Assignment - ATL

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE IN THE CLASSROOM CONTEXT /

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This assignment must be done individually and has to fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: between 6 and 8 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if
there are any-).
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Font size: 11.
- Line spacing: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be written in this Word document and has to follow the
instructions on quotes and references detailed in the Study Guide.

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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

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE IN THE CLASSROOM CONTEXT

Student’s full name:

Juan Miguel Suarez Gonzalez

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

Introduction

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 Assignment - ATL

When learning a foreign language, students must consider not only their academic
success, but also the development of their communicative skills. Somehow, students
are mainly concerned on developing such skills and being proficient speakers. Those
who choose to learn English to its full extent by developing their speaking, listening,
writing and reading abilities will also build a stepping towards a new culture. Therefore,
such cultural immersion will keep them motivated to develop their own learning
strategies and styles to acquire the language effectively.

For this to take effect we, as teachers, need to dominate different strategies and
dynamic forms of teaching for our students to start creating their own. Besides knowing
how to use the diverse resources to teach the students, we must apply the adequate
techniques to teach our class. In our teaching-learning process we must be flexible in
the usage of the different approaches and methods of second language acquisition.

We would like to add that as long as students become increasingly proficient in

English, they will create an interconnection between language, culture and other
factors. “Learning a new linguistic system means acquiring an objective view of one’s
native language and ,indeed, of one’s own culture” (California Department of
Education). Besides this, we need to understand some basic definitions such as the
phenomenon of interlanguage or IL, which is the type of language produced by second
language learners. Such term was introduced by the American linguist Larry Selinker
to refer to the linguistic system evidenced when a second language learner attempts to
express meanings in the language being learned. Therefore, the interlanguage is
viewed as a separate linguistic system, clearly different from both the learner’s ‘native
language’ (NL) and the ‘target language’ (TL) being learned, but linked to both NL and
TL by interlingual identifications in the perception of the learner.
(E. Tarone)

Based on our class material, we have also analyzed IL from the psycholinguistic and
sociolinguistic perspectives developed by different scholars and we find Selinker’s
analysis quite relevant as he states that second language learners activate the latent
psychological structure. Those learners,however,who go on to attain a native-like
command of the foreign language ,activate the latent language structure as well as the
latent psychological structure.
(Funiber: 9)

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 Assignment - ATL

What is more important is the fact that learners apply a variety of learning strategies as
they develop their interlanguage.Therefore, such errors produced by learners show us
at what extent they have developed their learning strategies effectively.

Task 1

● Native Languages: Mixed.

● Target Language: English.
● Background Information: Intermediate level, students on an intensive course.
● Data Source: student compositions.
DATA:
1. Soccer is the most common sporting.
2. America refused continual supported our military request.
3. When he was 7 years old, he went schooling.
4. About two hours driving eastern from Bangkok.
5. After finished my college studied, I went to my country.
6. Doctors have the right to removed it from him.
7. There is a night for asleep.
8. Moreover it may lead to conflicting.
9. I am not going to get married when I will graduation the school.
QUESTIONS:
1. Work out an IL generalization that might account for the forms in boldface. Give
your reasons for postulating this generalization.
The statements written in their compositions show a specific linguistic process in
construction.Errors emerge because the learners have applied their rules (intake) by
contextualizing each sentence based on their previous knowledge and their own
hypotheses in regard to semantic and lexical terms. Such “rules” determine their
comprehension and production which is not accurate in these examples.
We can also notice that such errors have lead the learners towards
overgeneralization.Somehow there is a connection between the L1 and L2.In other
words, the interlanguage system and those of the L2 are combined. It means that
theoretically, the kind of erroneous structures resulting are independent of the
individual’s mother tongue.(Funiber: 17)
Richards (1974) states that these errors were common to speakers of different
languages whey they developed their own hypotheses about the structure of the
second language. Another expert, Jain (1974) points out two forms of
overgeneralization which depend on the L1´s degree of proximity to the L2:

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 Assignment - ATL

- Overgeneralizations produced in a “creative” way cause more errors.

