Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

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reineke
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby reineke » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:57 am

"The term “fossilization” was introduced to the field of SLA by Selinker in 1972 on the basis of his observation that the vast majority of second language learners fail to achieve native-speaker competence...

It has long been noted that foreign language learners reach a certain stage of learning – a stage short of success – and that learners then permanently stabilize at this stage. Development ceases, and even serious conscious efforts to change are often fruitless. Brief changes are sometimes observed, but they do not ‘take’. The learner backslides to the stable state.

Fossilization is thus taken to be “permanent stabilization”, and as such, an
ultimate stage in the interlanguage process. Corroborating this view, Tarone (1994: 1715) points out: “A central characteristic of any interlanguage is that it fossilizes – that is, it ceases to develop at some point short of full identity with the target language.”

Tarone’s claim is worth noting for its strong implication that fossilization is inevitable, and that it is what characterizes the ultimate attainment of every learner.

Summing up: fossilization – in the eyes of many – is a product as well as a process; it affects the entire IL system as well as its sub-systems; it is literally permanent as well as relatively permanent; it is persistent and resistant; for some researchers it happens to every learner and for others to only some learners (for a detailed discussion of these positions, see Han 1998). It is a stage of interlanguage learning, therefore incorporating the fossilization of correct as well as of incorrect forms..

Furthermore, it is suggested that fossilization may represent the ultimate outcome of L2 learning (e.g. Tarone 1994).

Success in this context, in the view of some researchers, means complete mastery of a second language, namely, the attaining of “all levels of linguistic structure and in all discourse domains” (Selinker and Lamendella 1978..). The general lack of such success is characteristically seen to reside in the imbalance between the rate of success and the rate of failure. Over the years, the 5% success rate proposed by Selinker (1972) has been widely quoted. Some argue that this figure is too conservative (Birdsong 1999, 2004; Seliger, Krashen and Ladefoged 1975), while others claim that even 5% is a gross overestimate (Long 1990; Gregg 1996).9 If we follow Gregg’s (1996: 52) speculative argument that “truly native-like competence in an L2 is never attained”, there can be no question of any imbalance since no learner would ever achieve perfect mastery of an L2 (cf. Sorace 1993). Still other researchers (e.g. Kellerman 1995) who quote the 5% figure do so merely as a general recognition of the fact that there is overwhelmingly more failure than success in adult L2 acquisition.

In the SLA literature, it is also worth noting, there exist different views on what success should entail. As mentioned, for some, success means complete mastery of every facet of the L2; for others (e.g. Schachter 1996), however, it means achieving only native-like competence in the core grammar of L2 without taking account of linguistic peripherals. Despite the lack of consensus, the point nevertheless remains that in whichever sense, complete success is not achievable in post-adolescent L2 acquisition. This claim has gained considerable support from studies of ultimate attainment in so-called “near-natives” (e.g. Coppieters 1987; Sorace 1993).10 Although they each focused only on a small number of linguistic subsystems, Coppieters (1987) and Sorace (1993) both present convincing evidence of the existence of a significant gap, assumed to be permanent, between the interlanguage grammar and the mature native grammar.

Fossilization: five central issues
by ZhaoHong Han, Teachers College, Columbia University
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby s_allard » Sat Apr 15, 2017 4:03 am

My takeway from this barrage of citations is that some researchers in the SLA academe believe that the fact that adult learners do not achieve native-like mastery of a target language can be explained by the fossilization of the interlanguage at a level inferior to total mastery. As I said in my earlier post this concept of interlanguage is just a fancy way of describing the interference of the native or preceding languages on the acquisition of the target language.

This rather turgid academic prose is basically telling us something that we all know and have always known. Let's take a specific example that I brought up earlier. Nearly all adult learners of a foreign language never will attain native-level pronunciation in their target language. It has always been like this and probably always will unless we can find some way to clone brain cells from one individual to another.

