“Principles of language learning and teaching”

Byron Benitez Language Acquisition

Language , learning and Teaching

Learning a second language is a long and complex undertaking.

We ask ourselves the why, how, who, what, when,where we will be learning the second language.

Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning.

First Language Adquisition

There are theories about the acquisition of a first language , they give us several approaches: behavioristic, nativist, functional.

For centuries scientist and philosophers operated with the basic distinction between competence and performance.

Imitation is something that children always do in order to acquire a first language. The role of input in the child’s acquisition of language is crucial.

Age and acquisition

The first step in investigating age and acquisition might be to dispel some myths about the relationship between the first and second language acquisition.

The comparators and contrast of these two topics have been studied for several authors and for years.

Neurological considerations are taken into account and how it affect the second language access.

Human Learning

We focus on how psychologist have defined LERNING, there are two theories from a behavioristic point of view Pavlov and Skinner, one is rational and the other one is cognitive.

Another theory is AUSUBEL’S one, also Rogers and Vygostky who share son views in common in their highlighting of the social and interactive nature of learning.

THEORIES OF LEARNING

Behavouristic Cognitive Constructivist

Classical Operant

Pavlov Skinner Ausubel Rogers

Respondent conditioning

Governened by sequences

Meaninful = powerful

Fully functioning person

Elicited response Emitted response Rote = weak Learn how to learn

S - R R – S (reward) SubsutionAssociation

Community of learners

No punishment Systematic forgetting

Empowerment

Programment instruction

Cognitive pruning

Types of learnig Signal learning, stimulus-respinse learning, chaining, verbal association, multiple descrimination, concept learning, principle learning, problem solving.

Inductive reasoning , one stores a number of specific instances, and induces a general rule . Deductive is a movement from a generalization to specific instances.

Styles and Strategies Process is the most general of the three concepts, human beings universally engage in association, transfer, generalization, and attrition.Style is a term that refers to consistent and rather enduring tendencies or preferences within an individual. Strategies are specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation for achieving a particular end, planned designs for controlling and manipulating certain information.

PERSONALITY FACTORS

Affect refers to emotion or feeling, the levels of affective domain are: receiving, responding and valuing, organization and understanding oneself.

Myeres- Brigss character types: extroversion – introversion, sensing – intuition, thinking – feeling, judging – perceiving.

SOCIOCULTURAL FACTORS

The stereotype may be accurate in depicting the typical member of a culture , but it is inaccurate for describing a particular individual, simply because every person is unique.

Stereotyping usually implies some type of attitude toward the culture or language I question.

Second language learning, involves the acquisition of a second identity. This creation of a second identity is at the heart of a second learning, or what some might call ACCULTURATION.

It is common to describe culture shock as the second of four successive stages of culture acquisition: STAGE 1 is a period of excitement and euphoria over the newness of surroundings. STAGE 2 cultural shock emerges as individuals feels the intrusion of more and more cultural differences into their own images. STAGE 3 is one of gradual, and at the first tentative and vacillating recovery. STAGE 4 represents near or full recovery, either assimilation or adaptation, acceptance of the new culture and self confidence in the new person that has developed in this culture.

CROSS-LINGUISTIC INFLUENCE AND LEARNER LANGUAGE

The stockpile of comparative and contrastive data on a multitude of pairs of languages yielded what commonly came to be known as the contrastive analysis hypothesis .

Stockwell also constructed a hierarchy of difficulty for grammatical structures of two languages in contrast. Their grammatical hierarchy included sixteen levels of difficulty.

Transfer Coalescence Underdifferetiation Reinterpretation Overdifferentation Split

The so called weak version of CAH is what remains today under the label CROSS LINGUISTIC LANGUAGE, suggesting that we all recognize the significant role that prior experience plays in any learning act, and that the influence of the native language as prior experience must not be overlooked.

A mistake refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a slip, in that it is a failure to use a known system correctly. Errors can be analyzed, observed, and classified.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Is the aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negociate meanings interpersonally within specific context.

Language Functions: Are the purposes that we accomplish with language, e.g, stating, requesting, responding, greeting, parting, etc. Functions cannot be

accomplished without the forms of language: morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules and other organizational competences. While forms are the outward

manifestation of language , functions are the realization of those forms.

THEORIES OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Hypothesys and claims : A theory of SLA is an interrelated set of hypotheses/claims about how people become proficient in a second language.

Chaos / complexity theory : SLA is as much as dynamic , complex , nonlinear, system as are physics, biology, and other sciences.

An innatist model: Krashen’s input hypothsis: The acquisition learning hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the affective filter hypothesis,

INNATIST COGNITIVE CONSTRUCTIVIST

KRASHEN MCLAUGHING/BIALYSTOK

LONG

Subconscious acquisition superior to learning and monitoring

Controlled-authomatic processing

Interaction hypothesis

Comprehensible input

Focal/peripheral attention

Intake through social interaction

Low affective filter restructuring Output hypothesis

Natural order of acquisition

Implicit vs explicit HIGs

Zero option for grammar instruction

Unanalyzed vs analyzed knowledge

Authenticity

Form-focused instruction

Task-based instruction