The Role of Systematic Errors in Developmental Studies of Programming Language Learners

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Abstract
We report on an investigation into the systematic errors made by a large group of programming language students over a period of two years. The investigation and the learner-centered longitudinal study of which it formed a part, were both inspired by recent research into second natural language acquisition. The results of the investigation demonstrate that students had major difficulties using the semicolon, the sequencing operator of the programming language ALGOL 68. We argue that this difficulty is due to the fact that students did not immediately understand a specific, simply stated rule of syntax, introduced in a decontextualized way, but rather that their understanding of the rule developed with their increasing experience of using it in different contexts. We suggest that such systematic low-level syntactic errors may be indicative of higher-level misconceptions regarding the structure of the language.

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