April 2007 Volume 3 Issue 1
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Article Title
     Analysis of students' errors: the case of headlines 

Author
Farzaneh Khodabandeh,
Mobarakeh Payame Noor University, Iran

Bio Data
Farzaneh Khodabadeh has been teaching English for 10 years at schools and 4 years at university. She has a Master's in Teaching English from Isfahan University in Iran. Her areas of research include Discourse Analysis. She has written 5 articles and published two books named Pre-intermediate college English and Intermediate College English. She can be contacted at  farzaneh52id2000@yahoo.com

Abstract
This study intended to shed light on some problems which students face in translating headlines. For this purpose, 58 male and female graduate students of English were asked to take part in the present research. They were given a test which included thirty Persian and thirty English headlines and were asked to translate them. All the students' translations were analyzed in order to investigate possible cross linguistic problems in translating headlines. From the first analysis of the translated Persian headlines, it was concluded that the participants had grammatical and lexical errors in their translations. The second analysis of the translated Persian headlines showed that the participants had inadequate knowledge of the English headlines rules. The analysis of the translated English headlines revealed that the participants' chief difficulties were grammatical followed by discoursal and lexical types. This study has significance to teachers and syllabus designers.

Keywords: error analysis, headline, translation, syntactic and lexical levels.

1. Introduction

Many EFL students find that newspaper headlines are especially difficult to understand. This is because, as Fairclough (1995) says, "headlines have distinctive syntactic properties, which make them a grammatical oddity" (p. 21).
The headline is a unique type of text. It has a range of functions that specifically dictate its shape, content and structure, and it operates within a range of restrictions that limit the freedom of the writer. It encapsulates the story in a minimum number of words, attracts the reader to the story and, if it appears on the front page, attracts the reader to the paper (Reah, 1998). The style of writing headlines is largely geared to saving space and presenting information in striking ways.

 English newspaper headlines have their own special rules and regulations. Since they are the gist of the news, the language is compressed and condensed which challenges not only the English language learners but also some native speakers. As such, this study intended to find out the problems which students face in translating headlines.

2. Background
As this study analyzes students' errors in translating headlines, it is essential to discuss the theory of error analysis.

Error analysis was conceptualized and applied based on the behaviorist theory of language learning which implied that errors were signs that a language learner had simply not learnt the rules of the target language effectively (Brown, 1987). In the early 1950's, the notion of language as a system, and more importantly, the notion of second language acquisition as the meeting of two language systems gained more acceptance and linguists began to regard errors as evidence of language transfer, or what Weinreich (as cited in Richards, 1974) referred to as intersystemic interference. With this conceptualization, errors were regarded as the manifestation of ineffective language learning and were focused upon by linguists and teachers intent on their elimination (Brown, 1987; Ellis, 1985).

It wasn't until the late 1960's that researchers like Slamecka and Ceraso (1960) used evidence gained through error analysis to discredit the existence of negative transfer as the dominant factor in acquiring a second language, since many errors could not be attributed to intersystemic interference. What they and other researchers were demonstrating was that learners didn't just memorize target language rules and use them to form their own utterances: they were constructing their own rules based on the input they had received. Hence, there was a rebirth of error analysis and a movement from an undifferentiated world to a world organized by mind, from a world of instances to a world related by generalities and abstractions ("Error Analysis", 2004) requiring the whole concept to be redefined and approached from a more cognitive or mentalist perspective.

Psychology became a much more influential field for linguists interested in using error analysis as a diagnostic tool, to help identify the causes of errors. The term error itself was redefined in recognition that many mistakes in spontaneous speaking or writing could be attributed to a simple pause, metanalysis, or a "slip of the brain." (Crystal, 1992, p. 135). Errors began to help describe and explain the way in which learners learned a language rather than their progress towards conforming to a set of real or imagined standards of expression (Crystal, 1980, p. 134) and thus, had a more positive role.

Today, error analysis is used with a variety of techniques for identifying, classifying and systematically interpreting the mistakes made by language learners and has helped support hypotheses such as the natural route of development, as well as identify the weaknesses and/or disprove theories of language learning like contrastive analysis, throughout the last few decades. 

