• Akbar Solati

  Author

From the point of view of SLA research determining the sources of errors is the
most important stage in an error analysis as it involves an attempt to establish the
processes responsible for L2 acquisition. As far as psycholinguistic sources of errors are
concerned, two major processes are identified, distinguishing interlingual and
intralingual errors. Interlingual errors seem to result from L1 interference which refers
to those instances of deviation from the norm of the target language which occurs as a
result of familiarity with the mother tongue. Intralingual errors, however, are those
which result from faulty or partial learning of L2, rather than from language transfer. In
order to classify sources of spelling errors, this study has benefited from the
classification utilized by James et al. (1993). To this end, a 65-word dictation test, taken
from English text book of Persian learners of English in grade one, was administered to
40 learners. Upon the analysis of the spelling errors in the current study the sources of
spelling errors are: L1 interference, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restriction,
homophone confusion.

• pdf