Defossilization. Why we stop progressing in a foreign language

The problem of defossilization or why we don't progress in learning a foreign language  

Selinker (1972) noted that a vast majority of L2 learners fail to reach target-language competence. Which means that at some point they stop learning, acquiring new material successfully and progressing further. This “plateau” or “point of no return” where many students of SLA get stuck is referred to as ‘fossilization’. Thus, this tremendous obstacle that L2 students experience has become a very hot topic of discussion both for researchers and teachers.

   I absolutely agree with Yolanda-Mirela Catelly, (2012) [1] that “the students tend to accept that situation [fossilized errors] with serenity and/or complacency”. That is what makes the situation more difficult for all SLA teachers, since, as the author points out, “fossilized errors become really worrisome when they can be considered as a sign of low motivation”.

   Therefore, in my opinion, the first and most essential step on the way towards defossilization is to pay closer attention to consolidating students’ motivation to language learning. As we know, motivation is the primary mechanism in SLA. When I was giving lessons in a public school in Russia, I also came across the problem of low motivation that paved the way to strong fossilization in students’ knowledge. The problems usually started among pre-intermediate learners who could communicate at a basic level, had some essential vocabulary and thought that was enough. They had some persistent “fossilized” errors that we struggled to get rid of (such as 3rd singular for present simple or the use of “false friends”- e.g. the word “sympathetic” is wrongly translated into Russian because we have a word that sounds similarly but has an absolutely different meaning).

   Thus, in order to fight against fossilization, the teacher should try to increase the level of motivation among SLA students. How can we do this?

   A possible remedy can be the implementation of the authentic material. We can back it up with the existing “claims that authentic materials are a motivating force for learners.” (Peacock, 1997) Indeed, every time students worked with authentic materials, I saw that they were getting more excited, interested and were willing to participate in the learning process. By authentic material I mean “a stretch of real language, produced by a real speaker…for a real audience and designed to convey a real message…” (Morrow, 1977) It can be a short video, a newspaper article, etc. I remember how excited they got when I showed them a simple YouTube video, where an American and a British girls (their peers) were discussing the differences between AE and BE. This piece of authentic material was a total success and my students had loads of motivation to learn that topic well without the fear of having fossilized errors here.

   Yolanda-Mirela Catelly in her article [1] points out three stages that can be used in the process of defossilization: reflection, correction and awareness raising. Thinking about applying them in a real teaching practice, I believe these stages play an important part in getting rid of fossilization. However, there are some points to be considered as well.

   Errors in general take time to correct but a fossilized error may never be corrected unless the learner sees a reason to do so. Thus, the teacher should make students self-analyze their errors and draw attention to the most frequent mistakes. However, I would be extremely careful with the following idea of the author: “passing towards peer and whole group error system discovery”. Children and adolescents are highly sensitive and vulnerable when someone points at their mistakes, and most of all, when they are being corrected by their peers. On several occasions some of my students got really defensive when their classmates tried to correct them. This can create a harmful environment within the class. Therefore, a teacher has to be incredibly careful when organizing tasks aimed at peer correction.

   During my school years, after sitting a test our teachers handed us in the worksheets of our classmates, told us the answers, and we had to mark correct and incorrect variants. As I see it now, this procedure had numerous advantages. Firstly, we saw what kind of errors our classmates made and it could help us avoid that in future. Secondly, it saved the precious teacher’s time. Thirdly, it was efficient and didn’t hinder the learning process. However, one huge disadvantage of this type of peer correction is cheating. In order to help our friends, we tried to hide their mistakes or write correct answers in blank spaces. What I want to put across is that peer correction is a good tool for defossilization, but a teacher should be extremely careful with it and prepare for it well, considering all advantages and disadvantages.

   The author of the article [1] proposes to “draw up their own error lists/fossil dictionaries”. I think it can be a good idea to do so, especially if they are anonymous. It can be a useful tool for reflecting over some fossilized errors. Also, for reflecting over fossilized errors I agree that self-analysis would be a good thing to start with.

   In terms of awareness raising, I think the author came up with a really helpful idea considering the student’s diary of errors, which can help students keep track of their errors and those of their friends and see how they progress. What I found absolutely useful that I would use in my teaching practice is “putting an error list on board, without attributing them to the students who had made them”. I guess it will make the process of error correction smoother and will raise the awareness of fossilized errors.

   Looking at some other scientific works on the topic of (de)-fossilization, I came across some really curious ideas. For example, R. Ellis (1989) believes that defossilization can be achieved through formal instruction.

“Learners will fail to acquire the more difficult rules once they have achieved communicative adequacy. Learners may need form-focused instruction to make them aware of grammatical features that have little communicative importance and yet constitute target language norms. In other words, formal instruction serves to prevent fossilization. Instruction may not alter the way in which learning takes place, but it may help to speed it up.”(Ellis. R.; 1989)

Another interesting finding concerns correction and feedback from the part of a teacher. Higgs & Clifford (1982) concluded that “when students are regularly rewarded for linguistically inaccurate but otherwise successful communication of meaning or intent that the threat of proactive interference in the form of fossilization looms large.” There has been many arguments on how to correct, whether to correct and what is the best way to correct. Some teachers leave no space for mistake, correcting every students’ error or even a small mistake, impeding them to express their thoughts better. Thus many learners feel discouraged and fear to speak in order not to make any mistake. On the other hand, there are teachers who think that being able to communicate even making loads of mistakes is always better than not being able to express a single thought in English.

   All in all,  the whole term of (de)-fossilization in languages is absolutely important when it comes to labguage learning/teaching. Personally, I experienced this problem many times as a student. My French, for example, still remains fossilized. With the help of this information, I started to understand better the problem why at some point of L2 acquisition we experience difficulties and cannot progress further. However, I would agree with Yolanda Catelly that “fossilization does not equal failure”. With formal instruction, awareness raising and timely correction everyone can overcome this unpleasant step and keep progressing.

References:

1. Catelly, Y. M., 2012, Towards interlanguage defossilizing – a language learning and using strategy based model. Synergy volume 8, no. 1 /2012
2. Ellis, R., 1989, Are classroom and naturalistic acquisition the same?, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 11: 305-28.
3. Higgs, T., and Clifford, R., 1982, The push toward communication, In Curriculum, Competence, and the Foreign Language Teacher, ed., T. Higgs Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook.
4. Morrow, K.,1977, Authentic texts and ESP. In S. Holden. (Ed.), English for Specific Purposes London: Modern English Publications
5. Peacock, M., 1997, The Effect of Authentic Materials on the Motivation of EFL Learners in English Language Teaching Journal 51, pp 2
6. Selinker, L, 1972, "Interlanguage", International Review of Applied Linguistics, 10.