error analysis of EFL students' oral production in an online story telling course: the role of translation in focus

Abstract

Much research has been done on the analysis of EFL learners' errors in writing; however, few studies have examined the sources of students' errors in oral production. This article aims to examine advanced EFL students' errors in speaking in an online storytelling course. To this end, the transcripts of 53 stories told by students in a synchronous class were analyzed in terms of error sources, including inter- and intralingual errors. The results showed that for advanced EFL students, intralingual errors outweighed interlingual ones, with intralingual errors mainly referring to grammatical aspects of the language. On the other hand, interlingual errors occurred in relation to the use of lexical and grammatical collocations, including the collocations of prepositions, verbs, adjectives and nouns. This means that learners generally adhered to the literal translation from their native language when using collocations. The inconsistencies in the results of the previous studies were then discussed in relation to the learners' level, and the pedagogical interventions that were usefully required to correct the learners' errors were presented.