Language, Learning and Teaching
Uploaded by
Heidy Teresa MoralesLanguage, Learning and Teaching
Uploaded by
Heidy Teresa MoralesLANGUAGE, LEARNING
AND TEACHING
(References: Brown, D. H. (2000). Principles of language
learning & teaching. (4th ed.). New York: Longman. (pp. 1-19)
LANGUAGE
■ Is there one definition for language? NO
Different definitions of Language:
Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (1994, p.479): “systematic communication by vocal symbols”
Pinker‟s The language Instinct (1994, p.18): Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in
the child spontaneously without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of
its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities
to process information or behave intelligently.
DEFINITION
"Language is a system of arbitrary
conventionalized vocal, written, or gestural
symbols that enable members of a given
community to communicate intelligibly with one
another."
LEARNING
Is there one definition for learning? NO
■ American Heritage Dictionary (1989, p. 720): To gain knowledge, comprehension,
or mastery through study)
■ Kimble and Garmezy (1963, p. 133): Learning is relatively permanent change in a
behavioral tendency and is the result of reinforced practice.
TEACHING
Is there one definition for teaching? NO
■ American Heritage Dictionary (1989, p. 1246): to impart knowledge or skill to
someone
■ Brown (2000, p. 7): Showing or helping someone to learn how to do something,
giving instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with knowledge,
causing to know or understand
THE DOMAINS OF LEARNING:
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 acting upon events outside or inside the organism.
5. Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting.
6. Learning involves some form of practice.
7. Learning is a change in behavior.
Schools of Thought in Second Language
Acquisition (SLA)
■ Structuralism/Behaviorism
■ Rationalism & Cognitive Psychology
■ Constructivism
Structuralism/Behaviorism
■ Time Frame: Early 1900s &1940s & 1950s
■ Also known as structural or descriptive and empiricist school of linguistics
■ Advocates: Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, Charles Hockett, Charles Fries, and
others
■ Characteristics:
■ Behaviorists saw learning as behavior change through habit formation. Language is a
subset of learned behaviors, so language learning was seen as being similar to any other
kind of learning.
■ Behaviorist or connectionist learning theories describe and explain behaviors using an
SR-model.
■ A connection is established between a stimulus (S) and the organism‟s response (R) to
the stimulus.
Skinner (1957) experiment /Skinner’s Box:
(First Language Acquisition
■ Skinner put rats in a cage with two levers in it. If the rat pressed the first lever, a morsel of food would
drop into the cage. If the rat pressed the second lever, it would get itshpowder thrown over it. It turned
out that rats are capable of learning: after a number of tries, they systematically pressed the first
lever.
■ Skinner defined the notion of reinforcement - Positive reinforcement: an increase in the probability of
occurrence of a response to a stimulus as a result of the fact that this response, being correct, is
rewarded - Negative reinforcement: a decrease in the probability of occurrence as a result of the fact
that this response, being wrong, is punished
■ In other words, humans are exposed to many things in their environment So the response they give to
such stimuli will be reinforced if successful and will become a habit or if unsuccessful be abandoned.
(habit-formation & “shaping behavior”
■ First and second language acquisition (SLA) apply the basic principles: imitation, practice,
reinforcement/feedback and habit formation following stimulus-response.
■ By imitating & repeating the same structures, a person can learn a language.
Rationalism & Cognitive Psychology
Time frame: 1960s &1970s
Also known as generative-transformational school of linguistics Advocate: Noam Chomsky
Characteristics:
Human language cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observable stimuli and responses or the volumes of raw data gathered by field linguists.
They not only described languages, but they also wanted to arrive at an explanatory level of adequacy in the study of language.
In simple words, they are not only interested in: - What happened? (describing) but also in: - Why did it happen? (explaining)
The rationalist linguist has a formalist view of language: the child is preprogrammed for acquiring language (Language Acquisition Device = LAD) because universal
grammar is innate.
They believed that the SLA process can be understood better by first understanding how the human brain processes and learns new information
They were interested in both performance & competence (Chomsky) or what is also known as Parole & Langue (Ferdinand de Saussure).
Performance: the actual use and realization of language Parole: the appliance of language, the actual process of speaking.
Competence: a speaker‟s knowledge of his language that enables him to understand an infinite number of sentences often never heard or produced before./a
person‟s underlying and unobservable language ability. Langue: the general system of language
In general, we can sa y:
Performance/Parole= Using a language.
Competence/Langue= The linguistic system underlying second language grammars and its constructions.
Constructivism
Time frame: 1980s,1990s & early 2000
Advocates: Jean Piaget & Lev Vygotsky
Characteristics:
All human beings construct their own version of reality, and therefore multiple contrasting ways of knowing and describing are equally
legitimate.
This school focuses on “individuals engaged in social practices, ... on collaborate group., [or] on global community” (Spivey, 1997, p. 24)
Concentrated on topics such as: conversational discourse, sociocultural factors in learning, cooperative group learning, interlanguage
variables, and interactionist theories
This view/theory is sometimes called the creative construction hypothesis
Learners are thought to „construct‟ internal representations as „mental pictures‟ of the target language (TL). These internal
representations are thought to develop, in predictable stages, in the direction of the full second language system.
Most of the evidence for this theory has come from the analysis of: - learners‟ errors at various points in their SLA - the order or sequence
in which certain structures are acquired
It proposes that internal processing strategies operate on language input without any direct dependence on the learner actually producing
the language, i.e. the learner needs not to actually speak or write in order to acquire the language. Acquisition takes place internally as
learners read and hear samples of the language that they understand.
The speech and writing which learner eventually produced is seen as an outcome of the learning process rather than as the cause of
learning or even as a necessary step in learning.
Learners‟ oral or writing production is useful only in so far as it allows the learner to participate in communicative situations.
Language Teaching Methodology
Since the 1970s the relationship of theoretical disciplines to teaching
methodology has been especially evident.
The field of psychology: growing interest in interpersonal relationships,
the value of group work, the use of self-help strategies for attaining
desired goals.
The field of linguistics: searching for answers to the nature of
communication and communicative competence and for explanations for
the interactive process of language
The language teaching profession responded to these theoretical
trends with approaches and techniques that stressed the importance of
self-esteem, of students cooperatively learning together, of developing
individual strategies of success and focusing on the communicative
aspect of language learning
Different Types of Teaching Approaches:
■ Grammar-Translation Method
■ Direct Method
■ Audiolingual Method (ALM)
■ Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)/ Communicative Approach
The Grammar-Translation Method
History:
■ In the western world foreign language teaching was synonymous with learning Latin (which was thought to
promote intellectuality through “mental gymnastics”) or Greek which was until recently held to be
indispensable to an adequate higher education.
■ Latin was taught by means of this Classical Method: - Focus on grammatical rules - Memorization of
vocabulary and of various declensions and conjugations - Translation of texts - Doing written exercises
■ As other languages began to be taught in the 18th & 19th centuries, the same method was adopted as
the main method of teaching foreign languages.
■ At that time, little thought was given to teaching oral use of languages; languages were not being taught
primarily to learn oral communication, but to learn for the sake of being “scholarly” or for gaining a
reading proficiency in a foreign language.
■ Since there was little if any theoretical research on SLA in general, or on the acquisition of reading
proficiency, foreign languages were taught as any other skill was taught
■ Late in the 19th century, the Classical Method came to be known as the Grammar Translation Method.
