Psychology provides us with two major frameworks for the focus on learning processes:

Information Processing (IP) Approach and Connectionism

a) Information processing (IP). It is assumed that there is a limit the amount of information a human can pay attention to and learn at on time.

b) Connectionist approach

They focus on the increasing strength of associations between stimuli and responses rather than on the inferred abstraction of “rules”.  They attribute greater importance to the role of the environment in language learning, and see the input as the principal source of linguistic knowledge.

Language acquisition refers itself to the study of infants’ acquisition of language, labeled also as first language acquisition, as there is also a different type of language acquisition by language learners called second language acquisition.

There are two different argumentsa) Universal Grammar

We have the innate ability to acquire the language (also called linguistic nativism)

b) Empiricist theories In order to learn language cognitive abilities and the interaction between learners and their surrounding communities

L2… can be defined as the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or outside of a classroom, and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) as the study of this. (Ellis, 1997: 3)

1. Form focused instruction: Grammar Translation Method and Audiolingual Method in language pedagogy. Both teach learners grammar.

2. Learner instruction matching: this refers to the possibility that the same instructional option does not work for all learners, due to individual differences (learning style, language attitude, etc)

3. Strategy training: this refers to the explicit identification and instruction of those learning strategies that are likely to promote acquisition of language.