Study 28: Ready to learn
In 1988, Manfred Pienemann investigated whether instruction permitted learners to skip a stage in the natural sequence of development and this study showed that for some linguistic structures, learners cannot be taught when they are not ready to learn.
Study 29: Readies, unreadies and recasts
In 1998, Alison Mackey and Jenefer Philip carried out a study to understand whether adult learners at different stages could advance in production of question forms if they receive recasts in interaction. After the study, the results revealed that ready learners in the interaction with receiving recasts showed more rapid improvement.
Study 30: Developmental stage and first language influence
Nina Spada and Patsy Lightbown made an investigation about the acquisition of questions according to learners’ developmental readiness in 1999. They came to a conclusion that instruction timed to match learners’ developmental readiness may move them into more advanced levels. However, their performance may still be hindered by their native language.
According to this proposal, students learn what is developmentally ‘next'. Therefore, during my teaching life, I will always bear in my mind this proposal. I will know that sometimes my students can make mistakes because of unreadies. For example, while teaching the simple past tense, firstly students may learn the irregular verbs. After they begin marking past tense on regular verbs, they may overgeneralize the regular form. For example, they may say ‘I catched a fish’ instead of ‘I caught a fish.’ Briefly, I want to state that students learn a language by making mistakes and the reason may be developmental features of them. I am aware of this fact and when I become a teacher, maybe by providing more input and doing more exercises, I can make easier this period for them.
6. GET IT RIGHT IN THE END
This proposal gives importance to form-focused instruction, but this doesn’t mean that everything has to be taught. The emphasis is on the form in communicative framework. It suggests that if learners have enough exposure to language and motivation to learn, they acquire some language features naturally. Also, it is said that focused instruction allows learners to notice the target features in subsequent input and interaction.
In terms of error correction, errors are corrected explicitly. Especially in monolingual classrooms, students make similar mistakes, produce same wrong language and think that these are correct forms. Therefore, explicit focus on form and feedback are necessary in this view.