ELTWeekly Vol. 3 Issue#90 Contents
ELTWeekly Newsletter Vol. 3 Issue#90 | June 20, 2011 Research Paper: ‘An Account of Sources of Errors in Language Learners’ Interlanguage’ by Majid Ghelichi Video of the week: Teaching Grammar…
#90, Research Paper: ‘An Account of Sources of Errors in Language Learners’ Interlanguage’ by Majid Ghelichi
ELTWeekly Newsletter Vol. 3 Issue#90 | June 20, 2011
Abstract
EFL learners’ errors are a major area of study in the field of contrastive linguistics and SLA research. In this article, a roughly representative account of the significance and importance of errors has been provided. Various volumes by specialists in applied linguistics, language teaching, and SLA research have been used as authoritative sources of information to provide as comprehensive an account of interlanguage errors as possible. In the course of the discussion it becomes clear that the sources of errors are no longer sought merely in the language learners’ mother tongue ( i.e., negative transfer from L1 ). But, unlike the traditional beliefs, it has become evident that mother tongue interference is not the sole source of errors, and there are many other sources from which errors originate. In this article, the writer has tried not only to show the importance of errors in EFL learners’ speech and writing but also to present a clearly-depicted and comprehensive framework regarding the sources of these errors so as to help readers especially teachers to recognize such sources easily and quickly and be able both to predict the critical interlingual and intralingual aspects which contribute to learners’ erroneous linguistic behavior and to deal with their errors effectively and efficiently.
Key words : learners’ errors, sources of error, contrastive analysis, L1 transfer/mother tongue interference, interlingual and intralingual errors (more…)
#90, Research Article: ‘Using Fiction (Novel) To Improve The Sentence Structure Of Graduate Level Students (Esl/Efl Learners)’ by Shabnum Iftikhar
ELTWeekly Newsletter Vol. 3 Issue#90 | June 20, 2011
Introduction
This research article aims at emphasizing the use of fiction (novel) as a resource to improve the sentence structure of students. Sentence structure is also called “Syntax”. In the dictionary definition, syntax is a grammatical arrangement of words in sentences, but in a broader sense, the structure of a sentence is a unifying relation also. The words combined with one another must form a cohesive relation in a sentence. In order to write with correct sentence structure, a deep knowledge of grammatical aspects and a clear understanding of syntactic cohesion are indispensable. In recent years, the role of different genres of literature as a basic component and source of authentic texts of the language has gained currency to a great extent. There has been a continued debate on this issue as to how, when, where and why fiction should be incorporated in the ESL/EFL curriculum. This research by providing a pragmatic approach explores various strategies of using fiction to teach grammar/syntax in the language class.
The novel has a great capacity to catch the attention of the reader due to its story-telling method and its linguistically rich environment helps learners in acquiring competency in different areas of language. So far as the sentence structure is concerned, novel can be proved a powerful pedagogical tool in relation to the target language. Novels provide real life-like settings and characters and characters speak to each other, therefore, variety and versatility of sentence structures are copiously found in novels. (more…)