Equidad De Genero

Second Language Acquisition and its implications for error correction

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) takes time and occurs in stages:
* It takes a significant amount of time to acquire an L2 some acquires may never attain native like control of various aspects of the L2.
* Vocabulary, morphology, phonology and syntax may all represent occurring stages of acquisition.
* Theywill make error reflective of their SLA processes. These errors may be caused by inappropriate transference of L1 patterns and/or by incomplete knowledge of the L2.

SLA researches have several practical implications for teachers of L2 writers:
1. It is unrealistic to expect that L2 writers’ production will be free or that even when it is, it will “sound” like that of native English speakers.2. We should not expect student’s accuracy to improve overnight.
3. Most important, L2 student writers need:
- focus on different linguistic issues or error patterns that native speakers do.
- do feedback or error correction.
- Instruction that is sensitive to their unique linguistic deficits and needs for strategy training.


Language skills: Speaking

“Speaking” has often beenviewed as the most demanding of the 4 skills.
Fluent speech contains reduced forms, such as contractions, vowels reductions, the use of slang etc.
The most difficult aspect if spoken English is that it is almost always accomplished via interaction with at least one other speaker.
Briefly Canale & Swain’s proposed that the ability to communicate in a language comprises 4 different dimensions:1. Grammatical competence.- including rules of phonology, orthography, vocabulary, word formation and sentence formation.
2. Sociolinguistic competence.- rules for the expression and understanding of appropriate social meanings and grammatical forms in different contexts.
3. Discourse competence.- how sentences’ elements are tied together and how texts are constructed.
4. Strategiccompetence.- a repertoire of compensatory strategies that help with a variety of communication difficulties.

The oral skills class

Teachers are expected to balance a focus on accuracy with the focus in fluency as well.
One basic consideration is the level of the students
Who are the students?
Why are they there?
What do they expect to learn?
What am I expected to teach?
Teachersneed to become critical consumers of published material by asking questions such as the following:
* Is the text appropriate for the level/audience being taught?
* What sorts of content/topics are used, and are they appropriate for this . group students?
* Does the text integrate speaking, listening and pronunciation?

Activities

There are many ways to promote oral skills inthe ESL/EFL classroom:

1. Discussions:
The students are introduced to a topic via reading, and are then asked to get into pairs or groups to discuss a related topic in order to come up with a solution.

2. Speeches:
Topics for speeches will vary depending on the level of the student and the focus of the class, the teacher can provide the structure of the speech.
-Teacher evaluationof speeches:
* Interaction/rapport with audience
* Content and organization
* Language skills

3. Role Plays:
Is particularly suitable for practicing the sociocultural variations in speech acts.

4. Conversations:
One of the most recent trends in oral skills pedagogy is the emphasis on having students analyze and evaluate the language that they or othersproduce.

5. Audiotape Oral Dialogue Journals:
Oral dialogue journals are on format where practice with fluency and attention to accuracy can be accomplished at the same time.

Teaching Pronunciation

In teaching pronunciation the goal of instruction is to enable our learners to understand and be understood, to build their confidence in entering communicative situations, and to enable them...