Home work

1.What is the aim of this article?

-The aim of this article is to first argue that the rejection of the value of CA
was unjustified on both theoretical and empirical grounds . Then it was
based on classroom-based research and demonstrated its value for
teachers and their teaching.

2.The author of the article is obviously in favour of explicit learning?What is

explicit learning?What examples does he give?
-The author says that very few teachers in FSLT would deny the value of
some degree of explicit understanding of the grammar of the language they
are learning and that understanding in some simple cases may be derived
from exposure to comprehensible input. Understanding may be facilitate by
an awareness of the differences between the L1 and TL .
He gives these examples:
-Francophones when asked a question such as How long you lived here
for?
Their answer will be:
-I live here since two years. Or - I have 15 years.

3. The author further mentions that all errors can fossilize . What does that
mean? Which errors are especially apt to fossilization?
- L1 influenced errors which are potentially fossiliable and prove to be the
most persistent. The most important is that learners need to understand the
nature of the influence of the L1 in order to overcome it.

4.Which teaching method was CA a part of? How did this method function?
-CA was partly based on behaviourist learning principles in World War
Second and afterwards was developed into the audiolingual method.This
and memorization drills which are part of the audiolingual method.

5.What were the benefits of CA?

-CA input was not used as a means of providing explicit instruction but as
an indicator of which habits were to be eradicted by means of drills.

6.Why did the development of generative grammar lead to the decline of

CA?
-The three prominent applied linguists: Dulay,Burt and Krashen made this
statement: : Learners' first languages are no longer believed to interfere
with their attempts to acquire a second language grammar, and language
teachers no longer need to create special grammar lessons for students
from each language background.

7.What was the new view of error formation?

-First, Marton and Sheen find that the errors in the English of near
bilinguals largely comprise residual and possibly fossilized errors related to
L1 influence. Second, a substantial number of studies involved in the body
of method comparison research of the 60s and 70's had demonstrated the
effectiveness of teaching methods using CA input. It is true that such
research has been criticised for a lack of control of variables. Nevertheless,
the consistency of the findings is such that they cannot be ignored .

8.What were the consequences for the book industry and EFL teachers?
-The result was that publishers were enable to sell the same text books all
over the world and also many Anglophone teachers of English as a second
language were enable to teach anywhere in the world without knowing the
L1 of the students they teach.

9.In spite of the new developments , some research have shown that L1
does influence second language learning.Why then isnt CA included in
EFL books?
- There has been no apparent influence on the world of SFLT in terms of
the availability of teaching texts which exploit CA input.This may be
because of the economic factors related to publishing and theoretical bent
of these publications.The publication of text books contained little to no
explicit grammar content,then publishers have returned to publishing text
books with an underlying grammar syllabus,but this has not extended to
supporting it with CA input.

10.Where we can see the influence of CA?

-We can see the influence of CA in the teaching of foreign grammar to
adults, such techniques as grammatiical explanations, deductive
presentations of the subject matter, translation, the use of the native
language are jointly superior to the combination of techniques
constituting the implicit method.

11.What was the research that the author of the article conducted?
-The research that the author of the article conducted was that the study
entailed comparing two comparable groups of Saudi Arabian graduate
adults preparing for MBA study in the USA during a forty-week period of
intensive English in Saudi Arabia. The results, operationalised in terms of
frequency of error, were revealing for the study allowed for the comparing
of the performance of the experimental group with the control group .
During the forty week period, there were five series of tests, eight weeks
apart. Each series consisted of written, aural and oral tests. Subsequent
statistical analysis by means of t-scores produced the following results. The
EG performed significantly better on the CA items than did the CG in all
three tests though the findings were the least significant in the oral parts.
Thus, the treatment of the CA input was appreciably more Effective with the
EG than with the CG in reducing the number of errors.
Aleksandra Josifova
161 056