An overview of the historical background of error analysis and interference issues, followed by a sample error analysis in a case study context. This investigation of errors is significant in bringing to light the impact on English student writing of the differnces between English versus the indirect nature of various levels of Indonesian.

Title: Algebraic Error in Matrix Computations in the Context of Numerical Solution of Partial Differential Equations Author: Jan Papež Department: Department of Numerical Mathematics Supervisor: prof. Ing. Zdeněk Strakoš, DrSc., Department of Numerical Mathe- matics Abstract: Solution of algebraic problems is an inseparable and usually the most time-consuming part of numerical solution of PDEs. Algebraic computations are, in general, not exact, and in many cases it is even principally desirable not to perform them to a high accuracy. This has consequences that have to be taken into account in numerical analysis. This thesis investigates in this line some closely related issues. It focuses, in particular, on spatial distribution of the errors of different origin across the solution domain, backward error interpretation of the algebraic error in the context of function approximations, incorporation of algebraic errors to a posteriori error analysis, influence of algebraic errors to adaptivity, and construction of stopping criteria for (preconditioned) iterative algebraic solvers. Progress in these issues requires, in our opinion, understanding the interconnections between the phases of the overall solution process, such as discretization and algebraic computations. Keywords: Numerical solution of partial...

This dissertation titled Teaching English to Deaf and Hard-of-hearing University Students aims to portray a picture of the situation of teaching English to university students, more specifically of those studying at Charles University in Prague. The work is divided into two main parts. The first part brings general insight, also from linguistic perspective, into language competences and language acquisition by the hearing impaired. It describes variables and possible variables affecting spoken language acquisition by this minority. It gives basic overview of different levels of hearing loss on the grouds of medicine assessment of hearing loss. The dissertiation stresses out the neccessity of educating these students with respect to linguistic research and findings. Moreover, it emphasizes the needs to interweave linguistics and pedagogy and benefits of linguistics research and methods such as error analysis and contrastive analysis for enhancement of language productive skills of hearing impaired students. The second part of the dissertation is devoted to the research of English language teaching to hearing impaired students at Charles University in Prague. The work summarizes the findings of five-year long research carried out at the Language Resource Centre, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in...

This is a study that employs error analysis to investigate written production in English, by Swedish upper secondary learners of English, in order to determine which linguistic errors most commonly occur amongst this group, and to compare the results between first-year students and third-year students for a possible indication of which error types continue to occur throughout upper secondary school. The error categories included in this study are grammatical errors and errors as a result of transfer. The variable of gender will also be taken into account, due to the statistics and previous research that show female students tend to achieve higher results in academics. The purpose of the study is to gain a better understanding of how Swedish upper secondary learners acquire English, and to uncover which areas are most challenging for them, in the hopes of highlighting areas within ELT that may need revision. The participants of the study are students attending Swedish upper secondary schools, year 1 and 3. The analyzed data was collected from the Uppsala Learner English Corpus (ULEC), which consists of texts produced by Swedish learners of English attending middle school and upper secondary school.     The results show that certain error categories and types are consistently challenging for both first-year students and third-year students, which provides an indication of which areas in ELT might be lacking. Within the grammatical error category, all groups demonstrated a significant lack of knowledge pertaining to subject-verb agreement, as well as prepositions, which are both to a certain degree attributed to the first language; meaning, they may be the result of transfer. The male students were shown to outperform the female students; however, the female third-year students produced fewer errors than their male counterparts, which suggests a faster progression. The male third-year students were shown to have the same error rate as the male first-year students, which suggests a slower progression. While the third-year students produced fewer errors overall, the error types they struggled the most with are the same error types most commonly occurring in the first-year group, suggesting pedagogical remediation is needed.

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This thesis deals with Ukrainian-Czech interference at the syntactical level. The theoretical section deals with the terms we work with, defines both contrastive and error analyses, and focuses on syntactic differences between Ukrainian and Czech. The central part of this section focuses on different valencies for Czech and Ukrainian verbs. The practical section consist of an experiment in which we observe the error rate of Ukrainian students when using Czech verbs that have a different valency in Ukrainian. It also includes the differential valency dictionary of Czech and Ukrainian verbs, which is the result of this thesis. Key words: interference, positive transfer, negative transfer, contrastive analysis, error analysis, valency, verb pattern, syntax, Czech, Ukrainian, vocabulary

