Errors in Language Testing

Errors in Language TestingEnglish learners may often meet errors in using and understanding English. That is very common. No matter what a person learns or how hard he learns, he can not be free from errors. Because errors are by products in the process of learning. English teaching and learning should understand the significance of errors fully.In this paper ,we will talk about how errors can do some help and direct English testing.What are errors?There are two kinds of language errors. One is error, another is mistake. They are different.In the process of English learning, errors will appear due to the imperfect comprehension of English knowledge. They form in certain process while learning. What is more, they are regular and systematic. Linguistic Performance makes the errors result. For example, one can not remember, just guesses without conception about it, tired or lack of concentration lead to “say the wrong thing”. On the other hand, mistakes are not regular and systematic.In English teaching and testing, we pay attention to errors, but not the mistakes. We can get clear understanding about learners’ proficiency in language from their errors, especially the typical errors. Moreover, we can find difficulties in learning and predict where the errors will appear. According to this, we can make some measures to deal with it.On the forming reason, Richards suggested that errors should be classified into three kinds: interference errors, intralingual errors and developmental errors.Interference errors are a negative transfer. There are two kinds of influence in the process of English study. One is negative effect, the other is positive effect. English learners, especially beginners, they are conscious or unconscious to be interfered by their mother tongue. They may speak, pronounce and order word as their mother tongue. In a word, they use the grammar and rule of their mother tongue in English, so that there are some usages against the rules of English. This kind of influence of mother tongue is negative. Nevertheless, mother tongue not only has the bad effect.There are a lot of knowledge of mother tongue will be of benefit to language learning. This kind of influence is called positive transfer. It can help learners to understand, master and improve our English.Intralingual errors can lead errors. Intralingual errors have no relation with mother tongue. The reason why it occurs is learners do not have perfect understanding of target language. They may do not master the rule so well that make themselves confused. For example，learners may omit the –s from the third person singular verb or omit –ed from past tense. One more, a student learned two sentences, “It is a cat.”and “It is rainy today.”Because the student mastered imperfectly, mix the two sentences together, he may made a sentence like “It is a rainy today.”Developmental errors appear in the process of improving the language skill. Ignoring the model of target language and the applicability of rule, learners may “learn to be used ali ve” improperly or extent, expand at random. For example, Sheeps, moneys, newses, monkeies Payed, becomed, tought, thinked, Did they worked last Sunday? I enjoyed to watch TV. Are they eat anything? These above-mentioned do not interfere by mother tongue.Learners apply indiscriminately the grammar what they have learnt to words and similar sentences. Learners make errors while these can prove that the learners are able to apply language rule. However, the problem is they just master the universal rules but ignore the particular laws. To learn a new language, it means a progress, it also a necessary in the development of language learning. Even a baby native English speaker will make this kind of errors.Errors can be classified into different kinds basing on language teaching and language learning, such as phonological error, lexical error, synthetic error, comprehension error and pragmatic error.How to Use Error in TestingTesting definition is a means used to acquire some behavior in order to deduce people features. (Carroll, 1968:18). In a word, testing is a specific method of, quantitative analytical used to acquire behavior model.Uses of learner errorsErrors could be significant in three ways:1)they provide the teacher with information about how much the learnerhad learned ;2)they provide the researcher with evidence of how language was learnt ；3)they serve as devices by which the learner discovered the rules of thetarget language.Adapted from Corder (1967) Collection & ClassificationScholars say that, in order to improve the teaching and clear the aim, we should analyze students’typical errors. Traditional analysis is totally practical, it called EA( Error Analysis ).Here are some ways to analysis:1)Collection;We can collect information from students’ oral performance, (such as reading, reciting and dialog), writing homework (especially completing sentences and translation) and exams answer sheet (especially the listening and subjective items). 2) Errors Accuracy;Before finding errors, you should determine the “necessary accuracy”. You can just pay attention to major issues and ignore the side issues. Moreover, you can pay attention to both of them.3)Classification;The classification should base on need, such as, sentence structures, lexical meaning, word usage and pronunciation.4)Frequency of Occurrence;Relative frequency, it means the times of the errors repeat in your material. The errors occurring most frequently represent typical ones.5)Sum up;In accordance with the errors and relative frequency, we can draw the degree of difficulty and the range.6)Remedy;We should give some advices to study, such as how to review, which aspect should be taken measures or practiced more.A experienced test maker knows that items should be designed directed against what learners have learnt. They should understand perfectly about the test purpose and have to consider the learners’ particular circumstances. Test makers should know about test takers’ study in order to find out typical errors and what have matered. Moreover , collecting the errors in test is a great way to improve the quality of testing.Generally ,before makeing propositions, we should make an investigation on the basis of the test purpose and do preparation work. We can collect ,classify and analyse with traditional measures, or read some books about typical grammar errors and misuse of words to acquire more material. Of course, the most important source is from the experience of test makers.We design a test to acquire what we want to direct the test and improve our teaching and learning. In this aspect, errors play an important role.Take multiple-choice questions for an example. It often makes full use of errors. As we all know,multiple-choice questions hold quite large proportion in English test. The most difficult part for making this kind of item is to make sure each of distractors at work. It means each of them should have same confusing. Before making items, test takers (or the potential test takers or someone else have similar English level as test takers)should do some writing homework, such as fill-in items (filling words, filling phases or completion items), or translating from Chinese to English. To get material for the writing homework, it is better to find sentences from grammar book ,books about lexical or students text book. These sentences are correct sentences that can be use to be the stems of multiple-choice questions. when test makers make corrections, they should collect errors on purpose. It is not so easy to select typical errors form variety answers. After that, the typical errors can for redacting distractors reference. If students can answered most of the questions correctly, it means they know well on these knowledge and no need to appear in test again.In short words, errors are regular and systematic, can foretell potential mistakes.We can collect errors from test and therefore they can direct test making. And the errors can tell us the test good or not. They enlighten mutually. In order to make full use of errors ,we can learn more about Error Analysis. It can make our testing more effective.Bibliography:Ricards, Jack C.(editor ) Error Analysis :Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. London :Longman Group Limited ,1974《英语测试论》胡春洞王才仁,主编高兰生陈辉岳,著广西教育出版社, 1996 ,5《简明英语测试教程》邹申杨任明著高等教育出版社, 2010《第二语言习得:理论与实践》林立主编高等教育出版社, 2009。