2.1. Error analysis
Error analysis (EA) emphasizes “the significance of errors in learners’ interlanguage system” (Brown, 1994, p. 204). The term interlanguage, introduced by Selinker (1972), refers to the systematic knowledge of an L2 which is independent of both the learner’s L1 and the target language. Nemser (1971) referred to it as the Approximate System, and Corder (1967) as the Idiosyncratic Dialect or Transitional Competence.

Error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors learners make. It consists of a comparison between the errors made in the Target Language (TL) and that TL itself.

Researchers are interested in errors because they are believed to contain valuable information on the strategies that people use to acquire a language (Taylor, 1975; Dulay & Burt, 1974). Moreover, according to Richards (1974), “At the level of pragmatic classroom experience, error analysis will continue to provide one means by which the teacher assesses learning and teaching and determines priorities for future effort” (p. 15).

2.2.1. Sources of errors
A lot of sources of errors have been introduced by some innovative theorists. In the following section the primary causes of errors will be reviewed:

Interlingual/Transfer errors: those attributed to the native language (NL). There are interlingual errors when the learner’s L1 habits (patterns, systems or rules) interfere or prevent him/her, to some extent, from acquiring the patterns and rules of the second language (Corder, 1971).

Interference (negative transfer) is the negative influence of the mother language (L1) on the performance of the target language learner (L2) (Lado, 1964).

Intralingual/Developmental errors: those due to the language being learned (TL), independent of the native language. According to Richards (1970) they are items produced by the learner which reflect not the structure of the mother tongue, but generalizations based on partial exposure to the target language. The learner, in this case, tries to “derive the rules behind the data to which he/she has been exposed, and may develop hypotheses that correspond neither to the mother tongue nor to the target language” (Richards, 1974, p. 6).

2.2.3. Significance of errors
            Many scholars in the field of error analysis have stressed the significance of second language learners' errors. Corder, for instance, in his influential article (1967), remarks that they are significant in three different ways. First to the teacher, in that they tell him, if he undertakes a systematic analysis, how far towards the goal the learner has progressed and, consequently, what remains for him to learn. Second, they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learnt or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language. Thirdly, they are indispensable to the learner himself, because we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn. In other words, it is a way the learner has for testing his hypotheses about the nature of the language he is learning (Corder, 1967).

Taking these notions in mind, this study attempted to identify the errors which students make in translating newspaper headlines in order to help teachers identify the problematic areas of headline language at different levels of instruction.

3. Method
In the following part, the information regarding the research method, materials and procedures is presented.

3.1. Participants
          Fifty-eight male and female graduate students of English from the universities of Isfahan, Khorasgan and Najaf-Abad (16, 20 and 22 students respectively) took part in the present research. The reason for selecting M.A. students stemmed from the fact that at the time of conducting this research, i.e., the first semester of the (2003-2004) academic year, B.A. students  who had passed the course ''Reading Journalistic English'', in which discourse features of different components of an English newspaper are taught were not available; therefore, with the presupposition that all M.A. students of English had had this course in their B.A. studies and had acquired general knowledge about media language, it was decided to use all of the available graduate students of English for this research.

In order to test the participants' understanding of headlines at the syntactic and lexical levels, they were given a test which included thirty Persian and thirty English headlines and were asked to translate them in one hour. They were not allowed to use any dictionaries because their vocabulary knowledge was one of the exam criteria. All the students' translations were analyzed in order to investigate possible cross linguistic problems in translating headlines.

3.2. Materials
          Thirty English and thirty Persian headlines were chosen randomly from a one-week corpus (issued during a seven-day period from November 29 to December 05, 2003) of the headlines of the two languages. They were given to the participants to translate.

3.3. Procedures
For the analysis of the students' translations, three procedures were followed. For the analysis of the errors extracted from the translated Persian headlines, the linguistic taxonomy of errors provided by Keshavarz (1993) was taken into consideration and for the analysis of students' errors drawn from the translated English and Persian headlines, the lexical and syntactic features of headlines were applied.

3.3.1. Syntactico-morphological errors
Following Keshavarz’ (1993) model, this researcher used two major categories of errors for analyzing Persian headlines into English, namely, lexico-semantic and syntactico-morphological categories.

