APPLIED LINGUISTICS
What is Applied Linguistics?
- The study of the relationship between theory and practice. The main emphasis is usually on language teaching, but can also be applied to translation, lexicology, etc.
- The branch of linguistics concerned with practical applications of language studies, with particular emphasis on the communicative function of language, and including such professional practices as lexicography, terminology, general or technical translation, language teaching (general or specialized language, mother tongue or second language), writing interpretation, and computer processing of language.
- Applied linguistics is concerned with using linguistic theory to address real world problems. It has been traditionally dominated by the fields of language education and second language acquisition. There is a recurrent tension between those who regard the field as limited to the study of language learning, and those who see it as encompassing all applications of linguistic theory.
- Applied linguistics provides the theoretical and descriptive foundations for the investigation and solution of language-related problems, especially those of language education (first-language, second-language, and foreign language teaching and learning), but also problems of translation and interpretation, lexicography, forensic linguistics, and (perhaps) clinical linguistics. The main distinguishing characteristic of applied linguistics is its concern with professional activities whose aim is to solve ‘real world’ language-based problems, which means that research touches on a particularly wide range of issues – psychological, pedagogical, social, political and economic as well as linguistic.
The Role of Linguistics in Language Teaching
- Linguistics can be briefly and broadly defined as the study of language or the body of scientific knowledge about language in general.
- (Descriptive) linguistics is used to refer to the study of the internal structures of language. Other terms have been coined for the study of relations between language and other human endeavors or disciplines, like ethnolinguistics (language and culture or ethnic groups), sociolinguistics (language and society), etc.
- Language teaching can be defined as the teaching of the practical knowledge of a linguistic code.
- Language is a very important feature of mankind, perhaps the most important, because it is mostly language that keeps us apart from all other creatures in this world, and language is centrally involved in whatever has been achieved by man. Therefore, it is understandable, even inevitable, that language instruction takes such a large part in our curriculum, although whether we have done a good job in our language teaching is another matter.
- In the study of language (linguistics), we are concerned with language as a system.
Linguistics and Native Language Teaching
- When a person learns his native language (or his mother tongue), no conscious learning or teaching is involved. It is known as language acquisition done by the children.
- The only type of teaching that occurs during the language acquisition process is the making of corrections by the elders.
- The knowledge of linguistics will give one a better understanding of language, the techniques for the description of the elements, and the relations of the units in the language. This in itself is sufficient to make familiarity with linguistics an asset in a teacher of a language, whether native, second, or foreign.
- A native language teacher, whether he is teaching grammar, composition, or literature, will benefit from knowing linguistics.
- A teacher of grammar can have a more objective view of the structure of the language from the knowledge of linguistics.
- In native language teaching (NLT), the students at the time they start going to school already master the basic structures of the language and possess a considerable vocabulary, namely the things in the child’s world. The native child is largely encultured through the language and this is continued in school including his language classes. What he learns at school is the skill in the written language, some awareness of the rules of the language (grammar), the knowledge and appreciation of the literary creations of the society, the skill in understanding and using the different styles and dialects of the language.
Linguistics and Second Language Teaching
- Second language teaching is the term used for the teaching of a language that is not the mother tongue but that is used as a vehicle for general (public) communication, like Indonesian for most Indonesians.
- The aims and nature of second language teaching (SLT) are different from those of native language teaching (NLT).
- In SLT, the aims are in large part the same as in NLT but the level of achievement must necessarily be lower than in NLT. One major difference is that the audio-lingual skills must also be included in the aims of teaching; therefore a great deal of time must be reserved for audio-lingual exercises. Enculturation through a second language is often not broad in coverage as through a native language. It is usually restricted to those aspects of an official and public life.
Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching
- Foreign language teaching (FLT) is the teaching of a language other than a native or second language, usually but necessarily a language of another country.
- Essentially, FLT is not different from SLT. The major difference lies in the fact that the second language is used a medium of instruction after the initial stages and that it is used widely by the society at large as a lingua franca, whereas a foreign language is learned as a school subject and that there is rarely any occasion or opportunity to use it outside the FL classes. There is therefore a great difference in level and types of linguistic skills aimed at.
- In the development of teaching materials, both for SL and FL, a contrastive analysis needs to be made by the persons constructing the materials. Knowledge of linguistics is indispensable for making a contrastive analysis.
- A contrastive analysis will reveal the similarities and differences between the TL and the NL. These similarities and differences will provide guidelines, and or determining the places and amounts of emphasis in presentation.
