Error elimination and error fossilisation: a study of an advanced learner in the L2 community

• Autores: Paul Lennon
• Localización: ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics, ISSN 0019-0810, ISSN-e 1783-1490, Nº. 93-94, 1991, págs. 129-151
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper reports a longitudinal study of an advanced learner over a six months' stay in England under conditions of initial exposure to the L2 community.

    Fifteen interviews of an unstructured nature were conducted over the period, and these serve as a data base.

    Performance was analysed in five areas where the subject made frequent error in order to assess to what extent errors were eliminated and to what extent there might be evidence for the onset of fossilisation.

    These five areas were:

    1) adverb order with reference to "only" and "already" 2) "there is/there are" 3) "have got" 4) use and overuse of "always" 5) future time forms Analysis revealed that in the cases of 2), 3), 4), the subject's language is dynamic and moving towards native speaker norms. With reference to 1) there is no such evidence, but the data is scanty. For 5), not only do errors persist, which is in itself insufficient evidence of fossilisation, but there are various indicators that fossilisation may be setting in.