Grammatical accuracy in a second language

[reineke]

Focused error correction

"I have written extensively about Error Correction on this blog, often reiterating the point that whilst there is some evidence pointing to its effectiveness in enhancing L2 writing accuracy..., the gains obtained do not justify the enormous amount of time and effort invested by teachers in the process...

Why the effects of Error Correction are so limited

"Learning a language is not merely about accruing intellectual knowledge of the target language. As Truscott (1996) pointed out, learning to master a specific grammar rule doesn’t occur as a sudden revelation resulting from the information a teacher passes to a student through oral or written feedback.

L2 acquisition is much more complex than that: it is a long and painstaking process which may start with the understanding of how a given language item works, but requires extensive practice in the deployment of that item across a wide range of linguistic contexts before it can be said to have been brought to completion....

There are many factors which undermine commonly practised error-treatment methodologies (thoroughly discussed here). In previous blogs I identified the following ones as key:

(a) Corrective intervention neglects the intentionality dimension of learning from one’s mistake, i.e. it is not proactive in arousing students’ desire to eradicate errors...

(b) As many studies have pointed out, L2 students do not invest sufficient cognitive effort in the corrective process. They do not process the corrections deeply enough; at best, they make a mental note of the mistakes and the relative corrections and move on...

(c) The corrective treatment rarely involves a long-term, sustained effort to eradicate mistakes. Yet, this is crucial to the success of error remediation.

(d) For corrective feedback on item X to be effective, students need to process it many items over. This doesn’t always happen with less frequently occurring L2 items...

(e) usually, teachers are concerned with fixing errors but not with training students in becoming effective independent editors of their own written output..."

https://gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/2 ... anageable/

[smallwhite]

gianfrancoconti.wordpress.com/...

Who is this Gianfranco Conti that you quote every other post? It says on his website he's a PhD and a school teacher, etc, but is there something else, like is he well-known in his/your field or something?

[zjones]

I hate it when I make grammatical mistakes in my L2, but I'm still in the A levels so it happens all the time. Trust in the process.

I have a lot of tolerance for non-natives making mistakes in English. I love that people are willing to speak English with me even though they are not fluent. However, I have to be careful that I don't generalize people as "cute" due to their grammar mistakes, as I feel that doing so can be patronizing since their use of English does not indicate their intellectual ability.

I dislike seeing glaring mistakes in the English of my fellow natives, but over time I've become more forgiving. I never volunteer grammar or spelling advice. One of my friends had a localized brain injury as a school-aged child, and since then he has struggled severely with reading and spelling. He's bright, but his English does not show it. Also, a lot of my fellow homeschooled friends have sloppy spelling due to neglected educations and lazy parenting. Reading a letter from them is like reading Middle English.

[adamwakoski]

Although I often hear that it is better to speak as much as possible that to be a perfectionist, I have a lump in my throat each time I notice my mistakes. And it takes so much time for me to write in my L2 - I try to check everything that sounds somewhat unnatural to me. However, this approach does not apply to other people. Never correct them unless they ask me to.

[reineke]

"Students’ views about language learning may be right or wrong, but they are important. If we listen to them they’ll listen to us."

"Our grammar rules are necessary simplifications. The language won’t always obey them: it hasn’t read our little grammar books. Students need to understand this."

correctness

"Some language learners need a high level of correctness; some don’t.

Perfectionism can be very damaging. If you correct all your students’ mistakes, you may produce students who never make mistakes because they never say anything.

Native-speaker-like correctness is a completely unrealistic aim. Very few adults learn languages perfectly. Everybody makes mistakes, including teachers. It’s normal, and it doesn’t matter very much. Good enough English is good enough.

There are two good reasons for insisting on correct production of a language point: because it will make a difference to comprehensibility or acceptability."

success and failure

"We shouldn’t worry if our results aren’t very impressive; they probably won’t be. That doesn’t mean we’ve failed. Languages are hard to learn and teach."

Mike Swan

[reineke]

A is for Accuracy

"Accuracy and fluency: it used to be the case that, of these two constructs, fluency was the one that was the most elusive and contentious – difficult to define, difficult to test, and only rarely achieved by classroom learners.

It’s true that fluency has been defined in many different, sometimes even contradictory ways, and that we are still no nearer to understanding how to measure it, or under what conditions it is optimally realized. See, for example F is for Fluency.

But I’m increasingly coming to the view that, of the two constructs, it is accuracy that is really the more slippery. I’m even wondering if it’s not a concept that has reached its sell-by date, and should be quietly, but forcefully, put down...."
https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/20 ... -accuracy/


E is for Error

“It’s self-evident,” wrote an MA student of mine recently, in an online forum, “that most learner errors are caused by mother tongue interference”. Is it really self-evident? It was certainly self-evident in the mid-twentieth century, when the notion of interference reigned supreme. But the advent of interlanguage studies put paid to that. The new science of error analysis (as distinct from contrastive analysis) suggested that many – some would say most – errors are the effect of developmental processes and performance demands, and have nothing to do with the learner’s L1. This is evidenced by the fact that many errors are shared by learners from different language groups, and occur in a similar developmental sequence and under comparable processing conditions."
https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/20 ... for-error/