Teacher Discussion Forums

[Brix]

I should know this, and I've searched.

But I don't know the technical difference.


(If this is not appropriate for Pronunciation, apologies.)


Can anyone provide any definitions, examples, and possible links?


Thanks, B.

[Lorikeet]

My goodness, I always thought a mistake and an error were the same. Perhaps you can explain your request a little better? If it's a linguistics issue, and not a pronunciation issue, I can move the post to "Applied Linguistics." There might be some esoteric definition that I don't know.

[John Hall]

I had never heard that there was a difference between a mistake and an error until a certain trainer of mine brought it up. A mistake is a wrong response that if you thought about it you would realize is wrong. An error is a wrong response because you have no knowledge about what the right answer is. A student, if given a second chance, has the potential to correct a mistake, whereas a student has no potential to correct an error until he or she learns what is correct.

In a nutshell, errors you make because you don't know better, and mistakes you make despite the fact that you know better.

[Brix]

[Stephen Jones]

[John Hall]

Stephen,

This distinction does not exist only in my own head. As I mentioned, I am only passing on what some other teachers have told me. I don't know how popular this distinction is, or where it came from. I also suspect that it is not in the dictionary. However, I have encountered more than one teacher in my career who has made reference to this distinction. Also, why do you think the OP asked this question in the first place?

[Stephen Jones]

I didn't say the distinction existed only in your own head. You're mistaken; that is an erroneous assumption. I said it only existed in the head of the person who told you; in fact there are many others who claim there is a dichotomy, error belonging to competence, and mistake to performance but it is not a question of linguistics having given the word a special technical meaning, as 'work' has in mechanics for example, or 'langue' and 'parole' do in linguistics proper.

Rather we are again dealing with the bane of linguistics. The lack of an agreed terminology. You can find plenty of papers and discussions by linguists where the distinction between error and mistake is maintained, and just as many where the two are used interchangeably.

[Jonathan_fu]

A mistake is a random performance slip, and can be really self-corrected, whereas an error is a systematic deviation made by learners who have not yet mastered the rules of the target language.
For example, the word "forum" appears several times in a piece of writing, but "forom" shows twice among these words. At this time, we cannot say the author makes an error, instead, we have to say he or she just makes a spelling mistake for carelessness or something else!

[jotham]

Mirriam Websters seems to say that mistake leans more on a smaller scale, as if it's no big deal; and error points to significant boo-boos in the bigger scheme of things:
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/error

[JuanTwoThree]

There's certainly a widely recognised distinction between "Student slaps head realising that this is not right" and "Student thinks this is right" and many teachers use the terms "mistake" and "error" respectively. It dates back to the 60's. The post by Jonathan is a (near) direct quote from Corder on Error Analysis, I suspect.

However this distinction is not universally recognised and many's the writer who forgets it three paragraphs later. Also there are terms like "frozen errors" which can refer to mistakes/errors that students know to be wrong but can't help themselves. So it's by no means clear.

Within "errors" there is also a far more interesting (if you ask me) distinction between what a learner mistakenly/erroneously thinks is correct owing to a misunderstanding and what a learner spontaneously invents as a process of creativity and exploration, which is to be welcomed, I suppose.

[lolwhites]

I've often heard the term fossilized error to mean when someone keeps getting something wrong; for example, if you've lived in Spain for years and speak near fluent Spanish, but there's something you just keep saying wrongly. I've never heard the term fossilized mistake.

Looking in Websters or the OED probably won't help as the way teachers use the terms in a professional context may well not be the same as Dave in the pub. I would say error is more likely to be systematic while mistake is probably a one-off.

[JuanTwoThree]

I seem to be the only person in the world who says "frozen errors". It's probably a misremembering of "fossilized errors"

[azamouri]

a mistake is a performance of a speech that does not cope with the concerned spoken language-words because of a slip of the tongue, tiredness, anxiety...etc, it can be slef-corrected. However, an error is a performance that a speaker cannot correct by himself and this has to do with his acquired linguistic data. So, concerning errors, one can go on saying wrong thing without knowing that he is doing it. Errors usually come up with L1, SL or FL learners; whereas, mistakes and errors can occur with everyone performing a certain speech.

[metal56]

Interesting?

Normal collocations:

to commit/make an error
to make a mistake

*to commit a mistake

Over registers. Out of 1 million words:

made an error

REGISTER: SPOKEN 2 FICTION 1 NEWS 6 ACADEMIC 8 NONFIC MISC 4 OTHER MISC 6

commit an error

REGISTER: SPOKEN 0 FICTION 0 NEWS 0 ACADEMIC 1 NONFIC MISC 0 OTHER MISC 0

made a mistake

REGISTER: SPOKEN 2 FICTION 1 NEWS 6 ACADEMIC 8 NONFIC MISC 4 OTHER MISC 6

error

REGISTER: SPOKEN 144 FICTION 158 NEWS 275 ACADEMIC 938 NONFIC MISC 570 OTHER MISC 1,724

[metal56]

Can we say "don't make a mistake and mistake him for a kind man"?

If not, why not?

How about "don't commit/make an error and mistake him for a kind man"?

Or is it just "don't mistake him for a kind man"?