Category: Language

Is there a ‘critical age’ for language acquisition?

This case study in relation to the research conducted by linguists in second language acquisition, shows that there is no critical period for vocabulary, syntax and grammar, but that there is a critical period for phonological skills.  This period is different among individuals, and is determined by several factors, such as motivation, repetition, encouragement, and shared phonological features between one’s first and second language.

The argument I am supporting in this article is that there is a critical period for second language acquisition, and that it applies only to accent. To support my argument, I will examine the case of J.M., a native Spanish speaker who learned English as a second language. In addition, I will examine whether the conclusions drawn from J.M.’s case are in agreement with some of the existing literature where viewpoints of linguists are presented.

J.M. started learning English at the age of eleven in Spain. His teachers gave great importance to syntax and grammar, and consequently J.M. was very competent in these areas. However, all of his teachers were non-native speakers of English and their accent was not native-like; as a result, J.M.’s English sound production was also non-native like. In the classroom, J.M. was never corrected when he pronounced a word incorrectly. J.M. was immersed into an English-speaking environment when he came to the United States at the age of 18. This age is quite beyond the critical age, which ends at puberty, according to Lenneberg (1967, cited in Grimshaw et al., 1998).

I will examine whether and how J.M.’s accent, vocabulary, grammar and syntax evolved after his arrival in the United States, and will investigate whether these results agree with the existing literature. First, let’s examine vocabulary. Contrary to what one might expect, J.M. had greater difficulty learning new words during childhood than after the age of 18. This can be easily explained if we consider that during childhood, J.M. was not exposed to the foreign language continuously, but only in the classroom (1-2 hours per day) and a couple of hours outside the classroom, when watching English television programs. In contrast, in the United States he increased his vocabulary with great ease. I believe this was due to two factors: repetition and need. By repetition I mean that J.M. was now exposed to the language continuously. Marcotte and Morere (1990) showed that environmental deprivation leads to atypical brain organization as regards language functions. Marcotte and Morere’s study concentrated on first language acquisition, and we could hardly say that J.M. was deprived of learning the language; however, J.M.’s case agrees with Marcotte and Morere’s results in the following aspect: environmental factors play a very important role in language acquisition. In J.M.’s case, vocabulary repetition constitutes an environmental factor that is linguistic in nature. The need to communicate is of great importance for language acquisition; it is a big incentive to the learner. This need is the pressure that Hurford (1991) refers to when he argues that the capacity to acquire language “was helped to happen by selective pressure resulting from the enormous usefulness of language” (p.172), or when he argues that “the critical period effect “just happened”, and was allowed to happen because of the lack of selective pressure to acquire (more) language (or to acquire it again) once it has been acquired” (p. 172).

My argument is that there is no critical period for vocabulary, and that vocabulary can be acquired at advanced ages. In first language acquisition, the reason that the increase in children’s vocabulary is much greater than that of adults’ vocabulary is that children have a greater need to learn new words because their vocabulary is not rich enough at an early age, thus making communication difficult. J.M.’s case is similar to a child acquiring his first language. Although for J.M. English is his second language, he felt a similar need to communicate, since his English vocabulary was not rich enough, making communication difficult in his everyday life in the United States. The above conclusion agrees with that of Davis and Kelly (1997), whose “experiments examined the vocabulary component of language and […] did not find sensitive period effects” (p. 457). They add that although “one’s ability to learn the phonology and syntax of a new language later in life would be compromised, vocabulary acquisition is much more open-ended as new words are encountered throughout life. Thus there is a clear advantage to maintaining the ability to learn words” (p. 458).

Now let’s examine syntax and grammar. When J.M. arrived in the U.S. at the age of 18, his level of English syntax and grammar was already quite advanced. Great importance was placed on these two aspects of the language since he started learning it in Spain; in addition, due to similarities in syntax and grammar between English and Spanish, he didn’t have much difficulty reaching an advanced level quickly. This is why when he arrived in the U.S. there was no significant improvement observed, which we could have used to investigate whether there are critical age effects on syntax and grammar and whether syntax and grammar can be acquired after the critical period. However, we should keep in mind that J.M. started learning English at the age of 11. If there were a critical period for syntax and grammar, J.M. would not have been able to reach a native level. This conclusion is in agreement with Scovel (1998, cited in Gitterman, 1999), according to whom there is no support for a critical period for syntax. Nevertheless, this conclusion is not in agreement with Johnson et al. (1996) who concluded through discussion of experiments that grammatical performance of adult learners differs from that of native speakers qualitatively (i.e. not simply quantitatively). However, the results obtained by Johnson et al. may not be accurate, since, as they state in their study, “adult learners show a substantial amount of inconsistency in their judgments of grammaticality, and thus their performance is not well modeled by any simple or entirely deterministic model of underlying knowledge” (p.349).

