By the late 1970s, error analysis had largely been superseded by studies of interlanguage
and second language acquisition. Interlanguage is the type of language produced by
second or foreign language learners who are in the process of learning a target language.
Therefore, interlanguage analysis concerns an analysis of the linguistic systems of L1 and
L2 in relation to the transitional competence of second language learners. It also involves
an analysis of the continuum systems of second language learners’ linguistic
development (Connor, 1999). As a result, analyzing the interlanguage system requires an
understanding that in learning a target language, learner language is influenced by
different processes such as i) borrowing patterns from the native language, ii) extending
patterns from the target language, e.g. analogy, and iii) expressing meanings using the
words and grammar which are already known (Richards and Schmidt, 2002).