In an unusually cogently argued paper, Widdowson points to the practical difficulties in applying the familiar error/mistake distinction – or notions like […]
2006, Soochow Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures (東吳大學), issues 22–23, page 23
This paper addresses tense variation in oral narratives based on picture stories. Below, I look at three areas of research that are relevant to this: firstly, the error/mistake distinction; secondly, variation in interlanguage; and finally, research into temporality, tense and aspect.
2011 March 4th, Graham Hall, Exploring English Language Teaching Language in Action (Routledge, →ISBN, part I: “Classroom interaction and management”, § 1: ‘The language classroom: roles, relationships and interactions’, page 14
Errors, then, are systematic representations of a learner’s L2 development and can therefore help teachers (and learners) discover how far the learner’s knowledge the L2 has progressed. In contrast, however, mistakes are the result of slips of the tongue (where learners actually know the right language but fail to produce it). Mistakes are said to occur when learners ‘fail to perform to their competence’ (Ellis, 1985 in Johnson, 2008: 335) and, in theory, can be self-corrected by learners. Corder (1967) suggests that mistakes ‘are of no significance to the process of language learning’, but acknowledges that determining the difference between an error and a mistake is extremely difficult, especially, we should note, amid the complexity of the L2 classroom. Indeed, Bartram and Walton (1991) go as far as to categorize the error/mistake distinction as ‘purely academic’ and not relevant for teachers.
2011 November 22nd, Marta Ancarani [coörd.], La corrección de errores: en escritos de estudiantes de lengua inglesa, page 64
The arguments that favour correction are: […] Sixthly, the greater the amount of revision required of the learners to correct a deviance, the less rigorous should be the teacher’s inclination to demand it – by eliciting correction. It relates to the error/mistake distinction, that is, to the status of the deviance in the learners’ production.