We can explain this inability to achieve native-level performance by the state of the phonological component of the interlanguage. Be my guest. I simply believe that given the adult age of acquisition the influence or interference of the native language will remain dominant or very significant. By the same token, if the language is learned at an early age - the earlier the better - and in an immersion setting, the interference of the native language will be much less. So, I really don't see what the idea of interlanguage really brings to the table for us here.

Similarly, all this hullabaloo about fossilized mistakes for what is basically bad habits that stem from the influence of the first language on the target language. What problems of pronunciation do English-speaking learners of French have? The answer is pretty simple. What does French phonology have that English phonology doesn't ? For example, looking a French vowels we know that the vowel sounds in pu, peu, peur, the -ou in amour and pour and the nasal vowels are difficult.

At the grammar level, it is exactly the same thing. The English-speaker says "J'ai vécu à Paris pour deux ans." instead of "J'ai vécu à Paris pendant deux ans" 'I lived in Paris for two years'. What is happening of course is the erroneous interaction of pour and for. And if this mistake goes uncorrected then it will become engrained and hard to correct.

I don't like the term fossilization much because it makes things seem so permanent but I won't argue that issue much. What I will argue about is the theme of this thread which I think might be lost in this deluge of academic citations: i.e. does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

My position is a clear no, for reasons I have already outlined. Fossilization or bad habits have nothing to do with early speaking. Mind you, it has everything to do with good instruction, the right learning environment and good correction but not early speaking per se.
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby aaleks » Sat Apr 15, 2017 9:13 am

s_allard wrote:My position is a clear no, for reasons I have already outlined. Fossilization or bad habits have nothing to do with early speaking. Mind you, it has everything to do with good instruction, the right learning environment and good correction but not early speaking per se.


I agree with you on that. I have my not-so-good experience with the silence period approach. But firstly I should to say that it wasn’t a conscious choice, it just happened that I had no need to speak or write in English for a certain period of time. So when one day the need and opportunity presented itself I just got lost. I had a big enough vocabulary (for a non-native speaker), but didn’t know how to put words in a comprehensible sentence. And unfortunately, things haven’t changed much since then. Probably if, for example, I started to learn how to write simple sentences in English from day one my writing will be better now.
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby reineke » Sat Apr 15, 2017 1:02 pm

How to lessen the negative interference of our learners’ mother tongue on their target language pronunciation Phonology

The main cognitive cause of Language Transfer is that when we learn a new language our brain uses our default language(s) – more than often our first language – as the starting point for the hypotheses we formulate to make sense of that language and/or as a communicative strategy to fill in any communicative gaps...

L2-learners transfer refers to the L2-learners’ application of their L1-phonological categories to decode and represent the foreign language sound system. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that their motor commands (their control over larynx, phrarynx and articulators) have been conditioned by years and years of first language pronunciation. Hence, especially at the early stages, the ‘phonological distance’ (differences in pronunciation) between two languages will play a very important role in determining the accuracy of L2- learner pronunciation.

Another way in which L1-transfer affects pronunciation pertains to the fact that skilled L1-readers are very familiar with the written form of their native language, and automatically decode every grapheme (i.e. letter or cluster of letters) they read by producing a phonological representation of the sound (Snow,2002). This means that, when a learner reads a foreign language word its Working Memory will automatically match that sound with a first language phonological representation (i.e. will pronounce it the first language way). Thus, even if that learner reads a given word aloud following the teacher’s rendition of it, the L1 phonological representation of that word in the learner’s Working Memory will cause interference, with negative consequences for learning.

Another less recent finding (Neufeld, 1979) suggests that second language learners’ pronunciation might benefit from a mute period – a period of intense auditory exposure to L2 before attempting to produce the sounds.

Neufeld claimed that the silent period at the beginning helped the students to accurately produce the language later. Removing students’ own attempts allowed perception to remain more plastic, such that the L2 acoustic template is heard accurately before erroneous phonetic utterances in L2 become fossilised. Producing the sound too early, and therefore incorrectly, would have influenced this acoustic template and thus hindered their production.