So far we have examined vocabulary, syntax and grammar. But what happens when it comes to accent? Is there a critical period, after which one cannot learn to sound like a native speaker? Grimsaw et al (1998) examined the case of E.M., a man profoundly deaf since birth, who was provided with hearing aids at the age of fifteen. The language he acquired after that age was characterised by severe deficits in both verbal comprehension and production. This result favors the critical period hypothesis for first language acquisition. Gitterman (1999) examined Grimshaw et al.’s study and investigated whether the same conclusion can be drawn for second language acquisition. He concluded that there is certainly a critical period for phonological skills in second language acquisition. This conclusion agrees with that of Hakuta (1986, cited in Gitterman, 1999) and Scovel (1998, cited in Gitterman, 1999); “Scovel asserts that a loss of neuroplasticity in the brain of adults is the likely reason for the existence of a critical period for speech” (Gitterman, 1999, p. 378). In addition to Gitterman and Hakuta, Munro et al. (1996) also support the notion that there is a critical period for accent in second language acquisition. Munro et al. examined the hypothesis that production of English vowels depends on the age at which the second language is acquired. By examining English vowel production by native Italian speakers (but who had been living in an English-speaking environment for years), Munro et al. found that the presence of accent increased with age of arrival at the English-speaking environment. According to Long (1990) who studied the dependence of second language learning on age of acquisition, starting after age six appears to make it impossible for many learners to achieve native-like competence in phonology. Long attributes this lack of ability to achieve native-like competence in phonology to the loss of brain plasticity which happens with maturation. But what is that critical age, after which native-like competence in phonology is difficult to achieve? Johnson and Newport (1989) found that “performance gradually declined from about age seven on, until adulthood” (p. 95) (i.e. the decline begins far before puberty). Claude Hagège (1996), a French linguist, supports that the critical age is eleven years. Up to that age, he argues, the child can receive foreign sounds and the mouth can articulate them by imitation. At the age of 11 foreign sounds start being “filtered”, i.e. the child is no longer sensitive to sounds that do not exist in his native language. Lenneberg (1967, cited in Harley, 1995) suggested that the critical period ends at puberty.

The majority of studies seem to arrive at the conclusion that there is a critical period for second language acquisition as regards phonological skills. However, Bialystok (1997) argues that the evidence for a critical period for second language acquisition is not convincing. According to Bialystok, young learners acquire a second language with greater success than adult learners, but he attributes this success not to the existence of a critical period, but to other factors (such as the time one dedicates to language learning and motivation). Let’s examine J.M.’s case again, this time from a phonological perspective. When J.M. arrived in the U.S., he could hardly be understood; his accent was far from native. However, he had no difficulty at all in extracting (understanding) phonological information. For example, he pronounced the words “law” and “low” in exactly the same manner, although he could distinguish between the two when he heard them. Similarly, he produced / I / and /i/ in the same way (thus making no distinction between “feet” and “fit”), but had no trouble distinguishing the two when a native English speaker uttered them. Within a year after his arrival in the US, a significant improvement was observed. Although J.M. still did not sound like a native speaker, he could now be well understood. This observation shows that a phonological improvement can be achieved even after the age of eighteen. But is it possible to achieve native-like phonological competence after that age? During the following two years (age 18-20), J.M. continued to show phonological improvement, although this improvement was not significant (compared to the first year after his immersion into the English-speaking environment). How can we explain this decrease in phonological improvement? Can we argue then that 18 is the critical period for second language acquisition? At the age of 22, J.M. consulted a speech pathologist and had three one-hour sessions of “accent modification”. Tongue and lip positions required for production of various sounds were clearly explained to him. By using a mirror, J.M. could see whether he followed these mouth movements and compare them to those of the speech pathologist. In addition, J.M.’s sounds were recorded and replayed, so that he could observe himself where he needed improvement. After each session, J.M. practiced the sounds that he had worked on with the speech pathologist. After the treatment was finished, J.M. was able to produce the sounds he had worked on like a native speaker. For example, he could now produce the words “law” and “low” in a native-like manner. Unfortunately, the number of accent-modification sessions was not sufficient for an improvement in all of J.M.’s phonological difficulties. With more sessions and more practice, J.M. would likely have reached native-like phonological skills.

The answer to the question I posed earlier, i.e. how can we explain the decrease in J.M.’s phonological improvement, I believe is straightforward: he stopped trying; he did not dedicate any time or effort to practicing English sounds after his treatment was over. This conclusion is in perfect agreement with Bialystok (1997), according to whom adults can achieve the same success as children if they dedicate time and effort to language learning. As noted earlier, the decrease in J.M.’s phonological improvement started at the age of 18. Could this imply that 18 is the critical age? This contradicts most of the studies conducted on this subject, according to which this age is far beyond the critical period. However, this finding seems not to be in disagreement with Bialystok, who argues that the level where language noticeably declines is around the age of 20.

One could argue that J.M.’s case is an exception, and that we should not draw conclusions about what the critical period is based on this case. Therefore I will not use the study of J.M. as evidence to show that the critical period extends beyond the age of 18. I will rather use these findings to argue that the critical period is not a value common to each individual, but that it changes from person to person. Thus, although Claude Hagège argues that the age of eleven is a threshold for second language acquisition (and other researchers have suggested other critical ages), I argue that there is a critical period that differs among individuals, and that the loss of neuroplasticity is one of many factors (and certainly not the most important) that determine it. Other factors are motivation/need for communication, repetition, encouragement, relation between the native and the second language (shared features) etc.

Let’s examine how these factors affected J.M.’s phonological progress. The effect of motivation/need for communication has already been discussed; the need for communication was a very important factor in J.M.’s progress during the first year after his arrival in the United States. I believe that repetition also played a very important role during that first year. J.M. was now able to listen to English sounds repeatedly, and when he had doubts about the exact pronunciation of a word, he could easily verify it. As far as encouragement is concerned, it is a necessary factor so that an adult can practice producing different sounds exactly like a child does, without fear that he could make a mistake. Claude Hagège (1996) discusses this fear and considers it to be a big obstacle in an adult’s phonological progress. A child does not have a fear of being laughed at, if he does not pronounce a word correctly. An adult, on the other hand, is often afraid that he may produce sounds that will not sound native-like (for example, that he may over-aspirate a /p/ in the beginning of a word), and consequently he chooses to retain the sounds of his native language. J.M. certainly had that fear, but he made a great effort to overcome it when he realized that it was an obstacle to his being understood. J.M.’s speech pathologist gave him the encouragement he needed, as well as the option of trying to produce a particular sound many times until he produced it in a native-like manner. As regards non-shared features between English and Spanish, there are many. This is why J.M. had to put great effort into learning to produce new sounds. A bigger number of shared phonological features would facilitate the attainment of native-like pronunciation. This conclusion is in agreement with Bialystok (1997) who states that “the hypothesis is that language learners will find it difficult to master a structure that was not a defining feature of the first language and relatively easy to master a structure shared across the two languages. These differences may be exacerbated for older learners, but there should be no age differences in the ability to learn structures that are shared across the two languages” (p. 126). Although this statement does not refer specifically to accent, it is evident that it applies to accent, since no extra effort is needed to produce, in a second language, sounds that already have been mastered in one’s first language.