- The basic assumption in contrastive analysis is that differences will cause interference with the learning process and similarities will facilitate it. The results of this contrastive analysis can further be enhanced by a careful analysis of the errors made by the students.
Contrastive analysis
- Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. Historically it has been used to establish language genealogies.
| Contrastive analysis is an inductive investigative approach based on the distinctive elements in a language. |
Kinds of contrastive analysis: | |
· Intralingual
· Cross-linguistic
| |
- Contrastive analysis is that aspect of linguistics considered to be most relevant to language teaching. Today most teachers and text-book writers would probably still assert the usefulness of contrastive analysis, though the linguists are divided on the issue.
- Fries (1945) says that the most efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner.
- By contrastive analysis, we can predict and describe the pattern that will cause difficulty in learning, and those that will not cause difficulty, by comparing systematically the language and culture to be learned with the native language and culture of the student.
- When a systematic comparison of the two languages has been made, the similarities and differences are revealed. One can then predict the learner’s difficulties, because they will be in the area of differences between the two languages, and there will be no learning problems where there are similarities.
- The implications of contrastive analysis:
a. The writer of materials can look at a linguistic comparison of the first and second language and infer from it what patterns or structures to emphasize and what kinds of exercises to devise for the learner of the second language.
b. The materials must be specific to the speakers of a native language rather than common to several native languages, because languages differ from one another in different ways
- The theoretical problems involved in contrastive analysis need to be only briefly touched upon. Simply stated, the problem is this: structural linguistics states that each language is a self-contained system which is different from every other language system. The units set up in a language, from phonemes to sentence patterns are relevant only within that language. If this is so, then there is no theoretical ground for comparison between one language and another. The common ground for comparison must be outside linguistics – in sound substance or situation substance.
- While linguists are battling to perfect their respective theories to justify contrastive analysis, language teachers cannot wait for the ideal solution. They must continue teaching with the best insights and aids available to them at the moment. Contrastive analysis has obviously made a contribution to language teaching and will continue to make a contribution to it, since languages will continue to differ at some level even if it is discovered that they are similar in deep, deep structure.
- To summarize the usefulness of contrastive analysis, it is fair to say that it can be used to a limited extent for prediction of difficulties. It can be used more effectively to explain difficulties than actually occur. For the latter purpose, partial analyses are more efficient.
Before the SLA field as we know it today was establised, from the 1940s to the 1960s, contrastive analyses were conducted, in which two languages were systematically compared. Researchers at that time were motivated by the prospect of being able to identify points of similarity and difference between native languages (NLs) and target languages (TLs). There was a strong belief that a more effective pedagogy would result when these were taken into consideration. Charles Fries, one of the leading applied linguists of the day, said: "The most efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared witha parallel description of the native language of the learner."(Fries 1945: 9) Robert Lado, Fries' colleague at the University of Michigan, also expressed the importance of contrastive analysis in language teaching material design:
Individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture - both productively when attempting to speak the language and to act in the culture and receptively when attempting to grasp and understand the language and the culture as practised by natives. (Lado 1957, in Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991:52-53)
This claim is still quite appealing to anyone who has attempted to learn or teach a foreign language. We encounter so many examples of the interfering effects of our NLs.
Lado went on to say a more controversial position, however, when he claimed that "those elements that are similar to his native language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult" (Lado 1957:2). This conviction that linguistic differences could be used to predict learning difficulty produced the notion of the contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH): "Where two languages were similar, positive transfer would occur; where they were different, negative transfer, or interference, would result." (Larsen-Freeman & Long 1991: 53)
What of the claims that contrastive analysis has predictive power?
- There is evidence that the difficulties predicted by contrastive analysis do occur, but there is also evidence that the actual mistakes that are made in the predicted areas of difficulty are unpredictable. For example, the fricative [ θ ] is not found in Indonesia phonology, so Indonesia learners of English have a problem in producing this sound. What is unpredictable is that some replace it with [ t ] and others with [ s ].
- Contrastive analysis may also not be able to predict another kind of difficulty that is likely to occur with the learning of an international language like English. Loan words may create difficulty since the mother tongue pronunciation tends to leap to mind when the object or picture of it is shown.
- There is another kind of linguistic problem that a contrastive analysis cannot reveal; that is, the difficulties that arise from incomplete learning, or inadequate understanding, of the structure of the second language. Contrastive analysis assumes that the chief cause, or even the sole cause of difficulty and error in learning a second language is interference from the learner’s native language. It has been shown, however, that a large proportion of learner’s errors is the result of interference from previously taught second language materials.