A mute period may prove beneficial in enabling the learner to hear (and thus produce) subtly different phonetic features, new phoneme distinctions and unfamiliar sequences of stress patterns. One possibility is that an artificially induced mute period may protect the learner from using first language phonological categories to represent the L2 system, thus enabling higher levels of production performance and avoiding L1 transfer or interference.

The threats posed by L1- language transfer to the correct uptake of L2- pronunciation at the earlier stages of language acquisition are worrying only if we are aiming at 100 % accuracy due to the risk of fossilization, a phenomenon which, as explained in a previous post refers to the automatisation – often impervious to correction – of L2 learner errors.

How can we reduce the negative impact of L2-transfer on pronunciation?

Firstly, in order to avoid interference from a grapheme’s L1 phonological encoding.... on first introducing a new word it would be preferable not to expose the learners to its written form.

Secondly, L2 learners should be exposed to as much listening as possible in the context of a mute period before engaging in oral activities. Realistically speaking, in a typical state school classroom setting the pre-communicative mute period cannot be that long; but the most important lesson to be learnt from Neufeld’s (1979) research is that students should not be thrown into unstructured communicative practice straight away...

Thirdly, the observation that students seem to perform challenging L2 phonemes (sounds) more effectively when pronounced in isolation would seem to suggest – according to Simmonds, Wise and Leech (2011) that a babbling phase in which students imitate the target speech sounds in isolation might also improve non-native pronunciation

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/2 ... unciation/
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Apr 15, 2017 1:31 pm

s_allard wrote:My takeway from this barrage of citations is that some researchers in the SLA academe believe that the fact that adult learners do not achieve native-like mastery of a target language can be explained by the fossilization of the interlanguage at a level inferior to total mastery. As I said in my earlier post this concept of interlanguage is just a fancy way of describing the interference of the native or preceding languages on the acquisition of the target language.

Then I think you've missed the point of the "barrage" of citations. I believe what Reineke is trying to point out is simply that you (and Random Review) are misusing the term "fossilisation". In fact...
I don't like the term fossilization much because it makes things seem so permanent but I won't argue that issue much.

Now it's OK that you don't believe in fossilisation -- not everyone does -- but it is far better to simply say "I don't believe in fossilisation" than to use the term in a completely different way from everyone else.

"Fossilisation" is not simply an old error (as you would have it) -- fossilisation is an error that is "set in stone" and therefore impossible (or almost impossible) to fix.

You exprimirse/explicarse was not a "fossilised" error, just an error.

Now I'm kind of half-and-half about fossilised errors. I believe the term is overused, and that the errors that are hard to fix are generally systemic ones, such as the falling together of two phonemes.

For example, if a French speaker learns English and confused voiced TH with D and voiceless TH with T, then they will learn "thinker" and "tinker" as homophones. Learning to say "thinker" right later is particularly difficult, because trying to correct the pronunciation superficially will mean altering the pronunciation of the T/TH phoneme, which will break the pronunciation of tinker. And trying to fix "tinker" later will break "thinker", and so on ad nauseam.

The correct fix involves learning a new phoneme, and then relearning all the vocabulary that you learned with the wrong phoneme. It's a huge task, and many learners decide (to use an idiom my dad likes) that "the game isn't worth the candle".

This rather turgid academic prose

I would ask you (once again) to stop denigrating others' posting style. Your own style is not above criticism (and neither is mine) and while others bite their tongue about yours, you should consider treating others likewise.

Reineke's posting style comes from a position of admirable intellectual integrity -- he's made the conscious decision not to promote his opinions, instead deferring to recognised authorities. The internet is already full enough of opinion masquerading as fact, and while this site is far from the worst, it's still hypocritical of me that I slag off "alternative facts" but continue to post strong opinions here without taking the time to refer to research.

I personally feel that much is lacking in Reineke's posting style -- particularly that there is rarely anything in the posts that links what he's quoting to the context of the discussion -- but none of us are perfect.

