INTERLANGUAGE AND ERROR FOSSILIZATION: A STUDY OF INDONESIAN STUDENTS LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Learner errors are an inevitable sign of human fallibility; therefore, they always exist in second language learning. They become the source for studying the system of the learners’ L2 or interlanguage (IL). As a language system, IL has at least three main characteristics: systematicity, permeability, and fossilization (Adjemian 1976; Saville-Troike, 2006, p.41). That IL is systematic and permeable is no longer disputable. However, the premise which claims that IL is fossilized is still debatable. Schachter 1990; Han 2005, etc. view that there is critical period for SLA; adult L2 learners cannot attain complete TL grammar. Their IL errors are fossilized. Meanwhile, the opposing view comes from White and Genesee 1996, Bialystok 1999, and Steinberg et al. 2004, believing that there is no critical period for learning syntax. Based on these, the present study concerned an error fossilization-related issue, with specific focus on grammatical errors. The data were grammatical errors from the learners’ free compositions collected four times: prior and after one-semester instruction and two months afterwards. The data were analyzed qualitatively. The result indicates that almost all of the learners’ grammatical errors could be eliminated. Further surveillance shows that they were dynamic. At a certain period of learning course, some grammatical errors appeared. Due to the instruction, they changed their nature—some were destabilized, some were fluctuating, while others were stabilized. Fluctuating errors tended to destabilize and the stabilized errors were also likely to destabilize. The conclusion drawn from this study is that the learners’ grammatical errors are dynamic and not fossilized. They may get stabilized but just temporarily. The learners can take a lot of benefits from the given instruction so as to make their grammatical errors destabilized and rectifiable.