Sobre a fossilização e o papel da atenção no processo de aquisição de inglês como língua estrangeira (um estudo de caso).

Abstract

Errors are an important source of information about the acquisition process of a foreign language. According to Selinker & Lakshimanan (1993), a fossilized structure is the long term persistence of plateaus of non-target-like structures in the interlanguage of non-native speakers. This is a natural phenomenon which can also be observed in fluent speakers’ output. In this case study, I analyze fossilized oral productions found in the speech of an adult, advanced learner of English as a foreign language, whose mother tongue is Portuguese. Besides, I describe and evaluate the implementation of a proposal based on tasks (Nunan, 1991 and Robinson, 2005) that focus the learner’s attention on the form. Metacognitive strategies were also used to focus on the learning process and on its evaluation. Results show that language transfer is one of the factors in the learner’s interlanguage that leads to fossilization. The study also shows that the learner tends to produce target-like structures following the task-based approach. In this process, drawing the learner’s attention to form and making him think about his learning strategies and his cognitive process as a whole were fundamental aspects to make him improve his oral performance.