We can explain this inability to achieve native-level performance by the state of the phonological component of the interlanguage. Be my guest. I simply believe that given the adult age of acquisition the influence or interference of the native language will remain dominant or very significant. By the same token, if the language is learned at an early age - the earlier the better - and in an immersion setting, the interference of the native language will be much less. So, I really don't see what the idea of interlanguage really brings to the table for us here.

The whole point of Selinker's "interlanguage" is to try to change the discussion away from "interference". The idea is that talk of "interference" encourages the idea that avoiding L1 avoids interference; but Selinker claims L1 influence is unavoidable.
"Interlanguage" isn't intended just as another piece of jargon -- it's an alternative viewpoint that says that the process of learning a new language is one of constantly moving away from L1 patterns.

Similarly, all this hullabaloo about fossilized mistakes for what is basically bad habits that stem from the influence of the first language on the target language.

Except not all fossilised errors stem from L1. If I mention the example I'm thinking of, it'll land us back in a previous endless debate, so I'll skip that for now.
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby MrPenguin » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:10 pm

Does anyone have any experience with using spaced repetition software, like Anki, for correction of mistakes? I'm thinking production cards in particular, like cloze deletion cards, translation cards, correction cards (have the sentence with the mistake on the front of the card, and the correct sentence on the back) etc.

Personally, I've used MCDs (massive-context cloze deletion cards) quite a bit. They've been especially useful for correcting old pronunciation mistakes in my English (I'd passed 25 before I even became aware that there is a difference between voiced and unvoiced 's/z', or a noun/verb distinction in stress in words like 'increase', distinctions I now feel somewhat confident I can handle), and I'm considering trying it out for making myself more aware of the differences between British and American spelling and word choices, with the goal of adapting a somewhat neutral British-like style when writing and speaking.

I'm hoping that if the reason why you keep making mistakes is that you forget the correct patterns, spaced repetition systems won't let you forget (not for long, in any case). That's what they are made for, after all: preventing things from fading from memory.

Still, as well as it's worked for me for reading out loud, I don't know how effective this would be in the real world, when things are a lot more stressful, and you're under pressure to produce on the spot, as I haven't actually had extended conversations in English in years. Mostly, I read (quite a bit out loud, practising my pronunciation), write and chat, and occasionally help tourists with directions.

I guess a silver bullet probably does not exist in this matter. Some people are able to do what others can't, and vice versa, regardless of the methods used, and I feel like a person might even end up on the wrong track despite having done everything right from the very beginning. Even the best remedy can't fix every problem for everyone. Despite my English improving by leaps and bounds over the years, I've yet to successfully learn any other foreign languages to a high level, mostly because I keep getting discouraged by the enormity of the task ahead of me, as well as the complacency born from already having the world at my fingertips thanks to English. With German I can speak to Germans, and with Finnish I can speak to Finns. But I want to speak to and read the literature of Russians and Chinese and Japanese and Brazilians etc. just as much, and that's just too gargantuan a task for me, unless I settle for conversing with them in English, and reading things in translation. It doesn't help that I'm terrified of developing fossilized mistakes. :|
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby s_allard » Sat Apr 15, 2017 11:26 pm

Cainntear wrote:...
Now I'm kind of half-and-half about fossilised errors. I believe the term is overused, and that the errors that are hard to fix are generally systemic ones, such as the falling together of two phonemes.

For example, if a French speaker learns English and confused voiced TH with D and voiceless TH with T, then they will learn "thinker" and "tinker" as homophones. Learning to say "thinker" right later is particularly difficult, because trying to correct the pronunciation superficially will mean altering the pronunciation of the T/TH phoneme, which will break the pronunciation of tinker. And trying to fix "tinker" later will break "thinker", and so on ad nauseam.

The correct fix involves learning a new phoneme, and then relearning all the vocabulary that you learned with the wrong phoneme. It's a huge task, and many learners decide (to use an idiom my dad likes) that "the game isn't worth the candle".
...

