF ERROR

L1 Transfer

A close scrutiny of the error taxonomy (and the results of the secondphase) shows that L1 transfer is inevitably an important source of learnererrors. The majority of the written output of the Hong Kong CantoneseESL learners is strongly reminiscent of the normative sentence structuresin their L1. Many learners tend to think in their native language first,before converting their mental output into L2 written output. Somelearners may process their mental output directly in the L2 but constantlyretrieve their L1 repertoire when encountering difficulties or dealing withunfamiliar concepts in their production of L2 written output. The unitsaffected range from the whole sentence to individual phrases or words atnearly all linguistic levels save the morphological level. That L1interference does not affect the morphological level is not difficult tounderstand, because Chinese is an isolating language and a typicalChinese word is a single morpheme (Li & Thompson, 1981). There is very

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little morphological complexity, and most words consist of just onemorpheme not analyzable into component parts.

Lack of Facilitation From the L1

A lack of comparable equivalents in Chinese may also bring aboutlearner difficulty. For many error types identified, such as concordproblems, verb form selection, and case selection, the target languagefeatures do not have comparable equivalents in the learners nativelanguage. No claims about L1 transfer could be arrived at, but thepossibility of influence of a learners previous linguistic repertoire is not tobe dismissed. As is argued in the SLA literature, positive transfer resultingfrom the similarities between the target and native languages, which is thefacilitating influence of cognate vocabulary or any other similaritiesbetween the native and target languages (Odlin, 1989, p. 26), maysignificantly facilitate acquisition of different L2 aspects, includingreading, writing, and grammar. The subjects erroneous output suggeststhat the lack of comparable lexicogrammatical requirements in the nativelanguage may result in a lack of facilitation, which may in turn lead toadded learner difficulty. With the existing data from learners of only oneL1 and the objectives of the study, it is impossible to affirm the facilitatingeffects of positive transfer on ESL acquisition by Cantonese speakers,because the effects of positive transfer can only be determined through acomparison between learners of different native languages (Odlin, 1989).However, there is reason to believe that learner difficulty might beattributed to a low level of positive transfer.

NonL1-Related Factors

A number of nonL1-related factors are also evident from the errortaxonomy.

Lack of awareness of L2 norms. Learners lack of awareness of L2norms is inevitably the most significant nonL1-related factor. Incorrectverb form selection, for example, and many other errors which havebeen described as the results of a low level of positive transfer, may bethe results of learners lack of awareness of L2 norms and theirinadequate mastery of the target language.

Misapplication of L2 rules and/or overgeneralization. Learnersmisapplication of rules governing the formation of L2 comparativeand superlative structures may be the source of their use of duplicatedcomparatives or superlatives. The production of pseudotough move-ment structures under the influence of acceptable tough movementstructures, and the overuse of affixes with words which do not require


the corresponding affixes, may be seen as exemplars of overgeneraliza-tion, where learners overgeneralize the context for the movement oftough adjectives and the inventory of stem words which allow affixation.

Undergeneration. Undergeneration is manifested in the learnersproduction of pseudopassives, where they fail to generate the full rangeof passive constructions in the L2.

Selectional mis-hits. The use of synforms is a clear exemplar oflearners selectional mis-hits in accessing their mental lexicons.

Universal processes. The developmental sequence of interrogativeacquisition, where subject-verb inversion is overgeneralized to embeddedquestions (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991) may be the source of the learnersmisordering of constituents in indirect questions. Their difficulties withrelative clauses could be seen as resulting from developmental sequences, asguided by the accessibility hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie, 1977), with thesubject position acquired earlier than the direct object position, which inturn is acquired earlier than the indirect object position, and so on. Universaldevelopmental processes found in both L1 and L2 acquisition (Brown, 1973;Odlin, 1989) could also explain the omission of copulas.

Interaction between L1- and nonL1-related factors. An error is seldomsolely attributed to one single source. NonL1-related factors ofteninteract in an intricate fashion with L1-related factors. Pseudopassives, forexample, can be argued as an exemplification of undergenerationresulting from the reflection of the typological characteristic of topicprominence in Chinese, the learners L1 (Yip, 1995). Pseudotoughmovement structures should best be seen as the results of a complexinterplay of overgeneralization (of tough movement) and L1 transfer.How L1- and nonL1-related factors interact is beyond the scope of thepresent study, but it is evident that L2 acquisition is a complex processwith different mechanisms working in tandem with each other.

THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS

The findings of the present study provide ample contemporary data forthe interlanguage grammars of Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners, informthe SLA communities of the extent of crosslinguistic influence, and revealother nonL1-related causes. As many current SLA theories acknowledge theimportance of mother-tongue influence and are formulated on theassumption that transfer works in tandem with developmental factors andnonL1-related factors, the results provide enhanced theoretical under-pinnings for these theories. A lack of systematic and comprehensive accountof Cantonese ESL learners written output in the SLA literature also rendersthe descriptive data in this article an invaluable bank of learning evidence.Error analysis, being a post-hoc analytical instrument with all its methodo-

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logical limitations, is still a useful means of uncovering some of the cognitive,linguistic, and pragmatic complexities involved in L2 acquisition (James,1998). The approach adopted by the present study may not be theoreticallyinnovative, but the findings certainly possess a posteriori explanatory power.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS: HOW CAN THE ERRORTAXONOMY BE USEFUL FOR ESL TEACHING?

Explicit remedial teaching has been argued in the literature asconducive to L2 learning (e.g., Bell, 1992; Carroll, Swain, & Roberge,1992; Chan, 2006; Lightbown & Spada, 1990; Swain, 1993). Establishingan empirically based taxonomy of common errors is one preliminarystep toward understanding the cognitive and psycholinguistic mechan-isms at work in the learners learning process. The findings of the studyinform teaching professionals of the levels, nature, sources, andprevalence of learner errors and equip them with the key ingredientsneeded for the design of appropriate remedial instructional materials.Although not all errors can be removed through the teachers interven-tion, an error taxonomy like that described in this article could helpsyllabus designers, curriculum writers, as well as ESL teachers to anticipateand diagnose learning problems, so that they will be more adept atidentifying appropriate teaching strategies, designing quality errorcorrection materials, and planning SLA educational programmes.

Levels of Errors

Helping students overcome syntactic errors is probably one of themost pressing needs of many ESL teachers. The error taxonomyestablished here alerts teaching professionals to the importance ofdealing with errors at other levels, especially the lexical level, whichoccupies 12% of the total number of errors identified. Lexical selection,which has often been neglected, should be an important component ofan ESL writing course (Santos, 1988). Attention to morphological errorsand discourse errors is also called for. Though small in number, themorphological errors in the taxonomy inform us of an illuminatingphenomenon about ESL vocabulary acquisition: that they are typicallyassociated with higher proficiency students. These errors may represent adifferent stage of ESL acquisition unique to higher proficiency learners.

Nature and Sources of Errors

Many ESL teachers acknowledge the adverse effects of L1 interferencebut may not be aware of the extent of the effects. They may also overlook


the nonL1-related factors and the complex interplay between L1- andnonL1-related factors. Teachers who are ill-informed of the nature andsources of learner errors will find their design of remedial instructionalmaterials daunting. With an error taxonomy like the one establishedhere, ESL teachers can adopt remedial instructional strategies applic-able to the sources and nature of each error type accordingly. A set ofready-made materials for each error type can be designed for use in theclassroom and for sharing among teachers to facilitate team teachingand lesson preparation. In the materials, examples of errors extractedfrom the taxonomy can be included to illustrate the core of the problem.If the error type is mainly L1-induced, native examples can be used forcontrast. If other factors are at work, such as misapplication of rules, thesubtle differences between the correct forms and the anomalies can bepresented. Self-access materials targeting higher proficiency studentscan also be developed along these lines to enable learners themselves toself-monitor and overcome their errors more efficiently and effectively.

In another study carried out by the author and her collaborators,remedial instructional materials based on the insights of the taxonomi-cal classification were designed and implemented with over 450secondary and university ESL students in Hong Kong. It is found thatthe remedial instructional materials, which include different examplesof the same error type, highlight the nature of the problems, and givereference to the sources of the errors where appropriate, are beneficialto ESL teaching and learning (Chan, 2006; Chan et al., 2002; Chan,Kwan, & Li, 2003; Chan, Li, & Kwan, 2003).

Error Prevalence and Error Gravity

Error gravity and error prevalence are other important concerns of ESLteachers. Errors such as incorrect preposition choice, comma splices, andlack of pronoun agreement have been reported in the literature as lessserious, whereas those which interfere with comprehension, such asrelative clauses, word order, and word choice, have been regarded as moregrievous and require more attention (Vann, Meyer, & Lorenz, 1984).Although previous error-gravity research in ESL establishes the gravity oflearner errors, our taxonomy adds a further dimension to the classifica-tion: error prevalence. From the taxonomy, it can be seen that some errorsare more ubiquitous in general and others are more prevailing at aparticular proficiency level. Remedial efforts should of course be put ongrievous errors, but prevalent errors, such as word class confusion, shouldalso receive attention. Based on the taxonomy established, an error-gravityscale and an error-prevalence scale can be devised from the most grievousor prevalent to the least grievous or prevalent. ESL teachers can then map

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out their teaching sequence and prioritize their teaching focusesaccording to the prevalence and gravity scales.

A Concrete Example of the Use of the Taxonomical Classification

Below is a short extract from the free writing of an intermediatelearner (Form 3).