The analysis of errors in syntactico-morphological category was done according to the following subcategories (The examples are drawn from the participants' translations. It should be noted that the majority of the sentences may include types of errors other than those in question.):

3.3.1.1. Errors in the use of prepositions

3.3.1.1.1. Omission of preposition
*Five children were killed ø fire.
*Snowing ø northern Iran
3.3.1.1.2. Redundant use of preposition
*Wrights' plane reached to Mashhad.
*Iran fears from expansion of drugs in Afghanistan.
3.3.1.1.3. Wrong use of prepositions
*Mr. Rafsanjani's visit from Shahid Shahcheraghi dam
*Iran worries of the extra production of drugs in Afghanistan.

3.3.1.2. Errors in the use of articles

3.3.1.2.1. Redundant use of the definite article
*The Rights brothers' plane arrived in Mashhad.
*The women's social participations are great in Iran.

3.3.1.3. Errors due to lack of concord
*Leader of revolution call people for vaccination.
*Killing of Muslims do not have any justification in Samara.

3.3.1.4. Wrong use of the plural morpheme
*7 millions farmers dead: Aids kills
* 34 Chineses were lost in Zagroub.

3.3.1.5. Wrong use of quantifiers and intensifiers
*Women's participation in Iran is a lot.
*China will be largest shipmakers' worldwide.

3.3.1.6. Wrong use of parts of speech
*Electric train explodes in south Russia.
*Iranian ambassador was appointed in Greek.

3.3.1.7. Use of typical Persian constructions in English
 *Announcing Iran's 2006's world cup football match ticket sell
 *Last previous head was killed.

3.3.2. Lexico-semantic errors
   The analysis of lexico-semantic errors was done according to Keshavarz' model (1993) as follows:

3.3.2.1. Cross-association: Cross-association refers to cases where there are two words in the target language for which there is only one word in the learner's mother tongue. As a result, the learner may use that single word in two senses in the target language. For example:

*Value of Euro raised up again.
*The price of Euro grew again.

3.3.2.2. Language switch: Language switch refers to cases where the learner uses the native language term instead of the target language word. For example:

*The former chief of police was terrored
*Toofan crossed Boshsher province

3.3.3. Headlines' features analysis
          The lexical and syntactic features of English headlines were taken into consideration for the analysis of both translated English and Persian headlines.

3.3.3.1. Translated English headlines
The analysis of the translated English headlines gave the following categories:

3.3.3.1.1. Wrong translation of the Vocabularies
Gov't Scraps Foreigner Registration Rule
Govet qanon sæbt xareji ra xædshehdar mikonæd.

3.3.3.1.2. Errors due to translations of the proper nouns
Howard Dean for President
Riyasæt howard be reis jomhor vagozar shod.

3.3.3.1.3. Wrong translations of the abbreviations and acronyms
U.N. Says Great Apes in Danger World Wide
Iyalæt motæhedeh amrica elam kærd gorilhayeh bozorg dær xætær jæhani hæstænd.

3.3.3.1.4. Wrong translation of the whole sentence
Man Burns Life Savings, Fails Suicide Bid
Mærdi ke movæfæq be xodkoshi næshod pæsændazæsh ra sozand.

3.3.3.1.5. Errors due to the omission of pronouns
Elderly Man Kills ø Wife, ø Man and Himself
Piremærdi xodæsh væ zæn væ mærdi ra kosht.

3.3.3.1.6. Errors due to the omission of conjunctions
Report: Paltrow, Boy friend May Soon Marry
Gozaresh: dost pesær paltro be zodi ezdevaj xahæd kærd.

3.3.3.1.7. Using declarative sentences instead of interrogative ones
Is that Microsoft Calling?
Sherkæt Microsoft dær hal færaxani æst.

3.3.3.1.8. Using plural nouns instead of singular ones
Soldier's Parents See Son on TV with Bush
Valedeyn særbazha pesæraneshan ra dær televizion ba Bosh didænd.

3.3.3.1.9. Errors in the translation of tenses
Canada Finance Minister to Leave Cabinet
Væzir mali kanada kabineh ra tærk kærd.

 3.3.3.2. Translated Persian headlines
          Besides analyzing the lexical and grammatical errors of the translated Persian headlines, the participants' knowledge of the elliptical nature of headlines was examined in the following areas:

3.3.2.1. Omission of the articles

1. ø European Union threatened America.
2. ø big explosion in ø sought of Afghanistan

3.3.2.2. Omission of copula

• India ø ready for cooperation with Iran.
• Jerusalem ø not Israel's capital.

3.3.2.3. Omission of noun possessive 's

• Beitolmoghadas is not Israel ø capital.
• Women ø participation is wonderful.

