BRAC Institute of Languages (BIL) conducted the 20th Journal Club Session on July 01, 2017, at the Listening Lab of BRAC University. Mr. Farid Ahmed and Ms. Farzana Rahman Khan, Lecturers at BIL, individually presented the article titled “Identifying second language errors: how plausible are plausible reconstructions?” written by Md. Obaidul Hamid.
In the article, the author questions whether having the same mother tongue as the students could work as a privilege for the instructors in detecting the meaning of erroneous sentences written by them. The presenters further shared information related to the author’s survey that he conducted on a number of his colleagues, which included filling out a questionnaire consisting of erroneous sentences written by Bangladeshi students. The author also asked six Australian teachers to participate in the same survey. The purpose was to see whether the Bangladeshi teachers had any advantage over the Australian teachers in case of understanding or predicting the meaning of the erroneous sentences. In addition, while conducting research, the author measured the extent to which error identifiers are able to successfully guess learner intentions in their idiosyncratic utterances by consulting the communicative context.
Overall, the session led all the faculty members present to share their views, experience, agreements and disagreements on the author’s points and also to discuss the limitation of the article. It was helpful for the faculty members to not only share their experiences but it also inspired them to reflect on how best to address similar situations they themselves confront in the course of their professional lives.