In my childhood, I know everything is right or worm [synform]. I feel me isvery nice[case][concord]. I very love my friend [adverbial order]. I very like[adverbial order] my school because I have very good friend [concord]. Iknow me is a very bad girl [case] [concord]. I always sleeping [verb form] inmy classroom. I very happy [copula].

With the error taxonomy in mind, teachers can codify each error (seecoding in quote above) when marking students essays and classify theerrors into lexical (e.g., synform), syntactic (e.g., copula), or errors ofother levels. They can then check the errors against the gravity andprevalence scales to sequence their teaching focuses. Errors which aremore typical of a higher proficiency level may be addressed at a laterstage, but grievous and prevalent errors typical of the studentsproficiency level should be handled with immediacy. On carefulplanning and prioritization of teaching focuses, teachers can thenaccess the remedial instructional material bank for appropriate teachingmaterials.

The above coding can also be used for self-access purposes forstudents who have received explicit teaching on the corresponding errortypes. Teachers can give students the corrected essays with the markedcodes and refer students to the material bank for self-correction. Whenstudents see the same code for their errors (such as I very love my friendand I very like my school), they will learn to generalize the nature of theirerrors and also the correction techniques.

CONCLUSION

In this article, I have reported on the results of a study which identifiedcommon lexicogrammatical errors in Hong Kong Cantonese ESL studentswritten English output. It is argued that mother-tongue influence isinevitably an important source of learner problems, but lack of facilitationfrom the L1, inadequate mastery of correct usage, and universal processesmay also be important contributing factors. The error taxonomy presentedin this article was established based on written data from Hong Kongsecondary and university students, yet it can be expanded to include written


and spoken corpus produced by students at other proficiency levels andfrom other linguistic, social, or ethnic backgrounds.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the students who participated in the study. Thanks are also dueto my research collaborator, David Li, for his invaluable suggestions and input. Thisstudy was supported by Strategic Research Grant number 7000975 from the CityUniversity of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.

THE AUTHOR

Alice Y. W. Chan is an associate professor at the Department of English, CityUniversity of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. Her research interests includeerror correction, grammar, second language acquisition, phonetics and phonology,and lexicography.

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APPENDIX

A Taxonomy of Written Errors Made by Hong Kong Cantonese ESL Learners

Error Type

%TotalErrors inCorpus

%Total Errors in Each Type

Possible L1Interference

LowerIntermediate

UpperIntermediate Advanced

Morphological Level (0.42)Inappropriate selection

of affixes0.20 10 30 60 X

Overuse of affixes 0.22 18 27 55 X

Lexical Level (12.35)Inaccurate directionality 0.18 22.2 66.7 11.1 !Synonym confusion 1.46 58.9 35.6 5.5 !Vocabulary compensation 3.98 37.7 47.2 15.1 !Synforms 6.72 54.5 33 12.5 X

Syntactic Level (85.95)Pseudotough movement 0.22 9.1 81.8 9.1 !Misuse of until 0.66 6.1 75.8 18.2 !Misuse of conjunctions 0.84 31 59.5 9.5 !Duplicated comparatives

or superlatives0.94 44.7 51.1 4.3 !

Misordering ofconstituents in indirectquestions

0.94 23.4 70.2 6.4 X

In-prepositional phrases 0.98 73.5 24.5 2 !Independent clauses as

objects or subjects1.08 53.7 31.5 14.8 !

Be + -ed 1.98 29.3 50.5 20.2 !Pseudopassives and

undergeneration ofpassives

2.2 29.1 53.6 17.3 !

Omission of subjects 2.28 64 22.8 13.2 !Existential structures 2.36 61 26.3 12.7 !Misuse of prepositions 2.52 45.2 36.5 18.3 !Verb form selection 2.88 36.8 47.2 16 XMisuse of relative clauses 3.16 18.4 53.2 28.5 !Incorrect order of

adverbials or adverbs3.44 91.3 7 1.7 !

Serial verb constructions 3.80 78.4 18.4 3.2 !Inappropriate case

selection3.86 73.5 18.1 8.3 X

Punctuation problems 4.08 56.9 35.2 7.8 XTransitivity pattern

confusion5.18 40.5 40.5 18.9 !

Be + base form 6.46 72.4 23.2 4.3 !Omission of copulas 8.52 71.6 23.7 4.7 !Concord problems 8.89 44.1 37.6 18.2 XWord class confusion 9.00 38 38.4 23.6 XCalquing 9.65 64.1 29.3 6.6 !

Discourse Level (1.28)Periphrastic-topic

constructions0.50 44 28 28 !

Use of it as discoursedeixis

0.78 48.7 30.8 20.5 X


Documents

Toward a Taxonomy of Written Errors Investigation Into the Written Errors Of