MORPHOLOGICAL ERRORS IN SPOKEN ENGLISH BY CHILEAN LEARNERS OF A

FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT UNIVERSITY

ngela Martnez, Daniela Maldonado
Applied Linguistics
Foreign Languages Department

Problem

While observing first year students, we

witnessed that in most of the cases
there were morphological errors such
as the incorrect use of past tense,
inflection and ing. In fact, the lack of
this last one was also concerning, due
to it is the first morpheme to be
acquired.
Therefore, the main problem is related
with the absence of metalinguistic
awareness. If you are becoming a
teacher then it is crucial to be aware of
the language the learner uses. And
moreover to be conscious of the
difficulties,
differences
and
other
factors that may interfere with the
correct performance of the L2 learners
when producing oral communication.
Metalinguistics can be classified as
the ability to consciously reflect on the
nature of language, by using the
following skills:
-an awareness that language has a
potential greater than that of simple
symbols (it goes beyond the meaning)
-an
awareness
that
words
are
separable from their referents.
-an awareness that language has a
structure that can be manipulated, that
means that you can change and write
things in many different ways (for
example, if something is written in a
grammatically
way, you can
Possibleincorrect
explanations
change it)

Activitie
1. Dictogloss: Thes class gets divided
into groups of four in which one member
tells a story using past tense and then
they have to take notes and rebuild it.
Once done other member tells another
and
so
on.
2. Negotiation of meaning: The class
will be divided in groups in four in which
they will have to complete jigsaw
puzzles about short stories and talk
about them to the rest of the class.
3. Corrective Feedback: Students and
teacher sit in circle and begin to talk
about a designated topic that varies in
the time they perform this activity.
Whenever a student makes an error, the
teacher can correct it and continue with
the conversation. In further lessons
students would be able to correct
themselves.

The students have different educational

backgrounds. Some of them come from
private schools, but most from public
schools. This variety shows that there
are several kinds of students which also
do not have the same level of English.
It seem that not all of them fulfill the
standards required to be an university
student.
Their undereducated profiles create
motivation barriers which leads to low
participation that in addition to the
previously named factor concludes in
an
almost
inexistent
oral
and
communicative competence.
The
teacher, is the only one showing oral
communication skills throughout the
class, disabling the learners to acquire
any more language to break this cycle,
which would make them capable to
progress or learn the proper usage of
english as a foreign language and in
this case specifically how to use
correctly past tense.

Methodological
proposal

This problem may have its grounds

on several approaches, but we will
support it only on three:

The recommended activities have their

foundations on some strategies of
learning:

The Noticing Hypothesis: is a

concept
in
second-language
acquisition proposed by Richard
Schmidt in 1990 which suggests that
nothing is learned unless it has been
noticed.

NEGOTIATION
Negotiation of meaning: Learners
can not always provide each other with
the
accurate
grammatical
input.
Nevertheless, they can offer each other
genuine
communicative
practice.

The Processability theory: is a

theory and a model of secondlanguage acquisition developed by
Manfred Pienemann in 1998 and
says that learners do not only
transfer what they now from their L1
to the L2 but they have to develop a
certain level of processing capacity
in the second language before they
can use their knowledge of the
features that already exist in their
first language.

Didactic: The response occurs even

though no breakdown in communication
has taken place; it constitutes a timeout from communicating. It involves
negotiation
of
form.

The Focus on Form Approach: is

an approach to language education
in which learners are made aware of
the grammatical form of language
features that they are already able

Context

FEEDBACK
The Corrective Feedback has been
identified as one feature that is believed
to play a crucial role in helping learners
make connections between form and
meaning.
Implicit Feedback: The teacher or
another student responds to a students
error without directly indicating an error
has been made, e.g. by means of a
recast.
Explicit Feedback: The teacher or

DICTOGLOSS
It is often regarded as a multiple skills
and systems activity. Learners practice
listening, writing and speaking (by
working in groups) and use vocabulary,
grammar and discourse systems in order
to complete the task.
The Dictogloss, for example, is a
language teaching technique that is used
to
teach
grammatical
structures.

Reference
s
& Spada . (2006).

Lightbown
How
languages are learned . Oxford: Oxford.
Long, Michael (1991). "Focus on form: a
design feature in language teaching
methodology".
Rod Ellis. (2002). Doing focus-on-form.
New
Zealand:
Pergamon.