Show description

Sheorey (1986) and McCretton & Rider (1993) also found NNS teachers to be less tolerant of errors than their NS counterparts. On the other hand, in more recent studies Salem (2004, 2007) found NSs to be the less tolerant judges, especially of advanced grammatical and lexical errors, as opposed to NNS teachers. g. word order problems) which, with the exception of tense confusion, contributed least to incomprehensibility. Chastain (1980) has also shown that lexical errors interfered with comprehensibility more than grammatical errors.

The predictions of the behaviorist approach also failed to be accurate in the context of foreign language learning. The expected errors did not always occur, while errors that the CA approach could not account for were often committed. In addition, the sheer task of comparing languages for pedagogical reasons increased in magnitude to a degree where it no longer seemed efficient, especially since its predictive powers remained limited. The disillusionment was also deepened by advances in the field of linguistics.

The Lower-Saxony curriculum for English classes in high schools (Nieders¨achsisches Kultusministerium, 2006a), for instance, explicitly prescribes the principle of functional error tolerance, which places formal correctness as subordinate to communicative goals. A holistic approach of this kind raises the question to what extent errors should be corrected. Recent history of second language learning has shown that prediction and avid eradication of language errors certainly do not warrant the desired learning success.