Tackling Intermediate Students’ Fossilized Grammatical Errors

in Speech Through Self-Evaluation and Self-Monitoring

Strategies

A Critical Analysis of Cardenas’s (2018) paper a case study on

Fossilized Errors

Lynda Pombo Vera*

Luisa Galvis**

Alejandra Martinez***

This is a critical analysis of Cardenas’s (2018) paper entitled “Tackling Intermediate

Students’ Fossilized Grammatical Errors in Speech Through Self-Evaluation and Self-

Monitoring Strategies” This critique attempts to contextualizing the reader by means of a

brief summary and an evaluation of the six parts in which this paper is split: Introduction,

literature review, method, implementation, results and discussion.

BIO STATEMENT

**

*** are sixth-semester foreign languages students at the Bachelor of Arts in Languages,

English-French at the University of Pamplona. They want to be fully aware of the fossilized
errors that students make when learning a second language, especially those ones dealing

with pronunciation.

INTRODUCTION

At the introduction section, Cárdenas (2018) analyzed the impact self-monitoring and self-
evaluation may have an adult intermediate students’ which involved a series of teacher’s
observations and the analysis of recorded samples. The author found that the students had
frequency of fossilization in verb formation especially in the present and past forms also
repeating mistakes omitting the subject of a sentence. The author followed Brown’s (2007)
idea which helped his with the research question: What extend might self-monitoring and
self-evaluation strategies help adult intermediate students tackle their fossilized grammatical
errors in speech? The author wrote a strong and readable introduction that explained and
contextualized the reader in terms of what will be found in all the sections, he mentioned
what strategies he used but he failed using too many theories that did not help in the
realization of the test and that focused on secondary issues.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In the Literature Review section Cárdenas (2018) explained that fossilization is a permanent
local cessation of development in a language system or subsystem (Selinker, 1972). This
phenomenon affects most of the second language learners in different areas which can be
grammatical or lexical, others studies provide that a meaningful interaction and
communication has played the most important role. The self-monitoring, the writer used it to
check one’s comprehension during listening or reading and the accuracy and appropriateness
of one’s oral and written productions. The self-monitoring strategy evidence a clear help to
students tackle accuracy that could make them understand and identify their mistakes. The
self-evaluation, the author used it to check the outcomes of one’s language learning and he
prove the combination with other learning strategies and he concluded that it helps students
improving their pronunciation and learning process that reveal a positive attitude.

The author focused his research in described the phenomenon, identify the different types of
fossilized errors and the strategies to minimize the impact or to prevent it (Self-monitoring
and self-evaluation). This helped the author to focus on what to work on and how to work it
according to the student, that is, depending on which strategy facilitated the student's progress
in learning a second language

METHOD

To carry out this study, Cardenas (2018) selected action research as it involved “taking a

self-reflective, critical and systematic approach to exploring your teaching context” (Burns,

2010, p.2). For this study the author took into account the four phases in a cycle research

proposed by Kemmis and McTarget which the first one was planning, this is when the

researcher identifies a problem and thinks of an action plan to bring about improvements.

The second one was action, and here the plan was revised throughout the intervention. The

third was observation and here was the researcher observed the effects of the intervention

on the participants and context. Finally, the last one was reflection where the main goal was

evaluated and described the effects that the action had on the context. These phases were

essentials for the researcher to discover if action research was appropriate for students who

have acquired a great level of fluency but their accuracy had been affected by different

fossilized errors.

It is important to highlight that the implementation of multiple data collection strategies the

researcher made guaranteed credibility in the research finding. For this study the mainly
ones were field notes, artifacts and transcript from recordings and of course all these data

collection strategies let the students know their fails but also it helped them to start

searching strategies to improve themselves.

IMPLEMENTATION

As mentioned above, the main source of analysis were participants’ self-evaluation forms,

author’s field notes and participants’ transcript from the three recording they made for the

pre, while and post stage. For the beginning of the implementation process participants kept

their self-evaluation in a folder which was collected three times during the whole process.

Additionally, during the communicative events of each section participants used the visual

input to help them to notice the areas they need to pay attention to while speaking through

pairs or groups discussion. It is important to start highlighting how well structured and

organized was the implantation section, using folders and visual inputs to make the whole

process easier for students and the researcher.

FINDINGS

The author broke down the results into three categories, which were represented in a table

what allowed an excellent understanding of the data. The first category “Developing

Attentiveness” Cardenas (2018), analyzed that the implementation of this study had an effect

on participants attentiveness. The common errors they produce could be evidenced in a

subcategory: “The Effect of Attentiveness on repairs”, to open this subcategory let to the

author do a fully description of this finding, in which he explained that the participants of

this study showed an improvement on the degree of self-repairs decreased. It is important to

highlight that the author not only used his observations but also he used teachers’ observation
and students’ conclusion , this guaranteed an extensive explanation of this findings. The

second category “Developing awareness of fossilized mistakes” the researcher showed that

awareness-raising has helped students to improve their performances; however, fossilized

mistakes in speech had become common when interacting with others. In this part the author

did not mention how he found this category so it made difficult to understand, nerveless he

cited an author that facilized the comprehension of some concepts as “metacognitive

awareness” that is described by Birdsong(1989) as a “A reflection of the growth of two skill

components involved in language processing: the analysis of linguistic knowledge into

structured categories and the control of attentional procedures to select and process specific

linguistic information” (P.498). Continuing with the third category “A sense of

progressiveness in tackling fossilized errors” data had shown that some participants seems

to have had a progressive improvement towards tackling some of their fossilized errors in

speech. In this part, the author opened a subcategory “self-repairs” in which he had a strength

describing the progressiveness in self-repairs that allowed came to the conclusion that self-

monitoring have improved students’ performance.

DISCUSSION

In this part, one important point to highlight is that each relevant aspect of this study

(fossilization, self-monitoring, self-evaluation) had been addressed by different researchers

(Alvarez & Muñoz, 2007; Arciniegas, 2008; Caicedo, 2011; Chang, 2010; Goto & Lee, 2006;

Hasbún, 2007; Kormos, 2000; Pillai, 2006; Qian & Xiao, 2010; Sánchez Luján, 2012; Wei,

2008); however, none had tried to address fossilization from the present study’s point of
view. Results can be taken as relevant data which firstly had an important impact on his

teaching practices.

This research was an excellent tool to raise awareness on the fossilization phenomena

nationally and internationally and possibly cause a bigger impact than the one it had on his

or his fellow colleagues; All in all, this research process allowed his to discover how self-

monitoring and self-evaluation strategies impacted positively participants’ grammatical

fossilized errors in speech. Additionally, it is necessary to point out that self-monitoring and

self-evaluation strategies need to be taken into account on a regular basis when lesson

planning due to the fact that in spite of an increase in teachers’ practices using metacognitive

strategies, people’s minds towards thinking of their own learning can still be lacking. To

conclude, fossilization is a phenomenon which deserves further inquiry and attention. For

instance, there are many more fossilized language subsystems that have not been taken into

consideration in this context; consequently, carrying out research on other fossilized mistakes

may also bring about useful insights which could affect positively the local and even national

or international elt scenario. As a suggestion for further research, it would be really

interesting to inquire into peer-assessment practices in order to find out what the effect of

this strategy would be on fossilization. Commented [gc1]: Good suggestion, use the appropriate
gramar structure

REFERENCES

Cárdenas, A. M. (2018). Tackling intermediate students’ fossilized grammatical errors in

speech through self-evaluation and self-monitoring strategies. Profile: Issues in Teachers’

Professional Development, 20(2), 195-209.