Assignment - ATL

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE IN THE CLASSROOM CONTEXT

Student’s full name:

Juan Miguel Suarez Gonzalez

Group: 2018-10
Date: September 8th, 2019

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 Assignment - ATL

Assignment instructions:
See the data collected below and answer the following questions:
1. Work out an IL generalization that might account for the forms in
boldface. Give your reasons for postulating this generalization.
2. What strategy/strategies do you think these learners have come up with
regarding lexical use?
3. What additional information, if any, would you like to have from these
learners to test your hypothesis?
4. How do these tests and results relate to the concepts studied in this
subject?

Do not answer the questions one by one, but address all of them in essay form.

SUBJECT’S BACKGROUND

Native Languages: Mixed.

Target Language: English.

Background Information: Intermediate level, students on an intensive

course.

Data Source: student compositions.

DATA:

Soccer is the most common sporting.

America refused continual supported our military request.

When he was 7 years old, he went schooling.

About two hours driving eastern from Bangkok.

After finished my college studied, I went to my country.

Doctors have the right to removed it from him.

There is a night for asleep.

Moreover it may lead to conflicting.

Important: you have to write your personal details and the subject name on the
cover (see the next page). The assignment that does not fulfil these conditions
I am not going to get married when I will graduation the school.
will not be corrected. You have to include the assignment index below the cover.

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 Assignment - ATL

Introduction

It is eminent that second language learners commit errors when learning the target
language. In fact, mistakes are considered unavoidable in any learning process, not
just in second language acquisition. These mistakes are seen not only as deviations of
the rules but also as important sources in the process of acquiring the target language.
Students who choose to learn a second language not only want to achieve academic
success but also their communicative skills as well. On the other hand, most of the
students only want to be proficient speakers and tend to put aside their writing and
reading abilities, which in this case take an important role in Second Language
Acquisition.

This leads to a comparison of a direct relation, if any, amongst the learner’s first
language (L1) and the second language (L2) acquisition. As the students become more
proficient in English as the target language, they will learn that there is a relation
between the L1 and L2, as well as culture and other factors. As a result, such cultural
immersion will motivate the learner to develop his or her own approach and style to
acquire the language effectively.

Therefore, American linguist Larry Selinker refer to this as Interlanguage or IL, which
refers to the type of language produced by second language learners. Selinker points
out that mistakes seen in grammar in the target language is not only due to the
interference of the learner’s L1, but the learner’s\s ability to deal with the deviation of
the target language. I must point out that the perspective of IL considers the learning
strategies that a student employs in a task despite their L1 and the teaching-learning
approach they receive, according to Selinker. Interlanguage is viewed as a separate
linguistic system; clearly different from both the learner’s mother tongue and the target
language; but related to both their L1 and the target language by Interlingua
identifications in the learner’s own perception. (Tarone, E. 1994)

I also analyzed IL from the psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives developed

by different scholars in the printed material from Funiber and found that Selinker’s
analysis is relatively pertinent as he states that second language learners activate the
latent psychological structure. (Funiber: 9)

There is no genetic timetable; there is no direct counterpart to any grammatical

concept as “universal grammar”; there is no guarantee that the latent structure

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 Assignment - ATL

will be activated at all; there is no guarantee that the latent structure will be
“realized” into the actual structure of any natural language (i.e. there is no
guarantee that attempted learning will prove successful), and there is every
possibility that an overlapping exists between this latent structure and other
intellectual structures.
(1972; 33)

According to Selinker, all second language learners activate the latent psychological
structure and those who attain a native-like command of the target language, activate
the latent language structure as well. Those students who manage to reactivate these
go on to achieve a native-speaker competence. On the other hand, those who fail to
reactivate them will most likely have a low probability of attaining a native-like
command of the target language. (Funiber: 9)

I will use the following data to answer the questions in regards to interlanguage and the
reasons for my generalization.

SUBJECT’S BACKGROUND

Native Languages: Mixed.

Target Language: English.

Background Information: Intermediate level, students on an intensive

course.

Data Source: student compositions.

DATA:

Soccer is the most common sporting.

America refused continual supported our military request.

When he was 7 years old, he went schooling.

About two hours driving eastern from Bangkok.

After finished my college studied, I went to my country.

Doctors have the right to removed it from him.

There is a night for asleep.

Moreover it may lead to conflicting.

I am not going to get married when I will graduation the school.