The aim of the study is to find out to what extent Swedish learners of English, in the first year of upper secondary school, make prepositional errors in their written production, and to what extent these errors can be attributed to negative transfer, overgeneralization and simplification by conducting an Error Analysis. A comparison between gender and type of program, academic and vocational, is made to find out in which type of program most errors appear and if there is any difference in terms of gender.  The data is annotated from the Swedish Learner English Corpus (SLEC), which consists of argumentative essays written by Swedish learners of English, and it consists of 24 randomly selected texts based on the variables binary gender, type of program, Swedish as their L1, school year, and English course. All the texts selected are written by students in the first year of upper secondary school studying the course English 5. The results of the study reveal that Swedish learners of English struggle with prepositional usage. In total, 649 prepositions were identified in the 24 texts. Out of these, 72 (11.09%) were used incorrectly. The most frequently used prepositions involved in these errors are of, for, in, to, and with. Most errors appear when prepositional phrases function as post-modifiers in noun phrases. Substitution is, by far, the most common type of error found, meaning that the students replace the correct preposition with an incorrect one. The results thus show that the students seem to be aware that a preposition should be used although they fail to choose the correct one. Female students make more prepositional errors than male students; similarly, students attending vocational programs make more prepositional errors than students attending academic programs. Most errors are cases of overgeneralizations, followed by negative transfer from Swedish, and simplification. However, many of the errors can still be attributed to negative transfer which suggests that, even though Swedish and English are similar languages which could lead to positive transfer, this does not seem to fully apply to prepositions.

La maitrise du français écrit chez les élèves québécois s’améliore au fur et à mesure qu’ils progressent à l’école. Cependant, un nombre important d’élèves n’atteint pas les cibles d’apprentissage en ce qui a trait à l’écriture. Plus spécifiquement, la compétence des élèves à orthographier les mots demeure un défi important. Parmi toutes les erreurs d’orthographe, celles qui concernent les accords verbaux seraient parmi les plus difficiles à corriger, malgré des années d’apprentissage formel. Écrire un verbe correctement est particulièrement complexe. Le scripteur doit identifier le sujet dans la phrase et ajouter les marques de temps, de mode, de personne, de genre et de nombre à la terminaison du verbe en fonction du sujet. Le scripteur doit donc être en mesure de répondre adéquatement à ces questions en considérant des variables tant syntaxiques que morphologiques pour accorder correctement le verbe dans la phrase. Malheureusement, il existe peu de données descriptives précises sur les phénomènes liés à l’accord verbal qui occasionnent le plus de difficulté aux élèves. L’objectif de cette étude est de pallier ce manque en recherche afin de documenter les phénomènes les plus fréquemment associés aux erreurs observées dans les productions des élèves du primaire. Pour répondre à cet objectif, une étude descriptive a été réalisée auprès de 102 élèves de la 2e année du primaire. Les productions écrites réalisées par les élèves ont été collectées et tous les verbes ont été analysés à l’aide d’une grille permettant de documenter la réussite des élèves en fonction des phénomènes à prendre en compte pour bien orthographier les verbes. Les résultats principaux montrent que : 1) la présence d’un écran distracteur entre le sujet et le verbe pose des difficultés aux élèves ; 2) les verbes réguliers sont plus complexes à orthographier puisqu’ils sont moins fréquents ; 3) les verbes au présent et à l’imparfait sont mieux réussis que ceux au passé composé ; 4) l’infinitif est plus difficile que l’indicatif et 5) les verbes au pluriel sont plus complexes à orthographier pour les élèves que ceux au singulier. La plausibilité phonologique des marques d’accord sur la terminaison joue également un rôle important dans les performances des élèves. Ces résultats sont discutés de manière à exposer l’importance de considérer les variables syntaxiques et morphologiques dans l’analyse des performances des élèves en lien avec le verbe. / The development of writing competence improves as French Quebec students’ progress through school. However, a significant number of students do not meet the learning targets in writing. More specifically, students' ability to spell words correctly remains a challenge. Of all the spelling errors, those related to verb agreements are among the most difficult to correct, despite years of formal learning. Writing a verb correctly is particularly complex. The writer must identify the subject in the sentence and add the appropriate verb tense and mood, person, gender and number markers to the verb ending based on the subject. Therefore, the writer must be able to answer adequately these questions by considering both syntactic and morphological information to correctly inflect the verb in the sentence. Unfortunately, there is a lack of precise descriptive data on the phenomena related to verb agreement that are the most difficult for students. The aim of this study is to address this research gap by documenting the phenomena most frequently associated with errors observed in the written productions of primary school students. To meet this objective, a descriptive study was conducted with 102 second-grade primary school students. The written productions produced by the students were collected and all the verbs were analyzed using a grid that documents the students' success based on the information that need to be considered to spell verbs correctly. The main results of this study show that: 1) the presence of a distractor between the subject and the verb seems difficult for students; 2) regular verbs are more difficult to spell because they are less frequent; 3) verbs in the present and imperfect tenses are better spelled than those in the past perfect tense; 4) the infinitive is more difficult than the indicative and 5) plural verbs are more complex for students to spell than singular verbs. The phonological plausibility of agreement markers on verb endings plays an important role in students' performance. These results are discussed to highlight the importance of considering syntactic and morphological information in the analysis of students' spelling performance related to verbs.

