Analysis of Lexical Errors as a Tool in the Training of Czech and Slovak Teachers of Spanish as a Foreign Language

Abstract

This paper arises from the subject Errors in Spanish as a Foreign Language, taught in the Master of Teaching Spanish at Masaryk University of Brno, Czech Republic. Its main objective is to show how the analysis of lexical errors can be used as a tool in the training of non-native teachers of Spanish, in this case, Czech and Slo-vak. To achieve this goal, firstly, the paper presents a brief review of the trends that have investigated errors in foreign language learning, such as contrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage studies. Secondly, it analyzes a corpus of texts written by learners of Spanish according to the error analysis methodology (Corder, 1967), as an activity for the Master students. Thirdly, it shows a typological classification of different lexical errors found in the texts and it reflects on the possible connection between mistakes and teaching methodology. Based on the results of the analysis, the paper discusses the usefulness of the analysis of these errors not only for the training of non-native teachers of Spanish as a foreign language, but also for a better understanding of vocabulary teaching.