Scott Thornbury - IATEFL Chile XIV International Conference - 23 July, 2016

Plenary: Fossilization: is it Terminal, Doctor? It’s a truism, perhaps, that many learners reach a ‘plateau’, beyond which no amount of instruction or use seems able to budge them. Are there any (psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic) grounds for believing that this so-called fossilization is terminal? Based on my own experience of attempting to kick-start my fossilized Spanish, I will look at the role of such factors as classroom instruction, extensive reading, vocabulary memorization and real language use as possible antidotes to ‘arrested development’ in a second language.