I kastet me down on the sofa: A dive into lexical errors and Norwegian influence in the English of pupils in Norway

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to find the distribution between interlingual and intralingual influence among pupils in Norway, in addition, we want to observe to what extent the lexical errors among the pupils are influenced by Norwegian. We also observed which lexical errors influenced by Norwegian were the most common. In order to answer our thesis and research questions, we used a quantitative research approach where we got the data from the CORYL corpus. We used three different codes to search for Norwegian influence and word errors/vocabulary mistakes. Our target group consisted of 472 pupils aged 12/13 and 212 pupils aged 15/16. The texts that are in the CORYL corpus are gathered from the National Test in English (writing) from 2004 and 2005. This study has found that 12/13-year-old tend to create more interlingual errors than the older group aged 15/16. This is because they on a much larger scale tend to use whole Norwegian words and have Norwegian elements in their English. The older group which consists of pupils aged 15/16, do not have the same issue, as they tend to have more intralingual mistakes than interlingual mistakes.