fossilization assignment

Editor's note: Here's a definition of "fossilization" from the ESL Glossary at BogglesWorld.com:

Fossilization: When an error becomes a habit of speech in a second language learner. This happens especially when the error does not interfere with communication, and hence, the speaker does not get corrective feedback.

MET project | Chris Baldwin | July 27th, 2005

Hi all

Hope you're all enjoying the summer (if you're in the northern hemisphere).

I'm getting along with my MET reading, and am trying to think of a good project. I'm interested in FOSSILIZATION. This DL archive link is a good starting place, but has anyone done any AR in the area? I'm thinking about developing a methodology for adult advanced ss in 1-2-1 lessons.

Any ideas? I know it's a bit of a vague question, but I'm at the fishing around stage at the moment.

Have a good one.

Chris
Italy

Re: MET project | Yvonne Beaudry | July 27th, 2005

Chris,

Hi, completely off the cuff, but here ' s something:

"Do people with different L1 fossilize differently?"

I ask this because of something I mentioned in my FND lexical assignment. Japanese has many loanwords from English but they are usually altered, sometimes by pronunciation, sometimes by slight meaning or major meaning. (Sometimes they are altered beyond recognition). I noticed how these words are the most prone to fossilization. Many Japanese will say sarada for salad, or guardman for security guard in the middle of an otherwise perfect English conversation. Presumably your Italian students wouldn't make these mistakes but they are making others or you wouldn't have thought of it

You'd need access to subjects with various L1; Does your situation allow for that?

Actually, this sounds kind of interesting. If Chris doesn;t use it maybe a few of us from widely scattered parts of the world should get together and co-publish something? Anyone from the Middle East or South America interested?

Yvonne

Re: MET project | Richard Walker | July 28th, 2005

Hi Chris/all,

I wonder what aspect of fossilization you are most interested in: grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary?

Recently I began to be concerned with some of my Oral English students, at one of the colleges I teach at, who were able to communicate meaning well, yet whose interlanguage development had seemingly slowed down to a halt. These students had been exposed to plenty of spoken practice (inside and outside the classroom), yet were not progressing re: increasing accuracy and complexity of speech. This despite (or because of) them having Grammar Translation classes.

Having read Skehan (1998) and his discussion on interlanguage (fossilized development of grammar?) I became aware that increasing learner awareness of (fossilized) forms was the way forward, so I got students in one of my classes to transcribe about a minute of a meaning based performed task. They then looked for examples of any improvements they could make. Freed from having the pressure of real time (online) speech, they were able ? to notice areas for improvement. They did the noticing, not me. Thus, perhaps they had raised awareness of fossilized (spoken) forms, and perhaps gone some way to acquiring a correct form.

Hope this helps you carve a way into this large topic.

Richard

Fossilization | Chris Baldwin | July 29th, 2005

Hi Yvonne et al,

Most of the errors are linked to L1, mostly grammar, rather than vocab. There are many false friends, but I haven't noticed that they become fossilized, or at least they are easy to iron out once pointed out.

I also teach a little French to Italians, and have noticed that the errors which become fossilized are sometimes (usually?) due to false friends, or grammatical patterns which are similar in L1 and L2, but not the same, thus showing similar trends to English L2 fossilization, but not the same. These differences are probably because of the different interlanguages between the L1s and L2s.

Fossilization is a big area (a bit of a diplodocus?), and there's a lot of literature on the subject (starting with Selinker (1972), if anyone's interested). If you wanted to get together to some work on it, it could be interesting, especially given the world-wide network we have. This is a little out of the scope of my MET project, but if someone wants to follow it up, I'd be happy to help, perhaps with examples of fossilized errors to build up a corpus. Maybe this one's for the dis.

Have a good one,