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 Assignment - ATL

Despite the fact that all the students have made some mistakes, it can be
difficult to figure out why these mistakes were made since it is clear that they do not
share a common tongue. It could be stated that “all learners of the same L2,
irrespective of their mother tongue, would produce the same kind of errors, thus
overgeneralization has a universal character.” (Richards, 1974 in Funiber, n.d., p. 17).
Even though Generalization is a fundamental process in the construction of
interlanguage, the intensive use of grammatical forms of the target language where
rules apply, tends to take the student to overgeneralize their output.
Overgeneralization is described by Ellis, as it is cited in the printed material by Funiber,
in the following form,
The oversuppliance of an interlanguage feature in contexts in which it does not
occur in target-language use (e.g ‘He ated ice-cream’). Overgeneralizations
result in errors.
(1997:142)

Considering what I have learnt from the reading material on the subject at hand,
I believe that these students are overgeneralizing the verb rules, such as gerunds and
past participles used as adjectives, as well as adjectives used as nouns that have been
studied in the classroom. Generally, second language learners tend to employ two
main features of generalization that I can clearly see in the examples above: the
overuse of regular forms (regularization) and the simplification of structures and
elements (simplification). Let’s look at the previous examples, sentences 1 and 3
portray overgeneralization of gerund; sentences 2, 5 and 6 demonstrate regularization,
while sentences 4, 7, 8 and 9 illustrate a misuse of lexical chunks through
simplification. Jain (1974) distinguished between two fundamental types of
overgeneralization that depend on the L1’s degree of proximity to the L2:
- Overgeneralizations produced in a “creative” way cause more errors.
- Overgeneralizations based on the L2 produce fewer errors.

Since students are more likely to use what they have previously learnt and mastered in
their teaching learning process, it can be assumed that they do not want to try different
forms of grammar for fear of making mistakes, which can affect their output. Johnson
(1995), states that these mistakes area a clear form of fossilization, which is
considered a linguistic phenomenon, since students are not able to use the correct
grammar forms when they encounter, or are forced to deal with difficult material,
therefore, they are only able to use the already learned grammar. Fossilization can be
described as the interruption of the process of the development of interlanguage.

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 Assignment - ATL

Interlanguage can fossilize in any of its developmental stages. Interlanguage

fossilization is a stage during second language acquisition. It refers to a permanent
cessation of progress toward the TL. This linguistic phenomenon, IL fossilization, can
occur despite all reasonable attempts at learning (Selinker, 1972). All these misakes
will help teachers determine which areas of the target language need to be strengthen
and what grammatical structures and rules the students require.

2. What strategy/strategies do you think these learners have come up with

regarding lexical use?
In order to be able to list the strategies that learners came up with for the lexical
use, I must mention that lexical use seems to represent one of the major problems
students face in learning English as their target language. I believe one of the biggest
obstacles made by teachers is to use the students’ L1 as the means of instruction in
teaching English, the students’ immediate surroundings where they are exposed to
their L1 most, if not all the time, and their own culture. Their lexical abnormalities are
visible in both, the target language itself (intralingual) and the effects of their mother
tongue (interlingual). In order for student to overcome these difficulties, they must
develop different approaches to second language acquisition since they are not faced
with the target language, in this case English, in their everyday surroundings. This is
where the teacher must help the students develop or propose new strategies and
approaches to overcome their difficulties and fix the mistakes that students face in their
goal of achieving the target language.
Another strategy that I have found in my students, and from what I can see from the
data provided, is the translation method from L1 to L2 while trying to use the language
appropriately, which as I can see it is not appropriate. There are some strategies that
students use, which only lead them to make mistakes and we, as teachers, must use
these strategies to fix the problems our learners encounter in their day-to-day learning
process. The students’ limited knowledge of the target language obstructs them in
order to communicate properly with other people and hinders their opportunity to have
a positive output.

Based on the printed material, it is imperative to emphasize on Ellis (1997), who states,
“learning strategies are those particular approaches or techniques that learners employ
to try to learn an L2”. We, as teachers, must keep in mind the three main learning
strategies: cognitive, metacognitive and social/affective strategies, which Ellis points
out, to keep in mind through the teaching-learning process in order to have significant
learning of the target language.

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 Assignment - ATL

3. What additional information, if any, would you like to have from these learners
to test your hypothesis?
As teachers, we are able to correct errors so our learners improve and become aware
of their weak points in grammar then. We should also motivate students to improve at
their own pace. Besides this, we must put into practice suitable approaches, effective
strategies and specific techniques in order to teach grammar dynamically at some
extent. Teaching such semantic structures should occur naturally. In addition to this, we
focus on the question and we consider that there is a tendency to follow grammar
patterns which go from the simplest to the most elaborated structure. We have also
discussed the question above and we must say that this sort of test do not allow
teachers to have an accurate reflection from the learner's’ skills. We can not even
measure how well they can manage the language in order to have an acceptable
communicative competence.

As Richards (1971) suggested that in language process, simplification and reduction

are caused by the individual’s attempt to reduce the complexity of the language
system so we can say that the messages remain clear despite the grammatical
reduction. Besides we can point out that the learner might reach up to a level of
fossilization considering the internal factors as age (because the learner is an adult
male) and the lack of acculturate since the learner is able to interact and may feel
comfortable with that level of the language and makes no efforts to use the language
appropriately or he /she might receive positive cognitive feedback , that is, he/she is
understood so he/she doesn't have the need to correct himself which results in
fossilization
There are different aspects involved in the process of learning a language. First,
learners need a lot of exposure to L2 and that can be inside and outside the learning
environment, bearing in mind that the input has to be comprehensible so that students
can understand and internalized the information. We mean learners need exposure to
a specific type of input if language acquisition is to be facilitated (Funiber:51).Basically,
we would like to consider individual factors such as their background,age,
interests,learning styles, learning strategies,affective filter , intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation while learning L2.

