The purpose of the inquiry is to further understanding with respect to error and its correction in learning a second language. This dissertation deals with the question of how a learner puts one response into the foreground and eclipses or sets another previous understanding aside on the way to attempting to learn the invariable constant correct response offered through forms of representation arising from the aural, oral, visual, and/or written and other forms of sensual stimuli or input. The proposal is that the traditional positivist/postpositivist paradigms usually used in second language research are inadequate to look at knowledge and learning as a nonlinear dynamic process. A poststructural worldview is retained to look at this process. At issue is the reconceptualisation of error correction and focus-on-form in a French immersion setting. A conceptual framework adapted from a triad linked to Derridean, Deleuzean and Guattarian thought helps develop a theory of learning and knowledge for second language learning. At the methodological level, the study looks at different knowledge and produces knowledge differently in that it removes itself from looking at information transmission as being synonymous to learning and knowledge. Methodologically, this dissertation performs its hypothesis by using empirical data to provoke thought thereby transcending the empirical. What is posited in this dissertation is that through error correction, experience has the possibility of intruding upon a student, interacting and connecting with the student and possibly mediating with the knowledge of that student. It suggests that focus-on-form (1) opens up the aporia or closed spaces by creating doubt and (2) works in tandem with affect and perceptions. In this way, there is a possibility that new links and connections can be made in learning. Knowledge and learning are viewed as linked to an iterative process that folds, enfolds and refolds onto itself. The study offers a reconceptualisation of error and correction and provokes thought and reflection about their use in a classroom situation through the lenses of six Grade 4 French Immersion students. It suggests practical applications to teaching and learning. Moreover it opens up possibilities on how to conduct studies on focus-on-form in second language learning within a non-traditional research paradigm.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/6111 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Dufresne, Thérèse. |
| Contributors | Masny, Diana, |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 376 p. |
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