Abstract
The main objective of this study is to highlight the need to advise students to revise their online written productions to avoid the incorrect use of forms which differ from their L1. In order to do so, this paper explores a specific error: misuse of the initialism ‘ICT’. Even though the analysis deals with this term, the conclusion can be applied to similar cases. The subjects are university students who use English as a vehicular language in the classroom but who have very different levels of proficiency. After analysing their written productions in an online forum it was observed that misuse of ‘ICT’ could be either an error, due to a gap in knowledge, or a mistake, due to interlingual transfer. Taking Selinker’s (1972) and Corder’s (1981) theories as a starting point, we then explore what to do in these cases considering the specific form of instruction that these students receive. Consequently, explicit teaching of the term in the classroom is proposed taking into account the learners’ age factor and the revised theories.
Highlights
According to Ellis, we must observe whether the student uses the term correctly sometimes, incorrectly others: in this case, we would be dealing with a mistake
If the term is systematically used incorrectly, we are dealing with an error
Even though some educators argue that FLA or SLA is rather autonomous and spontaneous if teaching provides plentiful opportunities to deal with the target language (TL) (Tu & Talley 2016: 204), we must take into account that sometimes explicit norms are needed to better understand how the TL works and verbalize it (Ellis 2009: 3)
Summary
We want our students to reach a successful learning. For this reason, we need to analyse their productions to try to solve the most common reappearing mistakes. Error analysis is not an exact methodology and we need to analyse the type of mistake before we understand its origin and possible solution. In cases such as the one in hand, it is useful to resort to the concept of interlanguage (Selinker 1972; 1992) and see how it applies to these situations
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