Based on the examiners’ reports of the University of Cambridge on the shortcomings of the students of form V (school certificate level) in Arabic language in the international examinations of year 2008 and 2009 and on the proposals and recommendations therein, the researcher started this research work to address the difficulties faced by students in Arabic language in the grammatical rules when writing essays and in translation from Arabic to English and vice versa in form V (school certificate level) and chose Doha Academy (secondary department) in Mauritius as model. The research work in fact confirmed the errors of students in the grammatical rules after analyzing the examination scripts of the mock examinations run at the school during the year 2009 and 2010 and the researcher came to know about the causes of errors which were also confirmed by means of a questionnaire distributed to the students at this level. The researcher’s interviews with the male and female teachers of Arabic language at School certificate level on the issue were of great benefits and they in fact made mention of the grammatical errors which the researcher came across in the mock examinations’ scripts after close study and analysis. The researcher also considered the importance of the contrastive analysis between Arabic and English due to its effect in learning Arabic as a second language. ط After analysis of the questionnaire and interviews, the researcher came across a number of important issues which he mentioned in details among the results which he concluded. The researcher concluded that most of the errors in grammar are due to the influence of the English language on the Arabic language through linguistic interference, transfer of experience, generalization, as well as errors related to the target language itself like hypercorrection and intralingual phenomenon etc. And that the errors found in translation are caused mainly because of lack of Arabic vocabularies as well as literal translation and a lack of fluency and confidence in using Arabic structures and grammar. Finally, the researcher mentioned a number of recommendations and suggestions which he considers to be a priority and should be executed if we really wish to eliminate difficulties and problems in the process of teaching and learning of the Arabic language at this level and to see the progress of this language in this island. / على (university of Cambridge) بناء على ما قدمّت جامعة كمبرج قصور الطلبة في اللغة العربية في امتحانات كمبرج الدولية للصف الخامس الثانوية للعامين 8002 8002 م، ومن اقتراحات وتوصيات انطلق الباحث في هذا البحث ليتناول الصعوبات التي – يواجهها طلاب اللغة العربية فيما يتعلق بالقواعد عند كتابة المقالات وفي الترجمة من العربية إلى الانجليزية والعكس وذلك في الصف الخامس الثانوي في جمهورية موريشيوس م اختيار أكاديمية الدوحة في موريشيوس نموذجا. لقد أشار البحث فعلا إلى أخطاء الطلاب والطالبات بعد تحليل أوراق إجابات لامتحانين 8000 م كما - في اللغة العربية أُجرِيا في الأكاديمية في العامين 8002 (mock exams) تجريبيين تعرّف الباحث على أسباب الأخطاء التي أكّدها الاستبيان الموزّع على طلاب هذا المستوى. وكانت لمقابلات الباحث م مدرسي ومدرسات هذا المستوى حول القضية ثمراتها حيث أكّدت كذلك ما وجدها الباحث من الأخطاء في النحو والصرف في أوراق إجابات الأمتحان بعد الدراسة والتحليل. رأى الباحث كذلك أهمية التحليل التقابلي بين العربية والانجليزية لتأثير هذه الأخيرة في تعلّم الطلبة اللغة العربية كلغة ثانية. بعد تحليل الاستبيان والمقابلات وصل الباحث إلى عدد من القضايا المهمة وذكرها بالتفصيل في النتائج في آخر البحث. وصل الباحث إلى أن اكثر الأخطاء ترج إلى تأثير اللغة الانجليزية على اللغة العربية تتمثل في التداخل اللغوي ونقل الخبرة والتعميم السلبي كما أن هناك أخطاء تتعلق باللغة اهمدف كالمبالغة في التصويب وتداخل اللغة نفسها. وترج الأخطاء في الترجمة أساسا إلى النقص في المفردات العربية، فضلا عن الترجمة الحرفية وعدم الطلاقة والثقة في استخدام التراكيب العربية والتدقيق النحوي. وأخيرا ذكر الباحث عددا من التوصيات والاقتراحات التي يعتبرها من الأولويات والضروريات ا ولتي يوصي بتنفيذها إذا أُريد بالفعل القضاء على الصعوبات والمشكلات في تعليم اللغة العربية وتعلمه وتقدم هذه اللغة في هذه الجزيرة. / Religious Sudies & Arabic / D.Litt. et Phil. (Arabic)

Non-response is an error common to most surveys. In this dissertation, the error of non-response is described in terms of its sources and its contribution to the Mean Square Error of survey estimates. Various response and completion rates are defined. Techniques are examined that can be used to identify the extent of nonresponse bias in surveys. Methods to identify auxiliary variables for use in nonresponse adjustment procedures are described. Strategies for dealing with nonresponse are classified into two types, namely preventive strategies and post hoc adjustments of data. Preventive strategies discussed include the use of call-backs and follow-ups and the selection of a probability sub-sample of non-respondents for intensive follow-ups. Post hoc adjustments discussed include population and sample weighting adjustments and raking ratio estimation to compensate for unit non-response as well as various imputation methods to compensate for item non-response. / Mathematical Sciences / M. Com. (Statistics)