When teaching Arabic (second language or foreign language), we can exploit the theory of “error analysis”, to know the techniques and how to correct and behave with the learners’ language problems in Arabic or any natural language. So, in this “error analysis” theory, there are three main types of errors: “error”, “mistake” and “lapse” (“slip”, “slip of the tongue”) (ranked from the most dangerous to the least).

They are different between “language acquisition” and “language learning”; since acquisition only includes “the slip”, as for learning, it includes all three types (error, mistake, slip). The error (mistake or slip) can be of grammatical origin, syntax, morphology, conjugation, lexicon, semantics… and can also be a “fossilization” (problems of broken/ irregular plural in Arabic, for example), “overgeneralization” (especially for young children when learning Arabic as a foreign language)…