The examination of J.M.’s case in relation to the research conducted by linguists in second language acquisition, shows that there is no critical period for vocabulary, syntax and grammar, but that there is a critical period for phonological skills. This period is different among individuals, and is determined by several factors (and not simply by a loss of neuroplasticity), such as motivation, repetition, encouragement, and shared phonological features between one’s first and second language.

REFERENCES

Bialystok, E. (1997). The structure of age: in search of barriers to second language acquisition.Second Language Research, 13, 116-137.

Davis, S. M., & Kelly, M. H. (1997). Knowledge of the English noun-verb stress difference by native and nonnative speakers. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 445-460.

Gitterman, M. R. (1999). The critical period: some thoughts on Grimshaw et al. (1998). Brain and Language, 66, 377-381.

Grimshaw, G. M., Adelstein, A., Bryden, M. P., & MacKinnon, G. E. (1998). First-language acquisition in adolescence: evidence for a critical period for verbal language development. Brain and Language, 63, 237-255.

Hagège, C. (1996). L’enfant aux deux langues. Paris, France: Editions Odile Jacob.

Harley, T. (1995). The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. Coventry, UK: Psychology Press.

Hurford, J. R. (1991). The evolution of the critical period for language acquisition. Cognition, 40, 159-201.

Johnson, J. S., Shenkman, K. D., Newport, E. L. & Medin, D. L. (1996). Indeterminacy in the grammar of adult language learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 335-352.

Johnson, J. S. & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60-69.

Long, M. (1990). Maturational constraints on language development. Studies in second language acquisition, 12, 251-285.

Marcotte, A. C., & Morere, D.A., (1990). Speech lateralization in deaf populations: Evidence for a developmental critical period. Brain and Language, 39, 134-152.

Munro, M. J., Flege, J. E., & Mackay, I. R. A. (1996). The effects of age of second language learning on the production of English vowels. Applied Psycholinguistics, 17, 313-334.

 

 

Copyright © Maria Karra, 2012-2019. All rights reserved.

Second Language Acquisition: Learners’ Errors and Error Correction in Language Teaching

Pit Corder’s 1967 article entitled “The significance of learners’ errors” is often cited as the starting point for the discipline now known as second language acquisition (SLA). This article discusses four major insights developed by Corder and explains how Corder’s thinking has influenced the following lines of subsequent SLA research:

  • studies of learner errors
  • studies of L1 influence on SLA
  • studies of corrective feedback

It is to S.P. Corder that Error Analysis owes its place as a scientific method in linguistics. As Rod Ellis cites (p. 48), “it was not until the 1970s that EA became a recognized part of applied linguistics, a development that owed much to the work of Corder”. Before Corder, linguists observed learners’ errors, divided them into categories, tried to see which ones were common and which were not, but not much attention was drawn to their role in second language acquisition. It was Corder who showed to whom information about errors would be helpful (teachers, researchers, and students) and how.

There are many major concepts introduced by S. P. Corder in his article “The significance of learners’ errors”, among which we encounter the following:

1) It is the learner who determines what the input is. The teacher can present a linguistic form, but this is not necessarily the input, but simply what is available to be learned.

2) Keeping the above point in mind, learners’ needs should be considered when teachers/linguists plan their syllabuses. Before Corder’s work, syllabuses were based on theories and not so much on learners’ needs.

3) Mager (1962) points out that the learners’ built-in syllabus is more efficient than the teacher’s syllabus. Corder adds that if such a built-in syllabus exists, then learners’ errors would confirm its existence and would be systematic.

4) Corder introduced the distinction between systematic and non-systematic errors. Unsystematic errors occur in one’s native language; Corder calls these “mistakes” and states that they are not significant to the process of language learning. He keeps the term “errors” for the systematic ones, which occur in a second language.

5) Errors are significant in three ways:
– to the teacher: they show a student’s progress
– to the researcher: they show how a language is acquired, what strategies the learner uses.
– to the learner: he can learn from these errors.

6) When a learner has made an error, the most efficient way to teach him the correct form is not by simply giving it to him, but by letting him discover it and test different hypotheses. (This is derived from Carroll’s proposal (Carroll 1955, cited in Corder), who suggested that the learner should find the correct linguistic form by searching for it.

7) Many errors are due to that the learner uses structures from his native language. Corder claims that possession of one’s native language is facilitative. Errors in this case are not inhibitory, but rather evidence of one’s learning strategies.

The above insights played a significant role in linguistic research, and in particular in the approach linguists took towards errors. Here are some of the areas that were influenced by Corder’s work:

STUDIES OF LEARNER ERRORS 

Corder introduced the distinction between errors (in competence) and mistakes (in performance). This distinction directed the attention of researchers of SLA to competence errors and provided for a more concentrated framework. Thus, in the 1970s researchers started examining learners’ competence errors and tried to explain them. We find studies such as Richards’s “A non-contrastive approach to error analysis” (1971), where he identifies sources of competence errors; L1 transfer results in interference errors; incorrect (incomplete or over-generalized) application of language rules results in intralingual errors; construction of faulty hypotheses in L2 results in developmental errors.

Not all researchers have agreed with the above distinction, such as Dulay and Burt (1974) who proposed the following three categories of errors: developmental, interference and unique. Stenson (1974) proposed another category, that of induced errors, which result from incorrect instruction of the language.
As most research methods, error analysis has weaknesses (such as in methodology), but these do not diminish its importance in SLA research; this is why linguists such as Taylor (1986) reminded researchers of its importance and suggested ways to overcome these weaknesses.

