Psycholinguistic factors of fossilization in the english language learning
Violetta Borecka
Uniwersytet w BiałymstokuAbstract
Fossilization as a unique feature of interlanguage systems manifests itself in the cessation of the development of certain linguistic phenomena that remain unchanged in relation to the target language. Although the vast majority of students’ errors evolve towards normal structures and then disappear, some of them stabilize permanently. The purpose of this paper is to try to find the answer to the question: are there any features of persistent fossilization of lexical-grammatical structures in the interlanguage of Polish students learning English? The research material was provided by a study conducted on a group of 15 secondary school students in the years 2013–2016. The four-year study consisted of a systematic analysis of language errors that kept appearing in the students’ written tasks, regardless of the type and quantity of teaching material provided, the length of the study period, the age of the students and the exposure to a variety of teaching techniques. The author attempts to present the phenomenon of fossilization and its main psycholinguistic factors.Keywords:
language error, interference, interlanguage, error stabilization, learning strategies, overgeneralisation, simplification, language transferReferences
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