Sociolinguistica

Sociolinguistic Research Project
The 7º grade primary school usage variation of third person singular verb inflection –S,

Teacher’s Name: Beatriz Valenzuela Lobos
Student’s Name: Carla MirandaHernández

Santiago 15 December 2011

1. Introduction
When we think about English classes we must take into account that there are diverse learners with different kind of learning’s stylesbut also as teachers we can recognize that students frequently vary their usage of language depending on the context. In order to find an answer of why that happened, specifically in third personsingular verb inflection–S, it is necessary to go through a theory that is intrinsically related with the variability in second language interlanguage.
Variability in second language use theory isconcerned in pointing out why we speak differently depending on the social context, Romaine (2003), claims that variability depend on multiples causes, and that there are a series of possibleexplanations for second language variability, so we can find external an internal reasons. Due to our research is linked to sociolinguistic aspects we will focus on the external variability.
Within externalvariability we can find two explanations, Style and task-based variation, and gender- based variation, considering that the first one is more in line with our research we will work with it.
Styleand task-based variation; sociolinguists claims that learners vary their language usage, dependent on the task, style or interlocutor, Tarone (1988) states that second language learners vary theirlanguage usage from a more pidgin-like style used in informal speech, to a more target-like used in task with a focus on form, that is means in formal contexts.
2. Justification:
Principally, theidea of this project is to analyze why learners vary their use of language, in different circumstances, with the objective to improve second language acquisition.

3. Objectives
3.1 General...