As mentioned previously, Corder noted to whom (or in which areas) the study of errors would be significant: to teachers, to researchers and to learners. In addition to studies concentrating on error categorization and analysis, various studies concentrated on these three different areas. In other words, research was conducted not only in order to understand errors per se, but also in order to use what is learned from error analysis and apply it to improve language competence.

Such studies include Kroll and Schafer’s “Error-Analysis and the Teaching of Composition”, where the authors demonstrate how error analysis can be used to improve writing skills. They analyze possible sources of error in non-native-English writers, and attempt to provide a process approach to writing where the error analysis can help achieve better writing skills.

These studies, among many others, show that thanks to Corder’s work, researchers recognized the importance of errors in SLA and started to examine them in order to achieve a better understanding of SLA processes, i.e. of how learners acquire an L2.

STUDIES OF L1 INFLUENCE ON SLA 

Various researchers have concentrated on those errors which demonstrate the influence of one’s native language to second language acquisition. Before Corder’s work, interference errors were regarded as inhibitory; it was Corder who pointed out that they can be facilitative and provide information about one’s learning strategies (point 7, listed above). Claude Hagège (1999) is a supporter of this concept and he mentions it in his book “The child between two languages”, dedicated to children’s language education. According to Hagège, interference between L1 and L2 is observed in children as well as in adults. In adults it is more obvious and increases continuously, as a monolingual person gets older and the structures of his first language get stronger and impose themselves more and more on any other language the adult wishes to learn. In contrast, as regards children, interference features will not become permanent unless the child does not have sufficient exposure to L2. If there is sufficient exposure, then instead of reaching a point where they can no longer be corrected (as often happens with phonetics features), interference features can be easily eliminated. Hagège stresses that there is no reason for worry if interference persists more than expected. The teacher should know that a child that is in the process of acquiring a second language will subconsciously invent structures influenced by knowledge he already possesses. These hypotheses he forms may constitute errors. These errors, though, are completely natural; we should not expect the child to acquire L2 structures immediately (p. 81).

In addition to studies of L1 transfer in general, there have been numerous studies for specific language pairs. Thanh Ha Nguyen (1995) conducted a case study to demonstrate first language transfer in Vietnamese learners of English. He examined a particular language form, namely oral competence in English past tense making. He tried to determine the role of L1 transfer in the acquisition of this English linguistic feature as a function of age, time of exposure to English, and place and purpose of learning English.

The influence of L1 on L2 was also examined by Lakkis and Malak (2000) who concentrated on the transfer of Arabic prepositional knowledge to English (by Arab students). Both positive and negative transfer were examined in order to help teachers identify problematic areas for Arab students and help them understand where transfer should be encouraged or avoided. In particular, they concluded that “an instructor of English, whose native language is Arabic, can use the students’ L1 for structures that use equivalent prepositions in both languages. On the other hand, whenever there are verbs or expressions in the L1 and L2 that have different structures, that take prepositions, or that have no equivalent in one of the languages, instructors should point out these differences to their students”.

Not only was L1 influence examined according to language pair, but according to the type of speech produced (written vs. oral). Hagège (p. 33) discusses the influence of L1 on accent; he notes that the ear acts like a filter, and after a critical age (which Hagège claims is 11 years), it only accepts sounds that belong to one’s native language. Hagège discusses L1 transfer in order to convince readers that there is indeed a critical age for language acquisition, and in particular the acquisition of a native-like accent. He uses the example of the French language, which includes complex vowel sounds, to demonstrate that after a critical age, the acquisition of these sounds is not possible; thus, learners of a foreign language will only use the sounds existing in their native language when producing L2 sounds, which may often obstruct communication.

STUDIES OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK 

Corder elaborated on Carroll’s work to show that the most efficient way to teach a student the correct linguistic form is to let him test various hypotheses and eventually find the right form (point 6, listed above). In these steps, Hagège points out the importance of self correction (p. 82-83). According to Hagège, it is useful to always perform an error analysis based on written tests administered by the teacher, but without informing the student of the purpose of the test. On that basis, self-correction is preferable to correction by the teacher, especially if the latter is done in a severe or intimidating way. Self correction is even more efficient when it is done with the help of children’s classmates. According to teachers, the younger the children, the greater the cooperation among them and the less aggressive or intimidating the corrections. Hagège dedicates a section in his book to the importance of treating errors in a positive way. In this section, titled “The teacher as a good listener”, he notes that it is useless, if not harmful, to treat errors as if they were “diseases or pathological situations which must be eliminated”, especially if this treatment becomes discouraging, as occurs when teachers lose their patience because of children’s numerous errors. This, of course, does not mean that corrections should be avoided; after all it is the teacher’s duty to teach the rules of the L2. But the correction of every error as soon as it occurs is not recommended. The justification that Hagège offers is the following: the linguistic message that the child tries to produce is a sequence of elements which are interdependent; immediate corrections which interrupt this message tend to produce negative consequences, even to the less sensitive children; such consequences include anxiety, fear of making an error, the development of avoidance strategies, reduced motivation for participation in the classroom, lack of interest for learning, reduced will for self correction, and lack of trust towards the teacher. Esser (1984, cited in Hagège) also made a similar point: repetitive and immediate corrections, he noted, may cause sensitive children to develop aggressive behavior towards their classmates or teacher. Thus, Hagège concludes, correction must not be applied by the teacher unless errors obstruct communication. This is the main criterion for error correction (i.e. obstruction of communication) presented by Hagège; however there have been studies which examined such criteria in greater detail, such as Freiermuth’s “L2 Error Correction: Criteria and Techniques” (1997). Freiermuth accepts Corder’s view (point 6) and proposes criteria for error correction in the classroom. These criteria are: exposure, seriousness, and students’ needs.

