reading reflections

I found it interesting when the authors said that a learner who uses "buyed" instead of "bought" possibly has a better understanding of the language than one who just memorized "bought". The person who says "buyed" is aware of past tense rules for regular verbs, and unknowingly applies them to an irregular verb. I think this makes sense that forming the word "buyed" requires more grammatical knowledge. The learner is obviously familiar with other past tense verbs, and assumes that "buy" works the same way.
I also found it interesting that learners who have different native tongues struggle with learning English at different stages. The book talked about how common mistakes by French learners tend to occur at a certain stage. A German might not make those mistakes, but the German might make a completely different mistake at another stage. This has to do with the learners using their knowledge of their own language, and assuming that it can be used similarly in English.
I think everyone has, at some point, heard a non-native speaker form a sentence where the word order was incorrect. I know I've done this with other languages, when I assumed I could say something just the way I would in English. L & S gives plenty of examples of this.