I strongly believe that when Dam’s learners write, they get the chance of
restructuring (and renoticing) the forms that they, or Dam, have been using in an oral
context. By restructuring in this way, learners incorporate their hypotheses to their
working framework of the target language. Moreover, it also has an effect in learners’
self-esteem for they become confident (or more confident) about their linguistic
competence.
There is still one factor that has not been mentioned. This is the importance that
Dam (personal communication) gives to feedback, which I think, is essential in this
process. To my own view, Dam’s learners make use of their teacher’s feedback as an
opportunity to organise their internal linguistic framework. As I see it, this is a good
example of how an external force can trigger restructuration and build on the learner’s
self-esteem.
Unfortunately, in the case of the Oaxaca/97 project, it was found that in most of
the cases, the absence of writing played a detrimental role in the stage practice. They do
not write, either because they are afraid or because they are not used to writing (not even
in their mother tongue). Whatever their reasons for avoiding writing are, one thing is
true: they do not give it the attention that it deserves.
Being aware of this problem, I caught myself several times trying to make them
realise the importance of writing. In the case of K I explicitly remarked the role of
writing for her renoticing the 3rd conditional.
C: .... You need to practice now with speaking, in order for you to be able
to produce the form without thinking about it too much, without needing to
write it in order to realise your mistakes. If you noticed, when you were
speaking you didn’t notice your mistake. It was until you wrote it down
K: Yes
C: Until you wrote it you said: “Aha, I haven’t understood it well”
K: Ha.........Listen! Yes! No!
C: (laughs)
K: (laughs) That’s right! Then I have to write first
C: Then, it is a good idea. You first write it down, and doing so you become,
you realise that you are right or that you aren’t
K: Hmm
C: I think that in several cases you need to check something up with your
theory, with your hypothesis and then make decisions: “Aha, this goes here
and this goes there.” “A modal is missing here. This is missing there.” “No, here
it should be the tense form and there I should use the past.” “No, it has to be the
other way around, first past and then present” That way you can play around
and make several changes...
7.2.3.3 ProceduraIising
So far, I have dealt with the practice stage of language learning for
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