In the case of exposure, Freiermuth claims that when a child creates language (for example, when he tries to express an idea by using a linguistic form he has not yet acquired), he will most likely make errors; correcting these errors will be ineffective because the learner is not aware of them. Thus, error correction would result in the acquisition of the correct form only if the learner has been previously exposed to that particular language form.

As regards the seriousness criterion, Freiermuth claims that the teacher must determine the gravity of an error before deciding whether he should correct it or not. Here Freiermuth sets a criterion which agrees with that of Hagège’s: “the error, he states, must impede communication before it should be considered an error that necessitates correction”. But what constitutes a serious error? Which errors are those which should not be corrected? As an examples of non-serious errors, Freiermuth mentions those errors which occur due to learners’ nervousness in the classroom, due to their stress or the pressure of having to produce accurately a linguistic form in the L2. These errors can occur even with familiar structures; in that case, they are not of serious nature and are similar to what Corder called “mistakes”. Here again we see Corder’s influence in error analysis, and in particular in the distinction between errors and mistakes. Freiermuth goes on to suggest a hierarchy of errors (according to seriousness) to help teachers decide which errors should be corrected: “Errors that significantly impair communication [are] at the top of the list, followed by errors that occur frequently, errors that reflect misunderstanding or incomplete acquisition of the current classroom focus, and errors that have a highly stigmatizing effect on the listeners”. He also clarifies what can cause stigmatization: profound pronunciation errors, or errors of familiar forms.

Another important criterion that must be considered by the teacher is individual students’ needs. The importance of this factor is mentioned in Corder, who in turn notes that this idea had been suggested previously by Carroll (1955, cited in Corder 1967) and Ferguson (1966, cited in Corder 1967). Each student is different and thus may react differently to error correction. We infer from Freiermuth’s claim that the teacher must perform two main tasks: first, assess some specific character traits of students, such as self-confidence and language acquisition capability. Freiermuth agrees with Walz (1982, cited in Freiermuth) that self-confident, capable students can profit from even minor corrections, while struggling students should receive correction only on major errors. This claim agrees with Esser and Hagège’s claim that repetitive corrections are likely to decrease motivation; it is reasonable to accept that students who lack self-confidence will be “stigmatized” to a greater degree than confident students.

The teacher’s second task, according to Freiermuth, is to listen to learners’ L2 utterances in order to determine where errors occur (i.e. which linguistic forms cause students difficulties), their frequency, and their gravity (according to the severity criteria mentioned above). Then the teacher can combine the outcome of these tasks and decide on correction techniques for individual students.

A different approach to error correction was suggested by Porte (1993), who stressed the importance of self-correction. Porte refers to Corder’s distinction of errors and mistakes and points out that many students do not know the difference. It is important, Porte notes, that students know how to identify an error in order to avoid it in the future. She agrees with Corder that it is more efficient for learners to correct themselves than be corrected by the teacher, and goes on to suggest a four-step approach for self-correction. This approach consists of questions that the teacher provides to students. After writing an essay, students should read it four times, each time trying to answer the questions included in each of the four steps. Thus, in each re-reading task (each step) they concentrate on a different aspect of their essay. In brief, the first task asks them to highlight the verbs and check the tenses; in the second task students concentrate on prepositions; the third task requires them to concentrate on nouns (spelling, agreement between subject and verb); finally in the fourth task students should try to correct potential personal mistakes. Porte also offers some clarification of what is meant by personal mistakes, in order to help the students identify them.

The studies mentioned above are only a few examples that demonstrate how S. Pit Corder’s work influenced the area of error analysis in linguistics. The concepts that Corder introduced directed researcher’s attention to specific areas of error analysis; they helped linguists realize that although errors sometimes obstruct communication, they can often facilitate second language acquisition; also they played a significant role in training teachers and helping them identify and classify students’ errors, as well as helping them construct correction techniques.

REFERENCES

Corder, S. P. 1967. “The significance of learners’ errors”. International Review of Applied Linguistics 5: 161-9.

Dulay, H., and Burt, M., “Errors and strategies in child second language acquisition”, TESOL Quarterly 8: 129-136, 1974.

Ellis, R., “The Study of Second Language Acquisition”, Oxford University Press, 1994.

Esser, U., “Fremdsprachenpsychologische Betrachtungen zur Fehlerproblematic im Fremdsprachenunterricht”, Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 4:151-159, 1984, (cited in Hagège 1999).

Freiermuth, M. R., “L2 Error Correction: Criteria and Techniques”, The Language Teacher Online 22.06, http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/97/sep/freiermuth.html, 1997.

Hagège, C. “L’enfant aux deux langues” (The child between two languages), Greek translation, Polis editions, Athens 1999. (Original publication: Editions Odile Jacob, 1996).

Kroll, Barry, and John C. Schafer. “Error-Analysis and the Teaching of Composition”, College Composition and Communication 29: 242-248, 1978

Lakkis, K. and Malak, M. A.. “Understanding the Transfer of Prepositions”. FORUM, Vol 38, No 3, July-September 2000. (Online edition: http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol38/no3/p26.htm)

Mager, R.F. “Preparing Instructional Objectives”, Fearon Publishers, Palo Alto, CA 1962.

Nguyen, Thanh Ha. “First Language Transfer and Vietnamese Learners’ Oral Competence in English Past Tense Marking: A Case Study.”, Master of Education (TESOL) Research Essay, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia1995.

Porte, G. K., “Mistakes, Errors, and Blank Checks”, FORUM, Vol 31, No 2, p. 42, January-March 1993. (Online edition: http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol31/no1/p42.htm)

Richards, J., “A non-contrastive approach to error analysis”, English Language Teaching 25: 204-219, 1971.