- The point must also be made that not all differences between two languages lead to difficulty.
- Contrastive analysis hypothesis has shown that prediction is unreliable and comparison cannot be thorough. There are other sources of linguistic difficulty which contrastive analysis cannot indicate. The conclusion would seem to be that contrastive analysis can reveal the likely areas of difficulty but that only direct observation by the teacher in the learning situation can show the precise nature of the problems faced by the students.
- The general weakness of contrastive analysis is that it cannot predict with any degree of certainty what errors can occur. It cannot even predict which errors will occur more frequently that others, nor the varying degrees of difficulties. What it can be used for is to explain the reasons for the errors that have occurred. This view also states that contrastive analysis can have very slight importance in the construction of teaching materials and teaching techniques.
- Wholesale comparison of the two languages is perverse and wasteful of energy if direct observation is possible and necessary.
- Since a complete comparison is an arduous task and not possible at present in any case, why not start with the observed errors and make contrastive analysis in the area where problems have arisen? Such a procedure would be more useful in helping to reveal the cause of errors, but it implies that the observer of errors must be able to characterize the errors adequately enough in linguistic terms. Once such information is available, contrastive analysis directed to those areas of the language where erros are most frequent may provide useful information on why the errors occur. At the same time, it may suggest ways of organizing teaching materials so as to anticipate and get round the problem.
- Significance of contrastive analysis:
a. significance for teaching:
1. knowing the learning problems well from the comparison and better understanding the teaching focus.
2. evaluating the language and culture content of textbook.
3. preparing new teaching materials.
4. supplementing inadequate materials.
5. diagnosing difficulties in teaching and learning.
b. significance for testing
LANGUAGE INTERFERENCE
Language transfer (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, and crossmeaning) refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second language. It is most commonly discussed in the context of English language learning and teaching, but it can occur in any situation when someone does not have a native-level command of a language, as when translating into a second language.
Language interference (also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, cross-linguistic interference or transfer) is the effect of language learners' first language on their production of the language they are learning. The effect can be on any aspect of language: grammar, vocabulary, accent, spelling and so on
Language interference (also known as L1 interference) is the effect of language learners’ first language on their production of the language they are learning. The effect can be on any aspect of language: grammar, vocabulary, accent, spelling and so on. It is most often discussed as a source of errors (negative transfer), although where the relevant feature of both languages is the same, it results in correct language production (positive transfer). The greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative the effects of interference are likely to be. It will inevitably occur in any situation where someone has not mastered a second language.
Language interference often results in an English distictive to a learners first language. it is often easy to determine a non-native English speakers first language by the mistakes they commonly make in syntax, word choice, and especially pronunciation.
When the relevant unit or structure of both languages is the same, linguistic interference can result in correct language production called positive transfer — "correct" meaning in line with most native speakers' notions of acceptability. An example is the use of cognates. Note, however, that language interference is most often discussed as a source of errors known as negative transfer. Negative transfer occurs when speakers and writers transfer items and structures that are not the same in both languages. Within the theory of contrastive analysis (the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities), the greater the differences between the two languages, the more negative transfer can be expected.
The results of positive transfer go largely unnoticed, and thus are less often discussed. Nonetheless, such results can have a large effect. Generally speaking, the more similar the two languages are, the more the learner is aware of the relation between them, the more positive transfer will occur.
Transfer may be conscious or unconscious. Consciously, learners or unskilled translators may sometimes guess when producing speech or text in a second language because they have not learned or have forgotten its proper usage. Unconsciously, they may not realize that the structures and internal rules of the languages in question are different. Such users could also be aware of both the structures and internal rules, yet be insufficiently skilled to put them into practice, and consequently often fall back on their first language.
Broader effects of language transfer:
With sustained or intense contact between native and non-native speakers, the results of language transfer in the non-native speakers can extend to and affect the speech production of the native-speaking community. For example, in North America, speakers of English whose first language is Spanish or French may have a certain influence on native English speakers' use of language when the native speakers are in the minority. Locations where this phenomenon occurs frequently include Québec, Canada, and predominantly Spanish-speaking regions in the U.S..