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 Assignment - ATL

5. How do these tests and results relate to the concepts studied in this
subject?

As teachers we are able to correct errors so our learners improve and become aware
of their weak points in grammar then. We should also motivate students to improve at
their own pace. Besides this, we must put into practice suitable approaches, effective
strategies and specific techniques in order to teach grammar dynamically at some
extent. Teaching such semantic structures should occur naturally . In addition to this,
we focus on the question and we consider that there is a tendency to follow grammar
patterns which go from the most simple to the most elaborated structure. We have
also discussed the question above and we must say that this sort of test do not allow
teachers to have an accurate reflection from the learner's’ skills.We can not even
measure how well they can manage the language in order to have an acceptable
communicative competence.

4. What generalization can be made about the order of acquisition for learning these
constructions? Please note that you will not be able to reproduce the matrix you have
for this question (in your study materials) in the VC. You could use point form here.

Based on their previous experience and background information we notice that these
learners have developed their skills as they have acquired the language in an English
speaking country. Even though some of these learners make mistakes, they have an
acceptable language command in terms of grammar and structure. We must keep in
mind that learners acquire a language at a different pace and they develop their skills
in the same way as well.
Furthermore, we would like to look back to some theory about the acquisition of
grammatical structures which proceeds in a predictable way.In other words, there are
predictable sequences in the order of acquisition of morphemes and syntactic
structures.

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 Assignment - ATL

5. Tests of this type are designed primarily to elicit spontaneous utterances in a

controlled setting.What limitations are there in doing order of acquisition analysis based
on data of this sort?

CONCLUSIONS
After delving into Second Language Acquisition theories and analysing the tasks
above, it may be stated that the analysis of Interlanguage will yield evidence that may
be crucial when dealing with the learning process of a learner. It provides a clear
blueprint of current level, fossilized errors and even linguistic and cultural background
in L1. It also allows teachers to determine in which points he/she needs to reinforce a
process of noticing, and it also accounts for how students are restructuring the
language constantly given the fact that interlanguage is unstable and dynamic (Long,
1990).

Furthermore, by taking IL into account in his/her teaching practices, the teacher leads
students to pay attention to salient features of language that may become intake. Also
he/she will employ a wide range of consciousness-raising, resources to enhance
language acquisition, such as input enhancement, corrective feedback reformulation
and meaning-driven, reconstruction tasks to accompany learners in their language
acquisition. (Thornbury, 1997: 327)

From the previous discussion, some conclusions can be drawn as follows: contrastive
analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their
differences and similarities with the assumption the different elements between the
native and the target language will cause learning problems, while similar elements will
not cause any problems. Contrastive analysis hypothesis is criticized for not all
problems predicted by contrastive analysis always appear to be difficult for the
students. On the other hand, many errors that do turn up are not predicted by
contrastive analysis. Error analysis was an alternative to contrastive analysis. Error
analysis was criticized for misdiagnosing student learning problems due to their
"avoidance" of certain difficult L2 elements. Interlanguage is a continuum between the
first language and the target language along which all learners traverse. It is dynamic
(constantly adapting to new information) and influenced by the learners. Some
methods for error correction are: putting responsibility for error correction primarily on
the student, post-lesson feedback. The cognitive, affective, negative, positive feedback

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 Assignment - ATL

should be given sufficiently and appropriately. We must avoid is the punitive

reinforcement.

In order to sum up important ideas from this assignment and class material we can
say:
1. Most theorists agree on this phenomenon called “ special language” which is
the existence of a language between the target language and the mother tongue.
(Funiber:5)
2. Selinker (19729) coined the term interlanguage and so far such term has been
used to describe the language system that results from language learning.
3. A learner’s developing language is in fact systematic and it involves its own
internal logic and “rules”
4. Constructions are key components of Cognitive Linguistic and Functional
theories of language. Students learn constructions through using language, engaging
in communication. (Nick C. Ellis)
5. It is important to bear in mind the process of interlanguage: the nature and
effects of transfer, overgeneralization, fossilization, transfer of training and learning and
communication strategies.
6. Teachers should remember the role of consciousness as well as the
importance of providing the students activities that encourage noticing and
reconstruction which will foster the restructuring of students’ interlanguage
7. Comprehensible input is fundamental in the process of learning L2, once the
input is understood by the learner, it can be transformed into intake.
8. Input and interaction can help successful language learning

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 Assignment - ATL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ellis, R. (1997): Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press. Chapters 3-7.

Jain, M. P. (1974). Error analysis: source, cause and significance. In Richards, J.

C. (ed.), Error analysis. Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. Harlow, Essex:
Longman

Selinker, L. "Interlanguage." IRAL 10 (1972)

Selinker, L., Swain, M., and Dumas, G. "The Interlanguage Hypothesis Extended to
Children." Language Learning Vol. 25, No. 1 (1975)

Tarone, E. (1994): “Interlanguage” Elsevier Ltd. , volume 4, 1715/1719

Thornbury, S. (1997): ”Reformulation and reconstruction: tasks that promote noticing”.

ELT Journal 51/4:326-335

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