Stenson, N. “Induced errors” in Shumann and Stenson (eds.), 1974, cited in Ellis (p. 60).

Taylor G., “Errors and explanations”, Applied Linguistics 7: 144-166, 1986.

 

 

Copyright © Maria Karra, 2012-2019. All rights reserved.

A special person

I was sitting by the pool a few days ago, working on my “You’re a Greek, stop looking like milk” mission, when another resident of my building came and sat next to me. He was blond and his skin was even whiter than mine. He started talking to me in Spanish; it turned out he was Cuban. When I said I was Greek he said I didn’t look Greek, that I didn’t look like anything, that I could be anything (Should I throw him in the water or should I ignore him?, I thought). I said “Well, you must have thought I was Hispanic, otherwise you wouldn’t have spoken to me in Spanish.” He said that was the only language he knew. He had been in the US for more than fourteen years but he’d been able not only to get by but to work in a hospital even with his very limited English.
  
After we talked for a while about things of little importance (he was telling me that his tanning accelerator didn’t have any effect, I said I use Coppertone because the smell brings back beautiful memories of my childhood in Greece), he told me about his life. He said he had just moved to the building and that he lived with his mother and his sister, who was a special little girl, “es una niña especial”. I smiled and tried to register this. Whenever I’m not 100% sure about the meaning of something someone says to me, I just smile a little and in those first few seconds I’m racing through my brain’s dictionaries and corpuses to see what it could possibly mean. After discarding the possibility that he just loves his sister so much that at the first mention of her he says she’s a special person, I realized he meant she was a child with special needs. Thank goodness I had only smiled, any other reaction would have been inappropriate and maybe even offensive (think “Oh, what’s so special about her?”, even if said with the best of intentions or out of plain curiosity).
  
He went on talking but at that moment I had already drifted away in virtual dictionaries and sunk into the Spanish depository in my head, trying to remember if I’d ever heard or read “niño especial” with that meaning. I could only find “persona con necesidades especiales”. I couldn’t wait to go back upstairs and write to my Spanish friends to ask if this term is commonly used to refer to a mentally or physically handicapped person. Of course I wasn’t going to interrupt the conversation or my mission! I jumped from dictionary to dictionary in my brain, in the other languages I know. I stopped at French for a while, then moved on to Greek and parked there. I tried several terms, several synonyms of special, periphrastic and paraphrastic equivalents. Nothing. Was it an Americanism of Spanish speakers? “A special girl.” I smiled again, although the man had long moved on to a different topic.
  
Eventually I joined him again in the conversation but went back to that special term again and again that day and the next, smiling at the sweetness of it and of those it describes or should describe, and wished that it replaced all other equivalents in all languages and all dialects and all registers and all situations.

Uses and abuses of “heroes”

In the last thirteen years or so, since September 11, 2001 to be precise, the frequency of use of the word “hero” has increased exponentially. (Ouch, listen to me, “the frequency of use has increased exponentially”… I thought I’d left my engineering self in the past…)
  
Yes, those firefighters were heroes but after that, whenever someone does a good deed, he’s called a hero. A guy climbs up a tree to bring down a cat that has been stuck there for two hours, and he’s a hero. I’m not making this up, the cat story was on the news a couple of years ago. A calf fell into a pit in Flagstaff, Arizona and the policeman that pulled it out was called a hero on the Flagstaff local news. The people that survived the Boston marathon bombing last year were also called heroes; the ones that got injured were greater heroes than the others –the plain heroes. It seems to me that the word “hero” has replaced less extravagant characterizations such as “brave” or “courageous” or “admirable”. For some reason, the first person that comes to my mind when I hear this word is Manolis Glezos, who climbed up the Acropolis and tore down the swastika back in 1941, when the Nazis had entered Athens. That is a hero. To equate bringing down the Nazi flag from the Acropolis with bringing down a cat from a tree is just absurd.

Of course we don’t have go to back to a war to look for heroes. There are many among us. I am a member of the Facebook group “Living Donors Online”. Yesterday a member wrote:
“Hi all, just donated a kidney to my cousin 2 hours ago! I feel hopeful my gift can make the recipient better”.

Another member replied:
“You are a true hero. I can’t wait until I donate on July 15.. Hang in there, get well and keep us posted.”

And then another member said:
“Welcome to the real life super heroes club, bro. Speedy recovery.”

Now these are heroes. Super heroes indeed.  Giving life, looking forward to taking out part of themselves to offer it to someone else. These are heroes. Let’s use the word where it is appropriate and deserved. 

Too much informations [sic]

Just recently in a translation facebook group we were talking about “informations”, that monstrosity we’re hearing all the more often. Well, on my Delta flight a month ago, the flight attendant -a native English speaker- said through the intercom: “For internet service look in your Sky magazine for informations on how to connect”. Is this going to be yet another case of widespread misuse leading to widespread acceptance? Like …/nucular/ instead of nuclear? Of course it’s not as painful for me to hear as my pet peeve –actually, calling it a pet peeve makes it sound cute. It’s not cute. It’s closer to a knife than to a pet. Not a knife sitting in my cutlery drawer but a knife being stabbed in my chest. So my “stab knife” is …aircrafts (surprise surprise). And spacecrafts. As if mounting an engine is an activity of arts and crafts.

On the same flight, a couple of rows behind me, a mother –native English speaker- was teaching new words to her little baby daughter. I could hear her say over and over again: “Where’s the keys?”, “Where’s the books?”, “Where’s the bus?” (she got one right, sigh of momentary relief), “Where’s the girls?” (back to stabbing). I felt the need to turn around and stop this, I wish it weren’t inappropriate to intervene in cases of linguistic abuse, or to put it less mildly, language butchering.

