Page 24 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Key Principles

or ‘interlanguage’ which is governed by its own vocabulary and grammar
rules. Lightbown and Spada (2013) point out that it is important for teach-
ers to understand learner language and the steps learners go through in the
acquisition process as this can help them to plan their teaching procedures
and be realistic about what they can achieve in the classroom. It is useful to
know, for example, that a major source of errors in learner language is the
negative transfer of L1 patterns which may occur at different levels, involv-
ing vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation or, more generally, discourse. Being
aware of the typical errors due to negative transfer can help teachers focus
their activities and target such errors more systematically.
However, negative transfer is not the only source of errors in language
learning. Studies in language acquisition report that some patterns of lan-
guage which are characteristic of different developmental stages in learner
language are similar among learners from different backgrounds. Krashen
(1982) summarised these studies in his ‘morpheme acquisition sequence’
model in which he showed that learners acquire the language features of L2
in a particular order. According to this hypothesis, learners acquire the pro-
gressive marker -ing (He’s working at the moment.) and the plural marker -s
(two boys) sooner than the third person singular marker -s (She likes him.) or
the possessive -s (Peter’s dog). This also implies that some structures may be
easy to learn (such as the rule for the use of the third person singular marker
-s) but difficult to acquire (learners frequently make the mistake of omitting
the -s even at advanced levels of proficiency). Understanding the steps learn-
ers go through in acquiring the second language can thus help teachers to
focus their teaching on specific errors made by learners.

Reflection Point
1. What are some of the most typical errors made by your learners as a result
of negative transfer from L1 to L2?
2. What are some of the most typical errors you make or you used to make as
an FL learner? Discuss the reasons for the errors.
3. Watchavideo inwhich an Englishteacher discussescommon mistakes
made by students learning English. Do you also make such mistakes?

The Innatist Perspective
The innatist perspective is associated with the ideas endorsed by Noam
Chomsky who challenged the behaviourist perspective by asking the fol-
lowing question: How come children know more about the structure of their
language than what they could reasonably absorb from the language sam-
ples they encounter? In other words, is it possible they develop such a com-

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