Yep, from what I’ve been reading, it seems like the problem is just that the students need to be stimulated more, and as their development goes through its natural pattern of acquisition, they will outgrow those errors. It’s annoying as hell for us but it’s part of the learning process. They keep perpetuating language transfer and cannot learn by repetition so easily. I know exactly what you’re talking about… “they’re” and other similar words, and suffixes always absolutely kill me when I hear the kids mispronounce them each and every time. Eventually they’ll improve if you’re stimulating them.
I’ve found that making flash cards of, say, 20 words ending in “s”, 20 of the same words but with no “s” and playing games with these cards that hinge on perfect pronunciation… this can help them absorb the concept, but even then not EVERY student will get it. No harm is done, though, because they’re still practicing reading and you never know when it’ll finally sink into their subconscious. Of course you can also sneak in some words/phrases like “they’re” and “they are” and “we’re” and “we are”.
I’m ready to accept language transfer as the reason, but I still can’t understand why they cannot recognize “s” at the end of a word on a gut level.
I think part of the fundamental issue is that they have been taught by their Taiwanese teachers (and possibly previous foreign teachers) that studying English is a very particular thing. In particular, that they need to produce output (any approximation will do as long as the student does it straight after the teacher), rather than really focussing on the input. With many of my students this year, I’ve started from the premise that I need to teach them to listen. If they can’t stop and just forget about blurting something out in the next millisecond, then they’re never really going to be able to just listen and absorb that input. Thus, for me, it’s been about slowing everything right down and giving everyone enough time and space to just get the input. Once you remove that pressure to produce right now, PRODUCE RIGHT NOW!
PRODUCE RIGHT NOW!
then things will start to take their natural course.
One more point: language transfer only has to happen when the kids are being asked to do things their level of acquisition does not yet allow. It is not inevitable. Traditionally-taught classrooms are full of Spanish students saying “Me llamo es” (this is like fingernails on a chalkboard to a Spanish teacher) but CI classrooms aren’t – because the “me llamo” item is acquired early through massive input, and the students don’t need to fall back on translation to express that meaning.
Keeping what’s going on within the language they have acquired plus the items you’re working on at that particular moment minimizes transfer issues. In TPRS this is called “staying in bounds”, combined with frequent comprehension checks (to evaluate comprehension of structure).