Interference may be viewed as the transference of elements of one language to another at various levels including phonological, grammatical, lexical and orthographical (Berthold, Mangubhai & Batorowicz, 1997). Berthold et al (1997) define phonological interference as items including foreign accent such as stress, rhyme, intonation and speech sounds from the first language influencing the second. Grammatical interference is defined as the first language influencing the second in terms of word order, use of pronouns and determinants, tense and mood. Interference at a lexical level provides for the borrowing of words from one language and converting them to sound more natural in another and orthographic interference includes the spelling of one language altering another. Given this definintion of interference, code-switching will now be defined and considered in terms of its relationship to this concept.
Interference is a term used in sociolinguistics and foreign-language learning to refer to the errors a speaker introduces into one language as a result of his contact with another language. The most common source of error is in the process of learning a foreign language, where the native tongue interferes; but interference may occur in the other contact situations (as in multilngualism).In learning L1 certain habits of perceiving and performing have to be established and the old habits tend to intrude and interfere with the learning, so that the students may speak L2 (or FL) with the intonation of his L1 or the word order of his L1 and so on. Though such interference does occur, not all errors in L2 (FL) learning can be accounted for by interference from L1. L2 (FL) learning like L1 acquisition appears to proceed by stages when new bits of the language are imperfectly learned, giving rise to what has been called interlanguage or interference.
Based on the linguistic units which bear the interference, there may be three kinds of interference, namely phonological interference, morphological interference, and syntactic interference. Phonological interference is a negative transfer of L1 sound system into L2 sound system, e.g. producing L2 phoneme with L1 phoneme quality. Though less common, morphological interference may occur in forms of wrong diction, e.g. the choice of words between month and moon for Indonesian concept bulan. However, this phenomenon can also be explained in terms of intralingual error. The most common one is syntactic interference in which rules for forming L2 syntactic structures are imperfectly applied and even changed by L1 rules. The interference problem is a phenomenon that can not be denied in the second language learning process. In learning a second language, the language acquired after the first one, the role of the first language dominates the performance in the second language. Our knowledge of our first language often gets in the way when we try to speak or write the second language.
Interference is the errors by carrying over the speech habits of the native language or dialect into a second language or dialect (Hartmann and Stork, 1972: 115), Wenrich (1953: 1) asserts that interference is those instances that occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language. In addition, interference is the use of elements of one language or dialect while speaking or writing another.
Interference is a general problem that occurs in bilingualism. How the interference occurs in the second language performance is influenced by some factors. According to Lott (1983: 258 -259), there are three factors that cause the interference:
a. The Interlingual Factor
The interlingual factor which results in interlingual errors are learning activities that produce the patterns in the second language influenced by the first language. Learners make mistake due to the difference of the grammatical system between the first language and second language.
Commonly, errors are caused by the differences between the first and the second language. Such a contrastive analysis hypothesis occurs where structures in the first language which are different from those in the second language produce the errors reflecting the structure of first language. Such errors were said to be due to the influence of learners’ first language habits on second language production (Dulay et. al, 1982: 97).
Corder in Richard (1967: 19) says that errors are the result of interference in learning a second language from the habits of the first language. Because of the difference in system especially grammar, the students will transfer their first language into the second language by using their mother tongue system.
In relation to interrogative sentences, for example, the students may make errors due to the interference. This error may occur because the difference of the grammatical system between the first language and second language. The following sentences are the errors commonly made by the Indonesian students in making English interrogative sentences.
1. Incorrect sentence : The farmer brought what?
Correct sentence : What was brought by the farmer?
What did the farmer bring?
2. Incorrect sentence : When Jane coming?
Correct sentence : When was Jane coming?
b. The Over extension of analogy.
Usually, a learner has been wrong in using a vocabulary caused by the similarity of the element between first language and second language, e.g. the use of cognate words (the same form of word in two languages with different functions or meanings)
c. Transfer of structure.
Here, learners make incorrect sentence caused by the influence of structure of the second language. Besides, his interference can be caused by different system of language. The different system of a language can cause transfer of one language into another. It can be positive transfer and negative transfer.
There are two types of transfer according to Dulay et.al (1982: 101), positive transfer and negative transfer. Negative transfer refers to those instances of transfer, which result in error because old habitual behavior is different from the new behavior being learned. On the contrary, positive transfer is the correct utterance, because both the first language and second language have the same structure, while the negative transfer from the native language is called interference.
