Analyzing Co-occurring Errors of Adult L2 Learners in Speaking and Writing PDTs

This study was conducted to determine whether South Korean L2 adult learners’ errors in speaking and writing co occur. It also focused on answering whether Picture Description Task (PDT) can elicit enough language production to analyze errors in both speaking and writing. Eleven university students participated in the study completing ten paired sets of PDTs. The order of speaking and writing tasks was switched and different pictures were used throughout every set of PDT. The most common errors found in speaking and writing PDTs were the use of determiners, verbs, and prepositions respectively. The speaking errors outnumbered writing errors but the types of errors in speaking and writing appeared very similar along with the smaller language features of each category. This confirmed that whether it is speaking or writing, determiners, verbs, and prepositions are the three most common areas where L2 learners commit errors. The participants showed low level of confidence in speaking and more errors were made whenever a speaking description was given first. This suggests in PDTs teachers can lower learners’ L2 anxiety by presenting writing tasks first. PDTs practically activated L2 productions and made the comparison between speaking and writing outputs possible.