- Overgeneralizations based on the L2 produce fewer errors.
2. What strategy/strategies do you think these learners have come up with
regarding lexical use?
In order to list the strategies used by this group of learners, we can mention those
that allow them acquire and understand the language at some extent :
- Analysing patterns in L2 and making the connection with L1.
- Making lexical /semantic comparisons between L1 and L2.
- Close translation from L1 to L2 .
- Guessing from textual context.
- Asking classmates for meaning.
- Foreignizing: using an L1 word by adjusting it to the L2 phonology /morphology.
- Looking up words in dictionaries, memorization, and literal translation.
Based on our class materials, we find quite important to focus on Ellis as well
(1997:76-77) who states that “learning strategies are those particular approaches or
techniques that learners employ to try to learn an L2”. He also identified three main
learning strategies:cognitive ,metacognitive and social/affective strategies, but these
are aspects to keep in mind through the learning process from our perspective as
teachers.

3. What additional information, if any, would you like to have from these learners
to test your hypothesis?
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

Task 2

● Native Language: Spanish.

● Target Language: English.
● Background Information: Pre-adolescents, born in Mexico, living in United
States.
● Data Source: Responses to a picture story from a standard proficiency test.
DATA:
Below are the "correct" responses to standardised test items.

1. He wants to eat some food.

2. The dog ate the food.
3. The king would have eaten it.
4. It fell.
Below are the responses to these test items by five ESL learners (A-E).
A.
1. he wants to eat
2. the dog ate it
3. the king would eat it
4. it fell
B.
1. he want the food
2. the dog ate ...
3. the king eat ...
4. they fall
C.
1. he wants to get some food
2. the dog ate it
3. the king would have ate it
4. it fell
D.
1. he want ...
2. the dog eat ...
3. the king will eat ...

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 Assignment - ATL

4. it fall
E.
1. he wanna eat ...
2. the dog eat-ate it
3. he would eat it
4. it fall

QUESTIONS:
1. What feature of English grammar is being tested in each of the test items?

1. He wants to eat some food. Present simple is tested

2. The dog ate the food. Past tense is tested
3. The king would have eaten it. Conditional is tested
4. It fell. Past tense is tested

2. Who appears to be the most advanced learner and why?

The learner C seems to be the most advanced since he has three right answers
(questions 1,2,4) but in question 3 the learner must have forgotten the verb form.

3. Who appears to be the least advanced learner and why?

The learner D appears to be the least advanced considering that all the answers are
incorrect . It seems that the learner hasn't managed the basic patterns although he/she
has an idea or wants to express the message unfortunately all the answers are
inaccurate.

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

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 Assignment - ATL

predictable sequences in the order of acquisition of morphemes and syntactic

structures.

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?

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.

Task 3

● Native Language: Mexican Spanish.

● Target Language: English.
● Background Information: Adult male.
● Data Source: Tape-recorded spontaneous speech.
DATA:
Following are examples of this subject's use of negatives:
1. No write.
2. No like it.
3. I me no speaka too much Englee, eh?
4. Me no like stay in the house.
5. No es correct.
6. I no like tortilla.
7. You no go Calexico?
8. My brother no go to school.
9. No, ya no work.

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 Assignment - ATL

10. Me no comin.
11. No in town.
12. No cheese.
13. No now.
14. No American.
15. The operation ya no good.
16. No money.
17. Maybe no good for me.
QUESTIONS:
1. Describe this learner's knowledge of English negation.
As far as we can see in this long list the learner has a clear interference of his/her
mother tongue, the word “no” is preceding in most of the examples, it means that the
student hasn’t internalized the process of producing negative statements or it might be
easy for the learner just to produce these sentences since the meaning is conveyed
but it is grammatically incorrect. 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
2. At this same time, this non-native speaker produced many examples of "I don't
know". Does this alter your hypothesis about the pattern described in question 1? If so,
how?

No, we wouldn't say that, but if the learner produced many examples of “ I don’t know”
may due that the student has learnt this phrase as a chunk but is not able to conjugate
the negatives in the other sentences. Apart from this, even though he knows the
meaning of “I don't know” the learner might not have the opportunity to receive
feedback timely in relation to the examples mentioned above .

CONCLUSIONS

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 Assignment - ATL

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ellis, N. C.(2006 ): “Cognitive Perspectives on SLA - The Associative Cognitive Creed”

University of Michigan, 101.

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 Assignment - ATL

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

WEBOGRAPHY
Fossilization in language learning. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4zI-
raPnEQ
Interlanguage and Error Analysis. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=rrnYsi6sG8w
Interlanguage and language teaching. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=CBPhIF5du_w

What’s Interlanguage ? Available at https

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