Interference is the deviation of target language as a result of their familiarity with more than one language. Dulay et.al (1982: 98) differentiates interference into two parts, the psychological and sociolinguistic. The psychological refers to the influence of old habits when new ones are being learned, whereas sociolinguistic refers to interactions of language when two language communities are in contact. Therefore students will find it difficult in mastering the second language due to the interference, which is influenced by old habit, familiar with mother tongue and interaction of two languages in the communities. The common errors made by the students dealing with the interrogative sentences are:
1) Incorrect sentence : Which road you came?
Correct sentence : Which road did you come?
2) Incorrect sentence : What he comes from your village?
Correct sentence : Do he come from your village?
ERROR ANALYSIS
- Error analysis is an analysis about error that is usually used by researcher or language teacher who does it by collecting error samples, identifying errors, explaining errors, classifying errors, and evaluating errors.
- Error analysis involves suitable and effective teaching learning strategy and remedy
- Second language learning is primarily, if not exclusively, a process of acquiring whatever items are different from the first language.
- error analysis fails to account for the strategy of avoidance. A learner who for one reason or another avoids a particular sound, word, structure, or discourse category may be assumed incorrectly to have no difficulty therewith
It was S.P. Corder who first advocated in ELT/applied linguistics community the importance of errors in language learning process. In Corder (1967), he mentions the paradigm shift in linguistics from a behaviouristic view of language to a more rationalistic view and claims that in language teaching one noticeable effect is to shift the emphasis away from teaching towards a study of learning. He emphasises great potential for applying new hypotheses about how languages are learned in L1 to the learning of a second language. He says "Within this context the study of errors takes on a new importance and will I believe contribute to a verification or rejection of the new hypothesis." (in Richards 1974:.21)
Corder goes on to say that in L1 acquisition we interpret child's 'incorrect' utterances as being evidence that he is in the process of acquiring language and that for those who attempt to describe his knowledge of the language at any point in its development, it is the 'errors' which provide the important evidence.(ibid.: 23) In second language acquisition, Corder proposed as a working hypothesis that some of the strategies adopted by the learner of a second language are substantially the same as those by which a first language is acquired. (It does not mean, however, the course or sequence of learning is the same in L1 and L2.) By classifying the errors that learners made, researchers could learn a great deal about the SLA process by inferring the strategies that second language learners were adopting. It is in this Corder's seminal paper that he adds to our thinking by discussing the function of errors for the learners themselves. For learners themselves, errors are 'indispensable,' since the making of errors can be regarded as a divice the learner uses in order to learn. (Selinker 1992: 150)
Selinker (1992) pointed out the two highly significant contributions that Corder made: "that the errors of a learner, whether adult or child, are (a) not random, but are in fact systematic, and are (b) not 'negative' or 'interfering' in any way with learning a TL but are, on the contrary, a necessary positive factor, indicative of testing hypotheses. (ibid:151) Such contribution in Corder (1967) began to provide a framework for the study of adult learner lanugage. Along with the influence of studies in L1 acquisition and concepts provided by Contrastive Analysis (especially language transfer) and by the interlanguage hypothesis (e.g. fossilization, backsliding, langauge transfer, communication and learning strategies), this paper provided the impetus for many SLA empirical studies
Error and Mistake
- Language learning is like any other human learning. The child learning his first language makes “countless” mistakes” from the point of view of adult grammatical language. Many of these mistakes are logical in the limited linguistic system within with the child operates, but by carefully processing feedback from others the child slowly but surely learns to produce what is acceptable speech in his native language. Second language learning is a process that is clearly not unlike first language learning in its trial-and-error nature. Inevitably the learner will make mistakes in the process of acquisition, and indeed will even impede that process if he does not commit errors and then benefit in turn from various forms of feedback on those errors.
- Human learning is fundamentally a process that involves the making of mistakes. Mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculation, and erroneous assumptions form an important aspect of learning any skill or acquiring information.
- Success comes by profiting from mistakes, by using mistakes to obtain feedback from the environment and with the feedback to make new attempts which successively more closely approximate desired goals.
- A learner’s errors are significant in that they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of language.
Before 1960s, when the behaviouristic viewpoint of language learning was prevailing, learner errors were considered something undesirable and to be avoided. It is because in behaviourists perspectives, people learn by responding to external stimuli and receiving proper reinforcement. A proper habit is being formed by reinforcement, hence learning takes place. Therefore, errors were considered to be a wrong response to the stimulus, which should be corrected immediately after they were made. Unless corrected properly, the error became a habit and a wrong behavioural pattern would stick in your mind.This viewpoint of learning influenced greatly the language classroom, where teachers concentrated on the mimicry and memorisation of target forms and tried to instill the correct patterns of the form into learners' mind. If learners made any mistake while repeating words, phrases or sentences, the teacher corrected their mistakes immediately. Errors were regarded as something you should avoid and making an error was considered to be fatal to proper language learning processes.