Finally, a concrete example that demonstrates how all this high-level theoretical discussion works. It seems here that our French speaker learning English will realize the voiced TH of "that" as "dat" and the unvoiced TH of "thin" as "tin". French speakers have a problem with the two sounds of the English TH because they do not exist in French. It is actually very interesting to note that European French speakers will approximate these sounds with "z" and "s" rather than "d" and "t". The latter sounds are more common in the English of speakers of Canadian French.

What we have to keep in mind is that these speakers actually hear the real "TH" sounds. When they attempt to reproduce these sounds, the approximate or rather incorrect variants come out. We see something similar when an English speaker learning French tries to say "la rue" and it sounds like "la roue".

I don't understand this idea that fixing a pronunciation mistake will break something else. My observation is that when a sound is corrected it will quickly and automatically spread to all the contexts especially since the spelling will be often helpful. The student has to be first shown how to articulate the sound. Then a bunch of exercises to practice with. A tongue twister like "Is this the thing? - Yes, this is the thing." can be useful. Then away you go. Correcting pronunciation articulation takes time of course but that's the nature of the beast.

The key is correction. These mistakes come from the interaction with the native language. If these pronunciations go uncorrected, the learner will probably keep making the same mistakes forever. And the student has to of course apply these corrections.

But the main point here is that whether we call these fossilizations or bad habits, in my opinion, they are all the same thing. Bad habits are of course hard to change. If you've been speaking a certain way for 40 years, you're not going to change overnight. The way the term fossilization is used by some people, it seems that it's game over. The mistake has become permanent and will most likely never go away.

I actually agree in the sense that the longer you wait to correct something the harder it will be to change. But what does this have to do with the theme of the thread? The question remains: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

The problem isn't early vs delayed speaking; IT IS LACK OF CORRECTION. A beginner inevitably makes mistakes. The question is what to do about them. Given how the school systems works, phonetic accuracy is not a priority and large class sizes do not allow for individualized attention. Even today in universities, how often does one see classes devoted to corrective phonology?

The same thing applies to all the areas of language. What good is it to have written a hundred pages in a language challenge if there is no correction that tells you where you need to take corrective action? So you decide to learn 10 new words a day for the next year. Great idea but how do you know that you understand them correctly and can use them properly? This is what feedback gives you.
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby reineke » Sat Apr 15, 2017 11:42 pm

s_allard wrote:Really, I think this whole business about fossilization is way overblown. Fossilization is simply a fancy term for stubborn bad habits. This can happen in any field of human performance. Whether it's learning to play music, dance, sports, cooking, performing a job, we can pick up bad habits that are detrimental to our performance...

There are two sides of a coin here. One is to clean up my act and get rid of bad habits, the so-called fossils... The big problem here is error detection and correction. This is where some form of outside help is essential. You cannot do this alone...

Unless you are corrected, you will become fossilized

Let's say you want to improve your writing skills, one the of the hardest things to master in a foreign language. I believe this is impossible without some kind of external correction...

s_allard wrote:I really don't see what the idea of interlanguage really brings to the table for us here..

I don't like the term fossilization much because it makes things seem so permanent but I won't argue that issue much... Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes? My position is a clear no,..

s_allard wrote:This is a huge problem for adults. If no one corrects you, you are screwed. This is why a tutor is so important if you do not have free correction from spouses, lovers, friends, teachers, etc.

s_allard wrote:Now contrast this with a 7-week intensive course in French this year at Middlebury College Language School that will set you back around 10,000 USD...

I've never heard anybody complain about learning bad French at Middlebury or that their French ends up full of fossilized mistakes. Quite the contrary, the program is highly praised for its great results. The fact of the matter is that after 7 weeks the students end up speaking decent French, probably something like a B1 or a low B2 level. Do they make mistakes? Of course they do....


Fossilized errors take time to develop, stabilize, and become engrained. Middlebury College runs a quality 7-week program.

