Using Illustrations to Prevent Students’ Fossilized Grammatical Errors Caused by Direct L1 Translation in EFL Classes

In learning a foreign language, making mistakes while speaking is a concern for all learners. As a matter of fact, making students (Ss) recognize this issue in L2 is a challenge to deal with. In this regard, it is effective to involve L1 in a controlled and indirect way in the class. It is also necessary to notify Ss the logic and reason which is behind the mistakes they make because of the mother tongue effectiveness. To this end, in an Iranian Upper Intermediate (UI) class of 20 female Ss, aged between 15-40, meaningful illustrations (laugh 2 learn, Gasem Razavi & Majid Tajik, 2007) replaced the use of L1 to get the Ss to understand why some of their sentences don’t make sense in English. The Ss were divided into two groups; one group examined by illustrations and the other by explanation over the topic. They had a free discussion (FD), study part and then another FD (their voice was being recorded in the process) to test their understanding (test teach test). The instructor wrote Ss errors down after the session and compared both FDs and then made some charts created by Microsoft Excel. The result of this study led to a better and deeper understanding of their grammatical errors judging by the number of mistakes made in part 1 and 2 by each student in order not to be repeated

Keywords:

illustration , figuring out , mother tongue effectiveness , error treatment