On a more recent trip, right after I landed in Boston, I received a phone call from a guy claiming that I was in legal trouble and that I needed to pay him two thousand dollars to settle the matter in a friendly way right then and there, over the phone, instead of going to court. You guessed it, he was a scammer, but a professional one! Very well prepared, he had answers to all my questions. “I’m calling from your local police department, ma’am”, he said. When I asked him which police department that was, he said Cambridge. (I don’t live in Cambridge; I used to, many years ago.) He kept saying to me in his Indian accent: “We got informations on you ma’am. We got informations. According to our informations on you, ma’am,…”.

I’d had enough.  The grammar freak in me was getting palpitations, so I interrupted him and said: “First of all, it is information, not informations, there’s no s! Speak English damn it! And second, if you were really calling from the police department you would know that I don’t live in Cambridge!”
The guy went on: “Well, where do you live ma’am? We can transfer this to your local police department…”.  I hang up. I probably should have referred him to some English-language trainings (ouch, I stabbed myself).

CEO, freelancer, or what should you call yourself?

Over the years I have seen many colleagues just starting out and presenting themselves as CEOs, Directors of their “company”, Owners, etc. I think it is great to be CEO if that’s what you want. But is that what you really are? And is that what you really want?

In order to present yourself as CEO, i.e. use it as a job title in your resume or your social-network profiles, you need to actually be a CEO. Being a freelancer / having your own business/ working for yourself is not the same as being a Chief Executive Officer. Chief Executive Officer means you’re someone’s “chief”, that you have people under you. Calling yourself a Director implies that you have people to direct. Directing yourself does not qualify. Does anybody report to you?

Several times I’ve seen the title of CEO under the names of colleagues that had just presented themselves in a translation forum to say they were new in the translation world and needed advice on how to find new clients or what to charge. This makes me very skeptical. There’s a discrepancy here that simply makes those translators look somewhat unreliable or insincere. The above titles require experience, some prior steps/titles, and usually people under you, and I don’t think they should be used lightly.

“Owner” is somewhat different. You can be the owner of a company and be a sole proprietor. If you have your own business, you are a “business owner”. For example, I do business as “FRESNEL technical translations”, I have registered this as my business name in Massachusetts. I am a sole proprietor, so I don’t have anyone reporting to me. I have regular collaborators (e.g. for large projects or for when I don’t have time or when the language pair requested is not one I work in); when I offer them a job the PO says FRESNEL, when I pay them the check says FRESNEL, my bank account is under the name FRESNEL technical translations. To cut a long story short, this is a registered business and since I own it, I can call myself its owner (not that I do, really, it’s of no use to me, but I could). But I wouldn’t dare call myself a CEO. And frankly, I don’t want to. It would be bad for my business. Why?

Because I don’t want to run the risk of having clients see me as an agency. I am not an agency. In fact I state this clearly on my website: “FRESNEL is not a translation agency. There are no intermediaries or non-experts ever involved in your project. In order to handle large projects with tight deadlines, FRESNEL has a small, highly reliable network of expert translators and editors.” And it is for the same reason that my team consists of freelancers and not CEOs or Directors or Chiefs of any kind. Also because I want to make sure that what I pay them goes directly to the person that does the work.

So to be brutally honest, when I see CEO, Director and the like next to a colleague’s name, I stay away. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use such titles; but if you do, make sure they reflect reality. When you ask in a Facebook group how to do a word count in a PDF file or what the cheapest CAT tool is or how to determine your proofreading rate, and at the same time write CEO on your resume or on your online profile (or on your website, if you have one; many people don’t, and that’s even worse because if you’re a CEO of a company, the company should have a website), how do you expect a potential client not to be skeptical? And if the client is skeptical about your title, how do you expect him to trust your description of your qualifications, skills and experience?

What does it mean to “know” a language?

I’d like to share with you an excerpt from the book Interpreting for International Conferences by Danica Seleskovitch. I recently reviewed this book for my medical-interpreting course and I bookmarked things on every single page. I think it should be -if it isn’t already- mandatory reading for all interpreters.
I found it to be not only full of useful information but also very inspirational. I have always admired interpreters and their ability to switch “from one mental universe to another”, and when some years ago I wanted to learn more about how they do it, how their mind performs such a complex task, I inquired in an online T&I forum about book recommendations on this subject. This book by Seleskovitch was the one that was most highly recommended to me by many colleagues. Among the numerous things that are worth quoting, I’m copying here a passage that discusses what it means to “know” a language. How many of us have been asked “How many languages do you speak?” when we told someone we are translators? Of course the number of languages is somewhat -though not entirely- irrelevant to how good a translator is, but I have long stopped trying to give long explanations about this, it’s just easier to answer with a number, or give a vague answer like “a few”. However, my answer always varies; first of all because I’m never happy with it, I find it inaccurate, so I keep changing it (inaccurate because… do I include the languages I’m currently learning and which I can speak moderately well? Is “moderately well” good enough?); and second, because my level of knowledge of each language has changed with time. French used to be my second language; now I think it is my fourth. I used to speak Dutch fairly well but now I can barely utter a grammatically correct sentence without first thinking about it for 30 seconds. Should I include Dutch in the languages I speak? Do I call it a “passive language”, forcing the other person to ask what that is (assuming he’s not a linguist) and to think “gee, who cares, all I wanted was a number”? So now I just say “I speak a few”. If the other person insists, I say “I work with four, but I speak a few more”. And then I usually change the subject. I think I’ll print out this excerpt by Seleskovitch and carry copies of it with me. Here is what she had to say:

Nothing is more difficult than defining linguistic knowledge. What does it mean to “know” a language? A language is not a finite or clearly defined mass, which you either possess in its entirety or not at all. You do not “know” a language in the same way you know a theorem or poem by heart. You can only know it more or less thoroughly. Some speak two languages with perfect ease, yet have a very limited vocabulary in both. Conversely, philologists or authorities on theoretical linguistics, for example, who do not study languages for the purpose of speaking them, may have a very thorough knowledge of the languages they study, but would be unable to use them to communicate. Their knowledge is thus also limited.

