TITLE: 		A METHODOLOGY FOR DEVELOPING AN ERROR TAXONOMY
		FOR A COMPUTER ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING TOOL FOR
		SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS
AUTHOR:		Linda Z. Suri and Kathleen F. McCoy

ABSTRACT:
This paper discusses linguistic issues that one must address in order
to design an effective CALL system for second language learners. We
focus on how one should develop an error taxonomy and indicate how
that taxonomy can affect the design of the entire system.

This work was done in the context of designing a CALL tool to help
native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) learn written
English. Here we report the methodology used in developing the error
taxonomy for the system. Our analysis of writing samples from ASL
natives indicates that language transfer (LT) (when considered
appropriately) can account for many of the errors we
found. Recognizing this possibility has substantially influenced the
error taxonomy we have developed. The resulting taxonomy captures the
true source of many errors and will allow the eventual system to take
advantage of ASL knowledge when teaching English. We provide a
characterization of language transfer that provides a broad
perspective on the ways that two languages may differ and indicates
how these differences could potentially influence acquisition and
production of the second language.

In addition, we argue that an effective CALL system must not only
examine sentences in isolation, but it must identify and correct
discourse-level errors. We point out that the source of several error
classes we identified rests in discourse-level processing. We show how
these errors can also be explained in terms of LT, and in doing so we
extend the notion of language transfer to the transfer of features
which affect the cohesiveness of a discourse. We discuss a methodology
for correction several classes of discourse-level errors. While we
explain our methodology and justify our claim in terms of our study of
deaf writing, our findings are applicable to the design of CALL
systems for other second language learners.