No one should feel terrified about making mistakes as this attitude will likely affect the learner’s language growth. However, like other issues that take long time to develop, fossilized errors are also known to be resistant to outside intervention. Tutors and other outside help could prove invaluable but they are no knights in shining armor. They cannot slay the beast by pointing finger at it. Finally, comparisons with other skills such as cooking etc. are inappropriate (see below).

Conti summarizing error correction studies:

"An excessive concern with error treatment may affect students’ motivation negatively (James, 1998).
An excessive concern with error treatment can also lead to error avoidance which stifles creativity with the language by inhibiting risk-taking (Krashen, 2000).

Both direct and indirect correction do not impact students’ accuracy more effectively than no correction at all. Indirect correction has negatively impacted students’ motivation in some studies (Semke, 1984, Robb et al, 1986, Kepner, 1991).

In studies in which the writing of students whose essays received only feedback on content was compared to the writing of students whose work was corrected, the former condition had a better impact on certain aspects of their writing proficiency (the no-correction group producing more higher order propositions than the correction group). These studies concluded that error correction may actually damage the development of written proficiency.
Extensive strategy training in self-monitoring and feedback-handling strategies occurring over a long period seems to enhance essay-writing accuracy in the areas of grammar, vocabulary and spelling in university contexts . My study (Conti, 2001), which pioneered a feedback technique aimed at enhancing student involvement in the corrective process (a more elaborate version of what today is referred to as D.I.R.T. = Dedicated Improvement Reflection Time) obtained impressive gains in writing accuracy and even proficiency; however, it required a huge diagnostic effort, many hours of learner training and high levels of expertise on the part of the instructor...

For errors to be reduced or eradicated, students need to engage in a conscious and sustained long-term effort (Conti, 2004)
Errors are more likely to be eradicated when they refer to structures our students process frequently both receptively and productively (Loewen, 1998).
Some errors are caused by lack of knowledge. Others by processing inefficiency or cognitive overload (i.e. the brain cannot juggle all the demands of the writing process successfully because they are simply too many and some errors slip through). The latter mistakes are usually self-correctable by the students.
It is useless to correct errors which refer to structures the learners are not developmentally ready to acquire as they do not have the cognitive maturity to internalize them.
3. Should we stop correcting then?

The obvious answer is ‘No’ as students and parents do demand we correct. Moreover, as a language learner I have personally benefitted greatly from correction, so I do know it can work. The above research findings and what we know about how the human brain acquire languages cannot be ignored, though, and should inform our pedagogy.

What the 16 points above tell us is that to simply highlight a few errors and ask students to self-correct or do some research on the erroneously applied grammar rule is not going to enhance accuracy or language acquisition. This is because the acquisition of a grammar item is a complex process that takes months or even years of practice; it does not happen as a sudden revelation resulting from a correction. If the mistakes are made in speaking they will require extensive speaking practice; if they are made in writing, extensive writing practice. Simply telling a student you made mistake ‘X’ and asking them to self-correct it, do research on it, have a conversation with their teacher about it, or even all of the above, will not be enough; it will only be the beginning phase of a very long process.

Thus, if I correct a student at the beginning of term 1 on item ‘X’ I will have to consistently keep that item in their focal awareness for the months to come, whilst providing spaced practice in the usage of that item week in week out until the end of Term 3. This is because learning a language is about acquiring automaticity in the execution of a specific set of skills which are acquired through masses of extensive (not intensive) practice. Note that I said ‘in the months to come’, not in a one-off remedial lesson…

Other subjects, such as the Humanities or the Sciences, are less about automaticity and more about intellectual retention of knowledge and facts, hence they require a different type of corrective intervention.

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby s_allard » Sun Apr 16, 2017 1:04 am

reineke wrote:Other subjects, such as the Humanities or the Sciences, are less about automaticity and more about intellectual retention of knowledge and facts, hence they require a different type of corrective intervention.

