A fossilização na produção oral de aprendizes de inglês língua estrangeira (ILE) do curso de Letras da UFCG.

Abstract

It is important that learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) perform well in production, at least at the intermediate level, in order to avoid deviations caused by “fossilization,” which may cause embarrassment or lack of intelligibility. This research was the result of data collected through a questionnaire, applied to know the profile of the participants; an audio recording, conducted through two activities, one of 5 questions worked in pairwork with free answers and the other with 16 phrases that were read alternately by the participants. The term “fossilization” was first used by Selinker in 1972. Fossilization, or crystallization (Schütz, 2018), is often present in the speech of non-native EFL learners, whether adolescents or adults. In children, the chances of such a phenomenon occurring are more difficult, because they are in the phase of structural appropriation of the mother tongue. As we reflected on this, we decided to research the phenomenon of fossilization, as it is a matter of concern for EFL teachers. To carry out this research work, we rely on the theoretical concepts of Selinker (1972), Sims (1989), Schütz (2018), Percegona (2005), MacWhinney (2008), Oliveira (2017, Souza (2009) and Peralta ( 2019) in order to try to understand the causes and effects of fossilization in the ILE learning / acquisition process.Selinker (1972) mentions that fossilization manifests itself in a group and in an individual way. Group fossilization usually occurs in English speakers as a second language (ESL) and individual fossilization occurs in EFL speakers. In both forms, fossilization presents some variations in the oral production of non-native learners. On the other hand, Schütz (2018) defines the phenomenon as persistence in deviations and errors resulting from interlanguage, a term that applies to the assimilation of the foreign language with the mother tongue. Yet, however close the two languages are, they will have phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic structures different from each other. Thus, we found that informant 2 presented more evidence of fossilization in relation to the results collected from informant 1.