Grammatical Accuracy and Possibility of Fossilization in Chatting by EFL College Students

This paper investigated degree of grammatical accuracy of various language forms with a focus on the possibility of their becoming fossilized in a later use of L2. A study was undertaken in which sixty college students engaged in chatting on the Internet for one semester, and erroneous forms in chatting scripts were identified and analyzed. It was shown that erroneous forms employed during chatting were distributed across various linguistic categories, and that eight major grammatical levels accounted for more than 90% of total erroneous forms. Also erroneous forms of grammatical levels such as subject-verb agreement, voice and relative clause were found to have a much higher possibility of being fossilized than those of any other grammatical level under study. It was concluded that though many erroneous forms produced in chatting look simple, and are easy to learn in light of their grammatical functions in sentence, given their frequent occurrence in chatting, both teacher and students need to pay proper attention to them to the point that students’ attempt at communication is not hindered.