Interlanguage - Article Analysis for TESOL Professional

Nickel, Gerhard. 1998. The role of interlanguage in foreign language teaching. IRAL 36. 1-10.

This article was somewhat short and difficult to read for a non-graduate level (read normal) person but for the right person this article could be helpful for those seeking a better grasp on the effect that interlanguage is playing in a given classroom. The benefit a TESOL professional might gain from this article seems to be primarily in the realm of 'understanding' and is not that practical. A TESOL professional probably won't gain that much practical use from this article but they certainly will have a clearer understanding of what is going on in the students brain related to interlanguage and therefore will have the opportunity to compensate for the effect that interlanguage is playing in the students brains. Nickel gives a good example towards the middle of the text about the difficulty that those whose first language is german have in learning the difference between continuous and non-continuous verb tenses due to an interlanguage issue and offers some practical advice on how to compensate for that phenomenon. However, that seems to be the only practical bit of advice that is really offered. At any rate a good TESOL professional with a large vocabulary will be able to glean some useful tidbits from this article.