3.3.2.4. Use of tenses as used in English headlines
3.3.2.4.1. Use of present tense as past time

• Ali Vahid Khorasani Dies.
• European Union threatens U.S.

3.3.2.4.2. Use of past participle as passive voice

• 7 millions farmers ø killed for HIV.
• 34 Chinese tourists ø vanished in Zagroub.

4. Findings
The results of the translations analysis along with a report on their frequencies are introduced in the following sections.

4.1. The analysis of the translated Persian headlines
            Two different procedures were used for the analysis of the translated Persian headlines. First, they were analyzed according to the rules of the English common core grammar and secondly according to the headlines language.

4.1.1. Syntactico-morphological errors
            From the analysis of the translated Persian headlines, nine different categories of errors were identified whose results are presented in Table 1.

 Table 1. Observed frequency of the errors extracted from the translated Persian headlines

see PDF file for Table 1.

4.1.2. Lexico-semantic errors

The participants' translations were analyzed based on the errors of the lexico-semantic subcategories. What follows is the outcome of this analysis.

Table 2. Observed frequency of lexico-semantic errors from the translated Persian headlines

4.2. The second level of the analysis

          The participants' knowledge of the elliptical nature of headlines was examined through the analysis of the translated Persian headlines. Table 3 shows the results.

Table 3. Translated Persian headlines analysis

4.3. The analysis of the translated English headlines
The participants' translations of the English headlines into Persian were examined linguistically and syntactically. Table 4 displays the results.

Table 4.  Observed frequency of the errors from the translated English headlines

5. Conclusion and discussion
The analysis of the participants' translations of headlines gave the following conclusions:
1. The results of the research indicate that the graduate students had grammatical and lexical errors in their translations from Persian into English. Their errors which led to misinterpretation of ideas conveyed in headlines divided into two parts, namely global (those which inhibit understanding) and local (those which do not interfere with communication) errors. The participants' global errors resulted from inadequate lexical knowledge, and use of typical Persian constructions. Most local errors, on the other hand, were caused by misuse and omission of prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, lack of subject-verb agreement, and faulty lexical choice. As a whole, the finding from the participants' translations analysis is in line with the idea that native language interference is surely the most immediately noticeable source of error (Brown, 1994) from the translation of native language to the target one.

 2. The second analysis of the translated Persian headlines shows that the participants had inadequate knowledge of the English headlines rules. They translated the Persian headlines into simple sentences by using the articles, copula and noun possessive's, instead of omitting them. The analysis also reveals that the use of the tense forms in the translated Persian headlines was not in accordance to the English headline tense rules.

3. The research results show that the participants' chief difficulties in translating English headlines into Persian sentences were grammatical followed by discoursal and lexical types. Their grammatical errors resulted from the translation of tense forms and use of declarative sentences instead of interrogative ones. From the discoursal point of view, the participants had difficulties in interpreting headlines with the omitted conjunctions and pronouns. The participants' lexical errors resulted from the wrong translation of vocabularies, proper nouns, acronyms and abbreviations. The findings are in line with Newmark's (1988) study in that learners have difficulties in handling words or word associations either because they do not comprehend them or because they do not find proper equivalents, which makes translation a difficult task.

5.1. Pedagogical implications of errors
            Students' errors of headlines have significance to teachers and syllabus designers as follows.

 5.1.1. Implications for EFL teachers
            The study of the participants' errors helps teachers identify the problematic areas of headline language at different levels of instruction. They will be able to infer the nature of the learner's knowledge of the headlines at a given stage in his learning career and discover what he still has to learn. In Fallahi's (1991) terms, “error analysis (EA) is a clue for the teacher to pinpoint the learning problems which can hardly be predicted by CA” (p. 25).
            A course based on the frequency of errors will enable the teacher to teach the point of error and to emphasize more those areas where the error frequency is higher. Furthermore, errors provide feedback; they tell the teacher something about the effectiveness of his teaching materials and his teaching techniques and show him what parts of the syllabus he has been following have been inadequately learned or taught and need further attention.

5.1.2. Implications for syllabus designers
            Errors are significant to syllabus designers to see what items are important to be included in the syllabus and what items are redundant and should be excluded. The analysis of the participants' errors can help identify learners' linguistic difficulties and need at a particular stage of language learning.

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Appendix 1 and 11 -see PDF file