towards an analysis of errors made by university students ... - DSpace

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"it is the circumstances (learner, teacher
and linguistic data) in which learning takes
place that are different. It does not
necessarily follow for that reason that the
processes of learning are di f ferent".
For our students learning a foreign language
"is a matter of adaptation or extensi on of
existing skills and knowledge rather than
the relearning of a completely new set of
skills from scratch... We can conclude from
this... that there are some fundamental
properties which all languages have in common.,
and that when these fundamental properties
have once been learned (through their mothertongue
manifestation) the learning of a second
manifestation of language... is a relatively
much smaller task".
Reading has been classified as an observable physical act, just
like all other language skills, but this characterization
excludes reading in the receptive group of the two-division
performance: the productive and the receptive performance. To
read presupposes the ability to speak and hear,
"thus, the language teacher is concerned not
with teaching speaking and hearing, etc. but
'speaking in French, or reading German or
hearing Italian'... the teacher... extends
these skills in some perhaps relatively
superficial fashion".' 27
For Widdowson reading is not only recepti ve ; 18 he
has established some distinctions between the conventional
notions which define the aims of language teaching courses by
reference to speaking, listening, reading and writing,
and
the way language is realized in communication;
those conventional
notions can be represented as productive/active skills,