Errors as indications of the development of interlanguage

Errors as indications of the development of interlanguage - Janusz Arabski

Janusz Arabski’s article Errors as Indications of the Development of Interlanguage is a foundational contribution to second‑language acquisition research, presenting learner errors not as failures but as meaningful signs of cognitive processes shaping the evolving interlanguage system. Arabski argues that errors are windows into the internal grammar constructed by the learner, a grammar that is neither the native language nor the target language but a dynamic, transitional linguistic system governed by its own rules. In this perspective, errors become diagnostic tools: they reveal the strategies learners use, the hypotheses they test, the regularities they impose on unfamiliar structures, and the developmental stages through which their interlanguage progresses. Rather than treating errors as obstacles, Arabski positions them as essential indicators of growth, restructuring, and linguistic creativity.