Which term describes the stage where sentence patterns become automatic through repetition?

• A. Prediction
• B. Habit-formation
• C. Sound to sentence
• D. Immersion

Answer: (B)

Automatization of sentence patterns through repeated practice is what this question is getting at. When learners encounter the same structures again and again, these patterns become automatic and feel “habitual” in use. This is the idea of habit-formation: language produced with little conscious effort because the patterns are stored in procedural memory and come out smoothly in conversation or writing. In this autonomous stage, learners rely on well-established sentence frames rather than actively constructing every sentence from rules.

Prediction, by contrast, is about guessing what comes next in discourse, not about producing familiar patterns automatically. Immersion refers to being deeply exposed to the language environment to learn informally, not specifically to the internalization of particular sentence patterns. The term “sound to sentence” isn’t a standard way to describe this process.