Anyone who has to deal with the realities of today’s world has some knowledge, however minimal, of a foreign language, either because his job requires it or because he comes from a country where the language is not widely spoken beyond that country’s borders (the Dutch, the Swedes, the Poles and, increasingly, the French are finding themselves forced to learn another language). But neither the scholar with his literary or theoretical knowledge nor the expert with his specialized knowledge, nor the polyglot can be considered to have an exhaustive knowledge of the language, but merely a working knowledge. Acquiring a foreign language is so difficult that few specialists in linguistics are at the same time practicing linguists.


Seleskovitch, Danica. Interpreting for International Conferences. Pen and Booth, Arlington, VA 1998. (Translation and adaptation of L’interprète dans les conférences internationales – problèmes de langage et de communication, published by Minard, Paris 1968).

The art of name-chopping

“The simple is the seal of true.
And beauty is the splendor of truth.
With the words above, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, popularly known as Chandra, concluded his Nobel Prize lecture on 8 December 1983. Toward the end of his talk, he was describing black holes in the astronomical universe, explaining the simplicity in the underlying physics and the beauty of their mathematical description within the framework of Einstein’s theory of relativity. ‘They are,’ he said, ‘the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe.’ […]For newspaper journalists and broadcast interviewers, neither the simplicity of the physics of the black holes nor the mathematical beauty of their description was of major concern; the pronunciation of Chandra’s full name seemed to present them with an astronomical difficulty in and of itself.”
This is the introduction of a very good article about Chandrasekhar, which appeared in the December 2010 issue of Physics Today. Although the last statement of the above paragraph is admittedly funny, as a linguist I couldn’t help but find it sad at the same time, because it is true. “Chandra” is a name very familiar to physicists and engineers; in college we learn about the “Chandra X-ray Observatory”, the “Chandra telescope”. I don’t know how Chandrasekhar felt about this but if it were me I don’t think I’d be very happy about people butchering my name. Especially when it comes to someone that contributed so much to science, I think one should make an effort to say and write the full name: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. If nothing else, out of respect. I understand that for translators, who are more exposed to foreign names and complex sounds, names such as Chandrasekhar’s may be nothing extraordinary, but even to the untrained ear the pronunciation difficulty should not be “astronomical”!
  
Chandra X-ray Observatory (Illustration: NASA/CXC/NGST)
Chandra X-ray Observatory (Illustration: NASA/CXC/NGST)
The author goes on to say: “Being the first son, Chandra inherited the name of his grandfather, Ramanathan Chandrasekhar (referred to as R.C. hereafter)”. R.C., like …J.Lo. And further down he writes: “From his high-school days, […] Chandra had determined to pursue a career in pure science. He had as an example his uncle Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (popularly known as C.V. Raman) […]”. C.V. Raman; doesn’t it sound like M.C. Hammer to you? It does to me.
  
“In February and March [of 1928], Raman, along with Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan, made a fundamental discovery in the molecular scattering of light, later to become known as the Raman effect.” I know about the Raman effect but I never knew Raman’s full name, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in my textbooks. It was always Raman, could have been any Raman, as in “Raman noodles” (my college roommate’s dinner every single night for four years). This, of course, is fine, it’s his last name, not a chopped version or …an acronym.
  
I don’t know if I’m too sensitive to “name-chopping”, if I should lighten up, if my lack of sympathy towards name-choppers is because when you grow up listening to names like Hatzigiannakopoulos, Papageorgianopoulos, Hatzipanagiotidis, and Papanikolaou, then a 5-syllable name doesn’t exactly present a challenge.
  
And maybe Indian people don’t care much anyway. Or maybe they do care but are very considerate of those who don’t make an effort to learn or pronounce their full name. Well, instead of speculating, I thought I’d ask one. I asked an old colleague of mine, a programmer, whose name is Vidyasagar Bhakthavatsalam. At work everyone used to call him VB. That’s how he was introduced to me. Sometimes I was confused and thought we were talking about VB as in Visual Basic. A couple of people would call him “Vidya”. VB (my colleague, not the programming language) didn’t seem to mind, I thought that perhaps he even found it amusing. I used to call him VB too, not only because that’s how he was introduced to me but because I didn’t want to stand out as a know-it-all. But I always felt bad when I called him VB. So after not having spoken to him in a while, I e-mailed him out of the blue to ask if it bothered him that I used to butcher his name a few years ago. And if yes, I wanted to apologize (better late than never, I suppose). He sent me a very nice answer, that if one had to shorten his name, he preferred “Vidya” but that “VB works as well”. Which I interpreted to mean that if you call him VB he’ll still answer, but the more you chop off the worse. Then he went on to give me the etymology of his name, which I found beautiful. He said that in Sanskrit, Vidya means knowledge, and Sagar means ocean. So the full name means “ocean of knowledge”. Let me say that these two words are amongst my favorite, both in terms of phonetics and in terms of what they represent. Phonetically I find ocean, océan, ωκεανός, océano, very pleasing to the ear. Same goes for the Greek θάλασσα(sea). The ocean, the sea, is one of the things I miss most about my home country, two of my favorite Greek songs have the word θάλασσα/sea in the title, blue is my favorite color in all of its shades and always has been, and the thought of the ocean evokes to me the notions of openness, adventure, hope, vastness, possibilities, peace. And knowledge… suffice it to say that one of the main reasons I am a translator is because with every text we translate we learn something new. Knowledge to me is like the fountain of youth, a stimulus that keeps me going.  So these two things, ocean and knowledge, combined in a single word, in a single first name, is something I find absolutely beautiful. So my dear friend Vidyasagar, my sincere apologies. The word does represent you indeed, and I apologize for having butchered it for so long.