This belief of learning was eventually discarded by the well-known radically different perspective proposed by N. Chomsky (1957). He wrote in his paper against B.F. Skinner, that human learning, especially language acquisition, cannot be explained by simply starting off with a "tabula rasa" state of mind. He claimed that human beings must have a certain kind of innate capacity which can guide you through a vast number of sentence generation possibilities and have a child acquire a grammar of that language until the age of five or six with almost no exception. He called this capacity "Universal Grammar" and claimed that it is this very human faculty that linguistics aims to pursue.
This swing-back of pendulum toward a rationalistic view of language ability lead many language teachers to discredit the behaviouristic language learning style and emphasize cognitive-code learning approach. Hence, learners were encouraged to work on more conscious grammar exercises based on certain rules and deductive learning began to be focused again. This application of new linguistic insights, however, did not bear much fruit since Chomsky himself commented that a linguistic theory of the kind he pursued had little to offer for actual language learning or teaching (Chomksy 1966) .
What is mistake?
- a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention.
- A mistake refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a “slip” in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly.
- Native speakers are normally capable of recognizing and correcting such lapses or mistakes, which are not the result of a deficiency in competence but the result of some sort of breakdown or imperfection in the process of producing speech.
- Performance error (mistake) will characteristically be unsystematic (competence error is systematic).
- Mistakes are errors which are caused by memory lapses, physical status (tired) and psychological condition (strong emotion) or by slip of the tongue. Mistake does not reflect in the knowledge of language.
What is error?
- a misconception resulting from incorrect information
- erroneous: inadvertent incorrectness
- An error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner.
- Interlanguage refers to the separateness of a second language learner’s system, a system that has a structurally intermediate status between the native and target languages.
- A systematic error usually cannot be corrected by the learner, but he can “explain” his error in the sense of providing, in different wording and structures, alternative linguistic messages that get his point across and let the hearer know what he was driving at.
- Error (and also mistake) can occur in every linguistic level (sounds, words, word order, word stress, etc.)
Sources of Errors
1. Interlingual transfer (from L1)
The beginning stages of learning a second language are characterized by a great deal of interlingual transfer (from the native language). In these early stages, before the system of the second language is familiar, the native language is the only linguistic system in the previous experience upon which the learner can draw
2. Intralingual transfer
The negative transfer of items within the target language (incorrect generalization of rules within the target language) is a major factor in second language learning. Once the learner has begun to acquire parts of the new system, more and more intralingual transfer is manifested.
3. Context of learning (false concept)
Context refers to the classroom with its teacher and its materials in the case of school learning, or the social situation in the case of untutored second language learning. In a classroom context, the teacher or the textbook can lead the learner to make faulty hypotheses about the language (false concept or induced errors) – wrong explanation by the teachers and books.
4. Communication strategies – conscious employment of verbal or nonverbal mechanism for communicating an idea when precise linguistic forms are not readily available. They involve:
a. Avoidance
The most common type of avoidance strategy is syntactic or lexical avoidance within a
semantic category, e.g. (1) He is a liar (He didn’t speak the truth)
(2) I lost my road (way) – I got lost.
b. Prefabricated patterns
Another common communication device is to memorize certain stock phrases or sentences without internalized knowledge of the components of the phrase. Tourism survival language is full of prefabricated patterns, most of which can be found in pocket bilingual “phrase” books which list hundreds of stock sentences for various occasions.
c. Cognitive and personality style
One’s own personality style or style of thinking can be a source of error, highlighting the idiosyncratic nature of many learner errors. A person with high self-esteem may be willing to risk more errors, in the interest of communication, since he does not feel as threatened by committing errors as a person with low self-esteem, e.g. I drove my bicycle.
d. Appeal to authority (native speaker)
A common strategy of communication is a direct appeal to authority. The learner may, if “stuck” for a particular word or phrase, directly ask a native speaker (the authority) for the form, e.g. How do you say ………..
e. Language switch
When all else fails – when appeal, avoidance, transfer, and other strategies are all incapable of producing a meaningful utterance – a learner may resort to language switch, that is he may simply use his native language whether the hearer knows that native language or not.
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