Developing the ability to regard language as an object of reflection

In language, research on language development showed that the child learns to talk is learning to associate a conventional form - the word - a meaning. At the beginning of learning, object, word meaning and form a strongly nested. The young child sees the word and its phonetic structure as part of the thing, or as a property of it, inseparable from its other properties. As clearly shown by the work of Vygotsky (1997), the preschoolers explain the names of things by their properties. Thus, the question: "Can we change the name of an object by another, such as calling a cow" ink "ink and cow?” The children answered that it is quite impossible because you write with ink, and the cow gives milk. The child finds it difficult to separate the name and properties of the thing: if he "accepts", under pressure from the experimenter, to name a cow dog, that dog gives milk and has small horns (Bengtsson, 1980).

One of the most important areas of language development in children is precisely this awareness of the arbitrary nature of language. It results in the emergence of so-called meta-linguistic capabilities that allow the child to recognize the language as a conventional and arbitrary code and manipulate words, without the realities to which they refer are thereby automatically assigned (Hawkins, 1984). This capability is an essential condition for the treatment of writing. However, it is important to note that this causal relationship is reciprocal: the formal learning of writing plays an important role in developing these capabilities meta-linguistics (Krashen, 1982).

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

Research context

For the purpose of this research, the study will be conducted in the classes of ‘English as a secondary language’. This research will establish and carried out by using a quantitative research method. The project will use primary data. The selected group will consist of 20 individuals from Russian speaking origins. These courses were taught in their mother language that is Russian. Only of 60 to 20 credit hours of ESL classes for the participants were conducted. Pedagogical approach was followed in which the less emphasis was given to the accuracy in language and more the communication (Lightbown & Spada, 1990).

Participants

The students who will participate in the study belonged to Russian origin and making mistakes while they are forming Past Perfect tenses in English. The sample size will include 20 participants average age of the group was 20. The participants are the students who are studying English as a secondary language in the University of Newcastle. The group will exhibit a good balance of both the genders, with 12 males and 8 females. These students mainly communicated in Russian language. The time period during which the research was conducted comprised four months. Another fact to be noted is that before these English language courses, the students were taught entirely in Russian.

Measures

Three tasks were used to measure students’ knowledge of English past perfect. A paper and pencil grammaticality judgement task was administered to all students, working individually at their own desks in their classrooms. A scrambled questions task was carried out by all students working in pairs. Finally, interviews will be conducted to determine the perception of participation regarding the influence of L1 (Russian) on learning L2 (English).

Instrument

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 872