FOSSILIZATION IN ADULT SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Abstract

The article is devoted to peculiarities of the process of fossilization in adult second language acquisition (ASLA). It determines the relevance of current research due to the lack of consensual opinion on this issue in research community. Within second language acquisition study psycholinguistic comprehension of nature of fossilization deals with investigation of two prominent challenges in SLA: How to achieve a native-like level of proficiency in second language (L2)? Why is complete acquisition in L2 unachievable?
The presented paper accents a danger of unnoticed or/and unconscious phonetic, grammar, lexical, stylistic, discourse errors, that lead to development of approximate system, or, in other words, interlanguage (IL), that is a transitional system within a study of language fossilization, popularized by Selinker in 1972. It reveals the difference between two close phenomena of fossilization and plateau. The first one has a permanent nature, it is much more difficult to be overcome, since making errors without awareness learners establish transitional version of language, that should be L2, but actually is approximate system. In other words, in this chain a donor is L1, a target is L2, but, in fact, a true recipient is IL.
The article gives an overview of fossilization`s nature. Since intermediate level learners tend to estimate their experience as successful, for them it seems they realize how L2 works itself, students hope they comprehend a sense and true «mechanisms» of it. What is important, they are not afraid of making inference. Since this point they start comparing, then combining, and finally transferring in order to produce effective language output of more near-native complexity, they apply principles and rules of their native language to L2. That is how fossilization works. Plateau, in its turn, is a temporary phase, which can be overcome by learners upon condition they are provided with certain pedagogical techniques and effective learning strategies.