Error

INTRODUCTION

At the end of this module you will:

• recognise errors
• have some understanding of why students make them
• be able to prepare useful remedial exercises

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

Psycholinguistics is the study of language acquisition. It brings together the theories of psychology and linguistics in order to carry out this study. This is truly an interdisciplinary field. Linguists study the structure of language, ie sounds and meanings, and the grammar to which they relate, and they come together with psychologists who investigate how people acquire the structures and functions, and use them in speech and understanding. The work can be used to inform TEFL but also to help people with speech and language difficulties where some important component of communication may not have been acquired.

A knowledge of the difficulties of learning a foreign language is built into some degree courses in ESOL and Applied Linguistics by the syllabus including learning a foreign language from scratch in order to study the process by which we are taught and by which we learn (psycholinguistic study). We are not proposing this here, but if you have ever learned a foreign language, draw on your own experiences when you are teaching. How did you learn? How did you not learn? (look back at Unit 3 Module 3 for one person’s discussion of this issue.)

This knowledge of the difficulties in learning a foreign language, and consideration of the possible causes of error should lead you, as a teacher of ESOL, to develop a helpful attitude towards your students. Your students need to be confident enough, and 'uninterrupted' enough to be fluent, while at the same time, they need to know that they will be corrected and not allowed to continue making the same mistakes. Fluency and accuracy are the aims, effective communication, the ultimate goal, being achieved by a blend of the two.

The relationship between their first language and English will affect students learning in both negative and positive ways. Your attitude to languages will also affect your students negatively and positively. Think of all the elements we have talked about that go together to produce a successful language learner. Learning English is a difficult process!