Method artifacts

Question

0 A lot is made of L1 interference but I have begun to detect patterns in speach and writing that seem to come from the method used to teach English rather than the learner's first language. 02br02br00Has anyone else here noticed this phenomenon?02br02br00Endi.0-

MrPedantic · Accepted Answer

0It sounds interesting. Do you have any examples, Anon?02br
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00MrP0-

Anonymous · Answer

0 Thanks for your interest Mr Pedantic. It's Endi, btw, although I haven't managed to re-register, I did sign off at the end of the post.02br
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00Yes, I do have examples. 00I held back to see if anyone could provide examples first but since you ask, I can usually identify students who have been taught using the Callan method by the way they speak and write. The Callan method is still popular where I am. 02br
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00The most common thing that identifies them is sentences without real meaning such as "I have a pet at home." Great, but what I and any other reader wants to know is exactly what kind of pet: a dog or cat, and perhaps it's name. I often also get a strange disjunct that goes like this, "I have a pet at home. Our dog is wonderful." This is not L1 interference, it appears to be a direct artifact of the Callan method. The method, by the way, uses a drill with the question, "Do you have a pet at home?" To which the disciple (I use the word advisedly) has to reply, "Yes, I have a pet at home," or "No, I don't have a pet at home." I haven't been able to determine whether this kind of speach and writing carries over into the student's L1, I hope not but I wouldn't be surprised. Another thing is the use of "but" as a drill prompt also gets carried over into speech and writing eg "This is not a pen but it's a pencil," this is not natural English.02br
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00I was wondering if anyone else had noticed anything like this. I suppose they could be called method-induced mistakes. Also what are the technical terms for these particular kinds of mistake.0-

Milky · Answer

0 The Callan Method is rife with such01i00 manufactured02i00 English, but there are also many other non-Callan approaches, or teachers' personal stances, that impose language that ends up sounding like EFL (01i00EFLese02i00) interference when used by NNES. 0-

Anonymous · Answer

0 01blockquote

01cite10Milky12cite10The Callan Method is rife with such11i10 manufactured12i10 English, but there are also many other non-Callan approaches, or teachers' personal stances, that impose language that ends up sounding like EFL (11i10EFLese12i10) interference when used by NNES.12blockquote

10I'm sure you're right; can you give any examples? Is it possible to tell which methods/approaches have been used to teach a student by the way they speak and write?0-

Anonymous · Answer

0 Hi Endi, 02br
00When I've taught to a very strict methodology I've seen different patterns to when I've taught with a looser communicative approach. And certainly when I teach people who's previous language learning has been in a 'grammar-translation' tradition I see another set of patterns though I've never taught grammar translation myself. I think it's difficult to disentangle the details though as there also seem to be patterns which are fairly universal to language development, irrespective of L1 or method. 02br
00What kinds of patterns have you noticed? 02br
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00Alex. 0-

Milky · Answer

0< Is it possible to tell which methods/approaches have been used to teach a student by the way they speak and write?>02br
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00I'm not sure. I wasn't the one who said it.0-

Englishuser · Answer

0Hi Anon,02br
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00You wrote:01blockquote

00Is it possible to tell which methods/approaches have been used to teach a student by the way they speak and write?12blockquote

10I think it depends on the student's level of proficiency. Beginners and expert users are often hard to place, whereas intermediate learners tend to make different kinds of mistakes depending on how they've studied the language. 02br
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00Englishuser0-

Milky · Answer

0<Beginners and expert users are often hard to place, whereas intermediate learners tend to make different kinds of mistakes depending on how they've studied the language. >02br
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00Could you expand on that?0-

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