CAUSES OF ERRORS OF FRENCH SPELLING AMONG NIGERIAN STUDENTS Ozidi Bariki Department of Modem European Languages, University of florin, Nigeria. ABSTRACT Nigerian students of French have to grapple with interlingual problems involving three languages - mother tongue, English and French, This paper limits itself to problems of orthography, A six-point categorisation of deviant orthographic forms are identified and analysed The reason for the errors ranged from poor pronunciation to carelessness of students. While a clear-cut differentiation of categories of errors may not always be possible, our six-point categorisation, could, if properly harnessed, assist the teacher in employing strategies for teaching French orthography. Introduction Recent criticisms notwithstanding,- error analysis has been found to be a good pedagogical tool for both teachers and students. Schacter and Celce-Murcia (in McLaughHn 1987) expressed reservations about error analysis while Hakuta and Cancino (Ibid) questioned the appropriateness of error as a unit of analysis. The doubts expressed do not however invalidate the works of S. Pit Corder (1967 ), Grauberg (1969) and Richards (1969) among others. Corder used the term transitional competence to describe the performance of a second language learner in the target language. He groups the errors into three broad categories: pre- systematic, systematic and post-systematic. Pre-systematic errors are made as the learner is groping about in his bid to assimilate a new point In systematic errors, the learner has formed an idea of die point at issue. Here the learner regards his errors as being correct. The port- systematic errors are the deviant forms arising from the fact that the errors previously corrected at the systematic level have been temporarily forgotten. Selinker (in Ihenacho 1983) was later to use the more enduring term interlanguage in reference to the notion of transitional competence. SeIinker proposes 9 types of systematic errors. Sabah (in Nadeau et al 1991) described his interesting findings of different errors of competence and performance to which a learner is susceptible in his dialogue with a machine. The deviancies which range from substitution and suppression of letters or syllables to inflectional errors and permutation of homophones, among others, are sometimes srikingly similar to the ones committed by Nigerian students of French. In Nigeria, Tunde Ajiboye (1981,1987,1993) has highlighted some reasons foe the common errors in French. He chose the widely-accepted though sometimes criticized parameters of phonology, morphology, lexis, syntax and semantics in his analysis of error typology. In this paper, we will adduce six main reasons,, which according to our observations, do account for the bad spelling of French students in Nigeria. No serious efforts will be made to proffer solutions as that goes beyond the scope of the paper. In analysing the errors, it should be observed that even the French have had cause to complain bitterly on many occasions about the seemingly intractable problem of French orthography. Many reforms and suggestions have been made over the centuries with a view to making it easier to cope with the problem. In fact as at 1989, 20% of he adult French population spelt badly (Spire 1989:6). The situation does not seem to have improved. Viewed against this background, the difficulties experienced by Nigerian students most of whom speak and write two other languages before studying French are quite understandable. We consider the reasons for the deviant orthographical forms to be hinged on the following: (i) the dynamic infiltration of LI (mother tongue) and L2 (English) into L3 (French). (j) “faux amis"