Efficiency of Dual Processing Taxonomies in Moroccan EFL Learners' Speaking

Abstract

This article claims that one efficient way to avoid learners' hesitation and push them towards more speech delivery in EFL Moroccan settings is the applicability of compromise or dual processing taxonomies (DPT) aiming to establish link between utterances form and meaning during oral production, rather than on focusing on either meaning or form as two separate entities. To this end, an overview to the meaning/form dichotomy as it has traced route in the history of language teaching/learning will briefly be presented. A correlating recognizable lack of form-negotiation will be recapitulated and compared to a resulting error anxiety which both will be empirically evidenced. The case will also be to extrapolate FonF (Focus on Form) approach to L2 learning which -basing on current findings- proves very important but lacking during speaking situations in Moroccan secondary classes. Two hundred students and forty teachers have contributed to current research. Design is both qualitative and descriptive. Instruments used vary from open interviews to closed end questionnaires to classroom observation grids. I. Theoretical Stands Meaning or Form? It is agreed upon in L2 literature that language study within the structural framework was primarily concerned with the formal aspects of spoken language with an aim of discovering the regular patterns and structures. The focus of linguistic enquiry was the structure of language not its functions. For instance Saussurean belief that la langue est une forme et non une substance tremendously impacted the field of linguistics. Saussurean Syllable Theory (ST) together with his concern with Latin and Greek phonology fall within the same enterprise. Bloomfield was inspired greatly by Saussure since American linguists laid more emphasis on spoken languages too and on synchronic descriptions because the languages of aborigines in America did not have written codes.