On Some New Models of Instruction for Overcoming Fossilization in English Learning

This was a qualitative action research study whose purpose was to analyze to which extent self-monitoring (O' Malley, 1990) and self-evaluation (O' Malley, 1990) strategies could help adult intermediate students from the Centro Colombo Americano tackle their grammatical fossilized errors in speech.The participants had acquired fluency; however, their speech was being affected by their lack of accuracy.Through a needs analysis, the researcher found that students had fossilized mistakes on three areas: verb forms, subject missing, and word choice.The instruments used to collect data were teacher-researcher's field notes, self-evaluation formats, and transcripts from students' recordings made at the pre, while, and post stages of the study.In order to validate the data collected, triangulation of raw information from field notes compared to transcripts made by students along with participants' self-evaluative reflections helped the researcher find commonalities in the results, this provided helpful information which attempted to address the research question.Results revealed that three categories emerged from data collected.Firstly, participants seem to have developed awareness of their fossilized mistakes, which allowed them to identify the errors which had been affecting their speech.Secondly, students seem to have developed a degree of attentiveness towards their mistakes which helped them self-repair their mistakes when interacting with their peers.Thirdly, students seem to have developed a sense of progressiveness, which means that progressively students started being more careful with the language they used, helping them to be more accurate.Consequently, this study contributes to the understanding and ways to tackle the fossilization phenomenon in the classroom, bringing the matters of accuracy back to the class discussions.