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/

Although I am loathe to encourage reineke's posting style that consists of streams of citatons, I had a look at the article from the blog of Gianfranco Concti quoted above. The blog is excellent although it should be pointed out that it focus on language teaching to children mostly in exclusive private schools. Here is the complete quote of which only the first sentence is given above:

Other subjects, such as the Humanities or the Sciences, are less about automaticity and more about intellectual retention of knowledge and facts, hence they require a different type of corrective intervention. So, whereas in such subjects one can write in a book ‘it is fact X not Y’ and all the students will have to do is memorize that fact, in languages this will not be enough. The acquisition of a given grammar rule will require masses of spaced practice across a wide range of contexts coupled with positive or negative feedback on each and every application of that rule.

In football coaching, one cannot hope to improve a player’s dribbling skills by telling them what they are doing wrong, asking them to think about what they can do to improve and hope that just because they have understood the suggestions they are (a) going to take them on, (b) implement them and (c) act them out often and skilfully enough to automatize them. The player will first need to WANT to heed the advice and then practise it over and over again, even when the coach is not there to support him, and, only when it has worked many times over, he may finally internalize it. This example encapsulates all the challenges that effective error correction poses to teacher and learner alike, i.e.:

(1) the student must understand the correction;

(2) must want to learn from it (intentionality – the most important factor in the success of error correction);

(3) must practise it consistently over a long period of time at spaced intervals;

(4) must receive feedback that tells him/her that s/he is performing it correctly every time.

Can an overworked teacher even remotely hope to be able to successfully take each individual student in the classes s/he teaches through all of the above four stages with every single problematic item they target? Not really, that is why error correction, whether through D.I.R.T. or any other form of error correction is bound to have little impact on students’ proficiency.

(I have added the emphasis)
Far from eschewing correction of students, Conti encourages it. The problem he points out is that it usually doesn't work because of student reaction and the working conditions of the teachers. In this he is totally right.

Again, my constant question: For us adults, does speaking early lead to fossilized mistakes? All mistakes, early or late, if not corrected will become engrained. Is this rocket science? We see this in our native languages. If you have never attended school, your language skills will most likely be deficient because schooling will teach and correct. In any performance-oriented activity, corrective feedback is the key to improvement. If you are a musician and you go to see a famous and expensive teacher to improve your skills, what do you expect from the teacher? Most likely three things: a) what am I doing wrong?, b) how should I correct these deficiencies? and c) what can I do to improve my playing?

Now of course, the ideal is to avoid mistakes in the first place and play like a virtuoso from the very beginning. But for us adult language learners it too late to learn like children. We just have to deal with our mistakes by taking a positive attitude and encouraging correction.

The subtext I see in the discussion here is that people just don't want to deal with their weaknesses and seek to blame them on fossilization. Instead of constantly harping about the past and trying to lay blame on early speaking, we have to take ownership and say: what am I going to do about my target language skills now? Are there problems? Let's fix them. If there are no problems and we just need more practice, good, let's do that.
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reineke
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Re: Does early speaking lead to fossilized mistakes?

Postby reineke » Sun Apr 16, 2017 5:57 am

s_allard wrote:With this barrage of citations that seem to show scientific evidence that speaking early leads to fossilized mistakes, there is a little detail that seems to be left out: Here is such a quote and a passage that I have put in bold:

Truth is, if a learner keeps making the same mistakes over and over again because they are made to talk or write beyond their level of competence and are not sufficiently focused on accuracy those mistakes will become engrained in their production system and, once fossilised, will never be amenable to correction or re-learning (Mukkatesh, 88; Ellis, 1994).

The authors aren't saying that early speaking is bad, they are saying that being "made to talk or write beyond their level of competence" and not being focused on accuracy will lead to mistakes being engrained and fossilized. So if students speak at their level of competence and with accuracy then speaking isn't a problem. This is the challenge facing the teacher.


s_allard wrote:
Again, my constant question: For us adults, does speaking early lead to fossilized mistakes? All mistakes, early or late, if not corrected will become engrained. Is this rocket science?
...
But for us adult language learners it too late to learn like children. We just have to deal with our mistakes by taking a positive attitude and encouraging correction.

