Language Acquisition

This situation aims to evaluate the general objective.

Support 1

Education is mainly a social action, and as a consequence relies on social interaction. And scholars using conversation analytic principles in the classroom environment found that the essence of classroom interaction was shaped by the underlying drive which is the two-party speech exchange. Furthermore, classroom syllabi and procedures for teaching the speaking skill often amount to nothing more than the ‘parroting of dialogues’. And after years of speaking practice, many learners are still uncapable to take part in genuine conversation in the target language.

Support 2

Foreign language (FL) users are likely to frequently run into communication problems, and to do it more often than their L1 counterparts. Most of the communicative disruptions experienced by EFL learners are induced by a mismatch between their linguistic deficiencies (means) and their communicative intentions (ends). More precisely, These problems may derive from one or a combination of the following: (a) resource deficits, (b) processing time pressure, (c) perceived deficiencies in one’s own language output, and (d) perceived deficiencies in the interlocutor’s performance. In any of these performance situations, the Algerian learner’s attempt to compensate for missing/ inaccessible knowledge results in communication strategy-implementation.

Support 3

   Errors are deviations in usage, result from gaps in learner’s knowledge of the target language. The learner doen not know what is correct and are unable to correct their own deviant utterances. And mistakes are deviations in usage, reflect the learner’s unability to use what they actually know of L2 (called also ‘occational lapses). The correction of an error by the language teacher does not prevent the error occuring again. It is claimed by many researchers that errors are a natural part of language learning. They reveal the patterns of learners’ developing interlanguage systems, where they generalise, use first language rule to the second language. And excessive feedback can have a negative effect on motivation. Thus, error correction is of little benefit for long-term acquisition. To encourage communicative interaction, Algerian teachers should be aware of deciding ‘ when' and which’ errors to be corrected.

Support 4

   ‘Culture’ as an integrated pattern of human behaviour that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviours of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations. Linguists and anthropologists have long recognised that the forms and uses of a given language reflect the cultural values of the society in which the language is spoken. Linguistic competence alone is not enough for learners of a languagege to be competent in that language. Algerian learners are still struggling, even at advanced levels, in communicating effectively in the other’s language as most of them think in their mother tongue (L1) and perform/ speak in the target language (TL). In other terms, their TL use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behaviour.

Rubric

Based on what you read and learned, answer the subsequent tasks:

Task 1

Explain the IRF cycle that characterised classroom discourse.

Task 2

Summarise the main interactional properties that come to shape classroom interaction.

Task 3

Discuss the hiccups/ communication breakdowns faced by non-native speakers.

Task 4

Find out from the article attributed the role of communication strategy instruction.

Task 5

Compare the error root-causes after watching video 1.

Task 6

Analyse the systematic development of learner language.

Task 7

Compare between form-based instruction and content-based instruction.

Task 8

Deduce from video 2 the importance of teaching culture to the EFL learners.