situations:
E: I was skimming the dialogue and just imagining the way I will use it.
This “practice in her head” is congruent with her expectations, expressed in hypothetical
statements about her future linguistic performance.
E: I don’t know right now, but I might know in the moment I will be
speaking in English, I might have an idea, I don’t have it right now....
I am sure that time is the answer. Time will give me the expertise that I need.
In fact, most of the learners who had problems with practice referred to a kind of
barrier that prevents them from producing the language. This barrier does not only affect
their production but also the practice that is necessary for this production to be enhanced.
Ge provides a good example of this problem. He talks about a fear:
Ge: I don’t know how to get rid of this fear. I feel that I Ieam but I cannot
express myself in English.
And explains how he can practise in private:
Ge: When I am alone, I think in English, speak in English, but with someone,
I can’t. The tape seems to be deleted.
He refers to a psychological barrier and his fighting against it:
Ge: I am aware that learning English worries me a lot. But I don’t want to
give it too much attention. I want to think that it is just another subject.
I am able to Ieam English in the same way I learned psycholinguistics.
I am thinking about not creating a barrier.
At the moment of working with the learners and having to face their problem of
practice I thought that the main obstacle was the lack of content. It was certainly
something recurrent in learners. They knew how to say something in the target language
but they did not know what to say
Ga: I don’t know which verb to put!.. .1 know the Stmcture but I don’t
know what to say
F: But I don’t have an example right now.. ..at this moment I can’t think
about an example.
My own comment reflects that concern:
C: Well, now I know the grammar but what do I have to say? Some of the
times when we don’t say anything it is not because we don’t know how to say
it but because we don’t have anything to say. This was what happened to you.
You didn’t have anything to say because you were not communicating anything
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