CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Previous research

In the previous research of Ahlem and etc. did an investigation to find out to which extend francophone learners of English as a second language (ESL) are aware of the differences between French and English question formation and how such awareness relates to their L2 performance. Three tasks were administered to 58 grades 5 and 6 francophone ESL learners. In a grammaticality judgment task, learners were asked to judge the grammaticality of English Wh– and yes/no questions. In a scrambled questions task, participants were instructed to create questions with sets of words written on individual cards. Some of the participants were also interviewed. Students’ own grammaticality judgment and scrambled questions tasks were used as stimuli for the interviews. On the grammaticality judgment task, questions in which the subject was a pronoun were judged more accurately than questions in which the subject was a noun. The most frequent non-target question forms that learners produced on the scrambled questions task were those in which a word (e.g. auxiliary do) was ‘fronted’ (placed at the beginning of a declarative sentence). The interview indicated that most students had a poor understanding of differences between English and French questions. Correlation analyses showed a positive relationship between students’ awareness of L1–L2 differences and their ability to correctly judge and form questions in English. The fact that Russian speaking learners of English making mistakes forming past perfect tense led me to design the current investigation which is the a representation of Ahlems’ and etc. study investigating the same research questions as they did in their study.

One obvious source of representations of learners is the descriptions and grammatical explanations in textbooks or highlighted by different authors in their research. But, as pointed White, (1991) "it is in indeed, no simple correlation between the taught and meta-linguistic explanation of a meta-linguistic representation in the learner." On the one hand, learner may generalize or limit the scope rule, on the other hand, the meta-linguistic knowledge of previous learners are likely to be involved in their interpretation of grammatical descriptions of the phenomenon studied. In the field that interests us, the potential difficulties of understanding are not terminological. Rather, they concern the establishment of a relationship between expressions of ordinary language situations and language specific, updated in a text to understand. To access meta-linguistic representations of learners, we have built an experimental situation where learners are forced to the time to reflect on the factors that make them prefer one or the other time verbal language in a situation accurately and to explain and negotiate reasons for their choices in group discussions (Spada, Lightbown &White, 2005).

While construction of meta-linguistic knowledge in learner’s remains a relatively unexplored field. On the other hand, the explicit teaching of the structure of language is traditionally part of the curriculum of language at university level. As in each subject, the question is necessary to know how to intervene to support the construction, in learner, know well entrenched, well "negotiated" and that, in that our case, goes beyond the knowledge of an abstract terminology which, for the learner, is likely to remain unrelated to the linguistic reality. Theoretical starting points whether the language acquisition or ownership of knowledge of the language, we adopt the same theoretical starting point for the construction of knowledge. This implies, according to this view, a subsequent restructuring where new knowledge acquired fit prior to their transformation (Bialystok & Ryan, 1985; Cromdal, 1999;Ellis, 1991).

Knowledge development is therefore regarded as a creative act and not simply as a process cumulative (Krashen, 1982). This creative act is the constructions of knowledge can a priori intra subjective way or inter subjective way, following the construction lays in the subject or learner in verbal interaction and social which it participates. The different theories of language acquisition emphasize the importance of one or the other dimension. Thus, the theories inspired generative or cognitive constructivism enhance individual educated or not by innate principles of structuring the perspective adopted, while interactional orientation, as the name suggests, considers verbal interaction as the main engine of development of the language the learner (Hawkins, 1984).

The fact has already been revealed by score of researchers that to obtain good results in L2, a high level of acquisition of vocabulary is required to strengthen and improve the communicative approach. Teachers should consider this issue very seriously while teaching English to Russians so that the gain could be maximize. The learner must possess certain cognitive concepts in order to acquire its L1 and L2 level (Han & Selinker, 1999). Also strengthen the L1 is a matter of consistency, because, if we want to teach in a communicative L2, which empowers students and teaches them not only the form, they must be able to seek it elsewhere, that is to say, in their L1 and if it is low, it may produce one of two unfortunate situations, either meta- linguistics, where the person has neither the L1 nor the L2 correctly, a subtractive bilingualism, where L1 decays in favour of L2 - even going so far disappear because it has not received the attention / input / exposure required (Han & Selinker, 1999). On the contrary, if it is of a solid L1, it creates a situation, desirable, or simultaneous bilingualism, that is to say L1 and L2 in the first year, or additive bilingualism (additive bilingualism) if English is added later. The college will probably become a factor if the Anglicization of choice in education of the first language and second language are not based on sound pedagogical principles (Hu, 1999).

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 849