Production versus Correction : The Garden Path Revisited

Abstract

In order to make L2 learners aware what is grammatical or not in the target language Tomasello and Herron (1988) have developed a method called the Garden Path method. This is a teaching technique whereby learners are deliberately encouraged to formulate their own general grammatical rules for the target language and then overtly corrected when they make an overgeneralization error. Tomasello and Herron claim that the Garden Path method helps L2 learners correct transfer and overgeneralization errors; however, it is somewhat unclear what aspect of the method makes it successful. The question which we will try to answer in this paper is what part of the Garden Path method is responsible for its success. Towards this end, we will conduct an experiment with Dutch high school students acquiring English as a foreign language.