We all know that the goal of language learning is communicative competence in everyday situations. But does that mean that accuracy is no longer important? By no means! In order to communicate, your vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar must be correct enough to convey your thoughts to someone else. At B1 level, for instance, the CEF says that the speaker or writer “communicates with reasonable accuracy in familiar contexts, though with noticeable mother tongue influence. Errors occur, but it is clear what he/she is trying to express.“ The main cause for these errors is what is called first language interference or negative transfer.
This happens particularly in an oral exam. The candidate is nervous and automatically falls back on mother-tongue patterns of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, even when these do not fit in English. For example a German might say, “I’ve got an own flat” because they know that “own” is the word for “eigen” but forget that in English unlike in German it has to be preceded by a possessive (“a flat of my own”). Or they are looking for a word for open sandwiches, but can only think of saying “little breads”, forgetting that “bread” is an uncountable noun.
Learners often make pronunciation errors because they are misled by the look of the word. They say “catering” with a short instead of a long “a” (“cattering”) or “serve” with an unvoiced “ff” at the end (“serf”), or “invite” with a German-type “v” sound (“inwite”).
Fortunately slips like these don’t make you fail the exam, but afterwards you wonder why you made that stupid mistake as you know the correct version! This is a memory or rather a practice problem. It is not difficult to store information on an English word in your memory, but it is much less easy to retrieve it instantly when you need it. And in a stressful situation most people lose their fluency, even in their native tongue. The only solution is the old adage “Practice makes perfect“. Follow the example of a concert pianist who practises a piece of music for weeks and months until she can play it “in her sleep”.
Learning to speak English effortlessly really is a question of practice. If you have any ideas on how best to practise English we would love to hear them! Just visit our Facebook page and post your thoughts there.
Don’t miss our introductory offer for the telc English programme:
Register your students via our website for one of the new dual-level examinations – telc English A2-B1 or telc English A2-B1 School – by 31 December 2011, and receive examination preparation materials for all test takers free of charge!