Learner Language: Tools for Teachers | The New School

THE NEW SCHOOL | http://www.newschool.edu

Learner language is the constantly changing ability students have to communicate as they learn a new language. It provides an index of students progress, allowing teachers to determine how to best educate them. By analyzing examples of learner language, students develop skills to address it when they are teaching.

Elaine Tarone is a professor in Second Language Studies and director of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota.

Bonnie Swierzbin teaches in the TESOL-accredited ESL/K12 Licensure and MA in ESL programs at Hamline University.

Co-sponsored by the Department of English Language Studies and Oxford University Press.
http://www.newschool.edu/ce/englishlanguagestudies

Category:

Education

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• The New School
• New School University
• New School
• English as Second Language
• Learning
• Teacher
• Teachers
• Student
• Students
• Elaine Tarone
• Bonnie Swierzbin

[FKNPIGS]

wow you spent 20 minutes speaking about the absolutely irrelevant fact that she adds an s onto the end of a word. Is that all you could see? did you know what she meant?

very poor examples in your work. very irrelevant work.

"i know what i would do" - what a statement. I pity everyone that pays you money to learn something about english.

all i can say is wow

[FKNPIGS]

there's no such thing as the perfect model of english. It can vary so much from region to region that we must think in terms of international intelligibility.

[FKNPIGS]

You can be as grammatically correct as you'd like but if what you're saying is unintelligible then you're wasting your time.

Of course learners should know when they are making mistakes but they should be getting taught about proper sentence level intonation/stress/vowel length: these are things which are important to intelligibility, not minor mistakes like missing a /t/ on the end of a past tense.

Let them speak with these minor errors to improve their fluency and increase confidence.

[FKNPIGS]

this is a waste of time.

you're missinɡ the point of learninɡ a language. Intelligibility should be the focus, not wasting time on what you believe is 'correct english'.

What does a learner think when told they are making a mistake by not properly pronouncing /θ/ then go to Ireland to find that a whole native population is 'making that mistake'.

Grammatical mistakes were made by the speaker. Did it have any impact on intelligibility? No