Language, Learning, and Teaching

H.D.Brown
Current issues in second language
acquisition (SLA)
Who?
Who are the learners?
Origin
native language
educational level
socioeconomic level
Parents
intellectual capacity
personalities
Who are the teachers?
 native language
experience/training
 knowledge of L2
and its culture
philosophy of
education
Personalities
their interaction
with learners
These are crucial variables affecting the
learners’ successes of acquiring a foreign
language and teachers’ capacities to
enable learners to achieve acquisition.
What?
What is it that the learner must learn and the
teacher teach?
What is communication?
What is language?
What does it mean when we say someone
knows how to use a language?
What are the linguistic differences between
the first and the second language?
How?
How does learning take place?
How can a person ensure success in language
learning?
cognitive processes in second language
learning
 learning strategies
 interrelationship of cognitive, affective and
physical domains for second language
learning
When?
When does second language learning take
place?
differential success of children and adults
in learning a second language
Amount of time spent in the activity of
learning the second language
Where?

Within cultural and linguistic milieu of the

second language or artificial environment?
Socio-political conditions of a particular
country and general intercultural contrasts
and similarities affect learning?
Why?
Why are learners attempting to acquire the
second language?
Affective, emotional, personal or
intellectual reasons
 Careful defining of questions

finding the pieces of language learning

puzzles

a theory of second language acquisition

Language
Consolidation of definitions Fields and subfields
of language
1. Language is systematic phonological, syntactic and
semantic.
2. Language is a set of Relationship between
arbitrary symbols language and reality, the
philosophy of language; the
history of language
3. Those symbols are Phonetics, phonology;
primarily vocal, but may also writing systems; kinesics,
be visual proxemics and other
paralinguistic features of
language
4. The symbols have Semantics, language and
conventionalized meanings cognition, psycholinguistics
to which they refer
Consolidation of definitions Fields and subfields
of language
5. Language is used for Communication systems,
communication speaker-hearer interaction,
sentence processing
6. Language operates in a Dialectology, sociolinguistics,
speech community or culture language and culture,
bilingualism and SLA
7. Language is essentially Human language and
human, although possibly not nonhuman communication,
limited to humans the physiology of language
8. Language is acquired by all Language universals, first
people in much the same way; language acquisition
language and language
learning both have universal
characteristics
Teachers’ understanding of the
components of language determines to a
large extent how they teach a language.
Learning and teaching
1. Learning is acquisition or “getting”
2. Learning is retention of information or skill
3. Retention implies storage systems, memory,
cognitive organization
4. Learning involves active, conscious focus on and
acting upon events outside or inside the organism
5. Learning is relatively permanent but subject to
forgetting
6. Learning involves some form of practice, perhaps
reinforced practice
7. Learning is a change in behavior
Consolidation of definitions of Fields and subfields
learning
1. Learning is acquisition or Acquisition processes
“getting”
2. Learning is retention of Perception
information or skill
3. Retention implies storage Memory (storage) system, Recall
systems, memory, cognitive
organization
4. Learning involves active, Conscious and subconscious
conscious focus on and acting learning styles and strategies
upon events outside or inside
the organism
5. Learning is relatively permanent theories of forgetting
but subject to forgetting
6. Learning involves some form of Reinforcement
practice, perhaps reinforced
practice
Teaching
It cannot be defined apart from learning
It is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling
the learner to learn, setting the conditions for
learning
Your understanding of how the learner learns
will determine your philosophy of education,
your teaching style, your approach, methods ad
classroom techniques
Schools of thought in SLA
Time frame School of Typical themes
thought
Early 1900s & Structuralism •Description
1940s & 1950s and Behaviorism •Observable
performance
•Scientific
method
•Empiricism
•Surface
structure
•Conditioning,
reinforcement
Time frame School of Typical themes
thought
1960s & 1970s Rationalism & •Generative
Cognitive linguistics
Psychology •Acquisition,
innateness
•Interlanguage
systematicity
•Universal
grammar
•Competence
•Deep structure
The study of SLA is very much like the
viewing of our mountain: we need
multiple tools and vantage points in
order to ascertain the whole picture.
Language Teaching Methodology
Teaching methodology = “changing winds and shifting
sands”
Cyclical pattern in which a new paradigm of teaching
methodology emerged about every quarter of a century, with
each new method breaking from the old but at the same time
taking with it some of the positive aspects of the previous
paradigm.
Nowadays, teachers develop a sound overall approach to
various language classrooms
Teachers can choose particular designs and techniques for a
particular context
No instant recipe, no quick and easy method
The grammar translation method
1. Classes are taught in the mother tongue
2. Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words
3. Long elaborate explanations of intricacies of grammar are given
4. Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and
instruction often focuses on the form and inflection of words
5. Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.
6. Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated
as exercises in grammatical analysis
7. Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected
sentences from the target language into the mother tongue
8. Little or no attention is given to pronunciation (Prator and Celce-
Murcia, 1979)
advantages
Requires few specialized skills on the part of teachers
Test of grammar rules and of translations are easy to
construct and can be objectively scored
Sometimes successful in leading a student towards a
reading knowledge of a second language
theoryless
disadvantages
Does nothing to enhance a student’s communicative
ability in the language
“Remembered with distaste by learners – memorizing
endless lists of unusable grammar rules and vocabulary
and attempting to produce perfect translations of stilted
or literary prose” (Richards & Rodgers, 1986)
Direct method (a.k.a. Berlitz’s method)
1. Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target
language
2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught
3. Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded
progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges
between teachers and students in small, intensive classes
4. Grammar was taught inductively
5. New teaching points were introduced orally
6. Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration, objects and
pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas
7. Both speech and listening comprehension were taught
8. Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized (Richards &
Rodgers, 1986)
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Accepted in private Weak theoretical
schools foundations
highly motivated Did not take well in
students public education
Native-speaking Constraints of
teachers budget, classroom
size, time and
teacher background
Audiolingual method
New material is presented in dialog form
There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set
phrases and overlearning
Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills
There is little or no grammatical explanation; grammar
is taught by inductive analogy rather than deductive
explanation
ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Rooted in respectable Failed to teach long-
theoretical perspectives term communicative
at the time proficiency
Materials were carefully Language was not
prepared, tested and really acquired through
disseminated habit formation and
overlearning, errors
were not to be avoided,
structural linguistics did
not tell us everything
about language