Error Analysis in a Fourth Grader's Writing
Mr. Osei pushes into a fourth-grade classroom where Widline, age 9, has attended U.S. school for two years. Her home language is Haitian Creole; she had two years of French-medium schooling in Port-au-Prince before immigrating. Her oral English is fluent and she participates eagerly in discussion. In 12 recent journal entries, Mr. Osei tallies these patterns: “runned,” “goed,” and “teached” (7 instances); “She have two pencil in she bag” (3 instances); “He don’t like no broccoli” (2 instances). In read-alouds she says “tree” for three and “dis” for this. She reads at grade level on a running record. The general education teacher wants to mark every error and place Widline in a remedial phonics group. Mr. Osei suspects several different processes are at work and that a blanket correction approach may harm her confidence. The school’s grading policy counts conventions heavily in writing.
1. Analyze the error patterns. For each pattern, classify it as most likely L1 transfer, developmental overgeneralization, or ambiguous, and justify your classification with evidence from the case.
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The patterns are not a single phenomenon, so a single remedy would be wrong.
“runned,” “goed,” “teached.” These are overregularizations: Widline has induced the regular past-tense rule and is extending it to irregular verbs. This is a developmental pattern seen in both first- and second-language acquisition, and Haitian Creole does not form the past with an English-style -ed suffix, so L1 transfer is not the best explanation. The errors actually show rule learning, which is why intensive drills on every instance would be misplaced.
“She have two pencil in she bag.” This bundle has at least two sources. Haitian Creole does not inflect verbs for third-person singular and marks plurality with a postposed marker rather than an English -s, so omission of “has” and “pencils” is plausibly transfer plus developmental. Using “she” for possessive “her” is also consistent with Creole pronoun forms that are not case-marked the way English pronouns are. This is the highest-priority academic pattern because it recurs in formal writing.
“He don’t like no broccoli.” This is ambiguous. Haitian Creole negation does not ordinarily require English-style negative concord, so L1 transfer is a weak explanation. It could reflect informal peer English, a dialect feature, or a developmental stage. Mr. Osei should gather oral language samples across settings before treating it as a deficit.
“tree” for three and “dis” for this. These are phonological substitutions: Haitian Creole lacks the interdental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/, so /t/ and /d/ are expected replacements. Because Widline reads at grade level, this is not evidence that she needs a remedial phonics placement.
2. Which patterns would you target first in instruction, and how? Explain how your plan differs from the general education teacher's blanket-correction proposal.
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I would target the third-person singular and plural inflections first because they are frequent, visible in academic writing, and teachable in short focused cycles. I would use contrastive examples (“one pencil / two pencils”; “she has / they have”), sentence frames, and brief noticing tasks in Widline’s own writing, then ask her to apply the target to one edited piece rather than every journal entry. For past tense, I would treat “runned” and “goed” as evidence of rule learning and respond with recasts and a small irregular-verb word bank used during editing. I would not send her to a phonics group for “tree/three” because her reading is at grade level; instead, I would embed a few minimal-pair listening and speaking activities in oral language time and monitor whether the substitution affects comprehension. For the double negative, I would model the standard form and collect more data rather than publicly correcting a feature that may be dialect-influenced.
The general education teacher’s plan would mark every error in every draft and pull Widline from grade-level reading. That approach conflates different error types, overweights surface conventions, and risks teaching Widline that her ideas are secondary. My plan separates drafting from editing, prioritizes high-frequency academic features, uses the errors as assessment information, and protects her confidence and grade-level reading instruction. The grading policy can still count conventions, but on final edited products rather than unedited journals.
3. Explain how you would present this analysis to the general education teacher and to Widline’s family, including one concrete change to how the conventions policy is applied.
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With the general education teacher, I would bring three annotated work samples and a simple chart grouping the errors by likely source. I would frame the conversation around instructional efficiency: “These errors respond to recasting and editing conferences; these are phonological transfer and do not call for phonics retention; this one needs more language sampling.” I would propose a six-week goal focused on third-person singular and plural inflections in final drafts, with both of us using the same correction code. The concrete policy change would be to apply the conventions weight only to final drafts after editing, not to journal entries, so the grade reflects Widline’s best edited performance rather than her drafting stage.
With the family, I would use a Haitian Creole interpreter and avoid deficit language. I would explain that Widline is learning English rules in a predictable sequence, that some pronunciation patterns come from Haitian Creole, and that she is reading on grade level. I would show a piece of writing and describe the specific goal, then ask what they notice at home. I would avoid promising that all errors will disappear quickly and instead set a review date. This keeps the family informed without implying that Widline has a learning disability or that her first language is a problem.