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
noticed that in most of the cases there
were morphological errors such as the
incorrect use of past tense, inflection,
ing, third person singular, among
others. This may be related with the
absence
of
metalinguistic
awareness, because students know
the rules, but they are not aware of
using them while speaking or writing.
Metalinguistic awareness is a cognitive
process that allows a person to monitor
and control their use of language. It is a
type of meta-cognition, which is an
awareness and control of one's own
knowledge and cognitive processes
(being able to think about thinking).
You are able to think about language
and
structure
objectively.
For
example:
1. When I was a child I like sports.
2. When I think about, what is my
favorite subject, always I remember
than I like so much the class of lengua.
There I can develop my linguistic
habilities. Also I understood very well
to
my
teachers

Activitie
1. Dictogloss: The class gets divided into
s one member tells a
groups of four in which
story using past tense and then they have
to take notes and rebuild it. Once done
other member tells another and so on.
(example)
2. Negotiation of meaning: The class
gets divided in groups of four and then
complete jigsaw puzzles about short stories
and talk about them for the rest of the
class.
(example)
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.
For
example:
Student: I visit my family last weekend. I
eat
with
them
and
had
fun.
Professor: don't you mean visited? Ate
sounds better perhaps.

These examples were taken from a

paragraph activity. They were from
different students and both of them
showed
that
there
was
not
Possible
explanations
metalinguistic
awareness
for using the
right
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: It is a

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

NEGOTIATION
OF
MEANING
According
to
Long
(1985,
1996),
Comprehensible input gained through
interactional
adjustments
such
as
negotiating of meaning and modifying
output is central to second language
acquisition.

The Processability theory: It is a

theory and a model of second-language
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.
The Focus on Form Approach: It is
an approach to learning education in
which learners are made aware of the
grammatical form of language features
that they are already able to use
communicatively. It was proposed by
Michael Long in 1988.

Learners can not always provide each

other with the accurate grammatical input.
Nevertheless, they can offer each other
genuine
communicative
practice.
Didactic: The response occurs even
though no breakdown in communication
has taken place; it constitutes a time-out
from
communicating.
It
involves
negotiation
of
form.
CORRECTIVE
FEEDBACK
Lightbown and Spada (1999) define
corrective feedback as: Any indication to
the learners that their use of the target
language
is
incorrect.
It has been identified as one feature that is
believed to play a crucial role in helping
learners make connections between form

Context
The evaluated students join the first year
of English Pedagogy of the University of
Concepcin.
These 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
seems that not all of them fulfill the
standards required to be an university
student.
Their undereducated profiles create
motivation barriers which might? 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 knowledge
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.
We observed an english class with no
more than fifteen students. The lesson
was about writing an article. The teacher
in charge gave a task where students
were asked to create a paragraph. The
main point was related to the structure of
an article and not the correct use of
morphemes. Through this activity and
having analized the paragraphs we
started developing the problem.
DICTOGLOSS
Dictogloss activities encourage learners to
focus on the form of their language while
also being based in communication, and are
used in task-based language teaching
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
Lightbown & Spada. (2006). How languages
are
learned
.
Oxford:
Oxford.
Long (1991). Focus on form: a design
feature in language teaching methodology.
Ellis. (2002). Doing focus-on-form. New
Zealand:
Pergamon.
Pienemann. (1998).Language Processing
and
Second
Language
Development:
Processability
Theory.
Lightbown & Spada. (2006). Explaining
second language learning. How Languages
are Learned. The Noticing Hypothesis. p. 4445.