The subtext I see in the discussion here is that people just don't want to deal with their weaknesses and seek to blame them on fossilization.


You are citing the same text for the third time and you're complaining about too many citations? Not only did I include this and several other details concerning accuracy but the same text was also cited by Cavesa.

What about "If we plunge L2 learners into highly demanding oral tasks too soon? ... Yes," highly demanding" but also "too soon". Why was the author writing about the usefulness of a "mute period" which may shield the learner from "producing the sound too early, and therefore incorrectly"?

And what is your argument, exactly? Early speaking does not contribute to fossilization because everyone fossilizes anyway? If error correction is the only way to attain high skills, then language pros are the guardians of the way into the promised land. I am not against tutors, early speaking or immersion schools. I am chiefly trying to point to a faulty and self-serving logic.

If one sticks to a narrow definition of fossilization and takes for granted the assertions that these errors are not as impervious to correction as the name suggests (courtesy of one's helpful language tutor) one will necessarily have to conclude that full native competence is indeed very much attainable. If we ignore that you are disagreeing with a conclusion that was drawn from your own premises, you are apparently too fossilized to notice this:

"Fossilized errors tend to be impervious to correction."

"Despite repeated corrections, the vast majority of errors.. keep re-occurring. "

"Intensive grammar and editing instruction targeting specific errors has also shown to be largely ineffective."

Once errors are automatized (or ‘fossilised’) nothing can be done to completely eradicate them.

"... never amenable to correction or re-learning."

"Cohort after cohort of language learners who have fossilised (automatized) mistakes."

"many primary students who come to secondary with many fossilised mistakes they have automatized..."

"Hence preventing students from automatizing mistakes seems to be more effective than treating them."

Some food for thought:

"The formation of correct rules is often a difficult process. To form a correct rule, a speaker has to frequently execute the correct sentences related to the rule. However, a beginner cannot execute the correct sentence easily, and every time he or she executes an incorrect sentence, the wrong rule will be strengthened in the relevant neuronal circuits. A paradoxical situation is unavoidable here. The more often a beginner utters incorrect sentences, the stronger the neuronal circuits representing them may become. However, advanced second language speakers conform to the rules of the target language to a greater extent than beginners.”

Fossilized language speakers have two important characteristics (Harley and Swain, 1978; Selinker, 1972). One is that they have already acquired a certain level of communicative fluidity. They can generate utterances in the target language without undue cognitive planning and without consciously building structures. They show less hesitation when engaged in conversation. In summary their speech has fluency. Another characteristic of fossilized second language speakers is that their learning has stopped or radically slowed down. Their typical utterance structures and phonology do not improve over time although they may be continuously exposed to the target language environment. They continue to make the same grammatical and phonological errors although they are sometimes aware that they are doing so.

These two characteristics may be explained by BG functions and procedural memory. The first characteristic of fossilized second language speakers, natural fluidity, occurs because they have already acquired the target language procedurally, thus, they have obtained automaticity. By repetitive use of the target language, the speakers may have formed procedural memory of (incorrect) linguistic rules of the target language through the basal ganglia circuits. When one acquires a procedural memory of a motor or a cognitive skill, one can execute it automatically…

The other characteristic of the speakers, rigidity of errors, can also be explained with reference to the BG and procedural memory… Procedural memory is formed more slowly than declarative memory. The other side of the coin is that procedural memory is more robust so that, once formed, it is better preserved, and it is also inflexible, and therefore difficult to change. This is why it is so difficult to correct bad habits… If a fossilized second language speaker has already automatized the linguistic skills through basal ganglia circuits, the automatized skils are naturally resistant to correction and change.

An outstanding question is whether fossilized language can be defossilized… First, defossilization perhaps is possible.. .
From experience, we all know that automatizing declarative knowledge or altering a habitual procedure is difficult and time-consuming."

The Neurobiology of Learning (excerpts).

BTW, you're not too late to learn like a child and you can take this early speaking business quite literally given that even young children show signs of interference from L1.
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