Chapter 1. Language, Learning, and Teaching

Chapter 1. Language, Learning, and Teaching

 

[1] Current Issues in SLA

1. Learner characteristics

2. Linguistic factors

3. Age and Acquisition

4. Instructional Variables

5. Context

6. Purpose

 

[2] Schools of Thought in SLA

1. Structural Linguistics and Behavioral Psychology

- In the 1940s and 1950s

- publicly observable responses

- ignore the mind, unobservable guesses, intuition

- L could be dismantled into small pieces or units and these units can be described scientifically, contrasted, and added up again to form the whole.

- L → a linear, structured system that describes grammatical sequences in terms of separate components comprise a sentence

- Noam Chomsky → “surface structure” relationships

- structural drills, pattern drills, Audiolingual Method

- behavioral model: operant conditioning, rote verbal learning, instrumental learning

 

2. Generative Linguistics ad Cognitive Psychology

- 1960s, generative-transformational linguistics

- L cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observable stimuli and responses

- not only describing L (achieving the level of descriptive adequacy), but also an explanatory level of adequacy in the study of L (deep structure)

- performance (observable) – competence (underlying)

- Cognitivism: rational approach → deeper structures of human behavior and underlying motivations

- far more interested in why: what underlying factors – innate, psychological, social, or environmental circumstances

- acquisition, innateness

- interlanguage

- systematicity

 

3. Constructivism

- Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky

- post-structuralist, integration of linguistic, phychological, and sociological paradigms

- similarities: emphasis on social interaction and the discovery, or the construction, of meaning

- differences:
1) Cognitive C: the importance of Lrs contructing their own representation of reality, more active role for Ss

2) Social C: the importance of social interaction and cooperative learning in contructing both cognitive and emotional images of reality

 

- Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD):
the distance between Lrs’ existing developmental state and their potential development

1) Learning with appropriate Stimuli
2) social interaction was foundational in cognitive development
3) rejection of the notion of predetermined stages

 

 

[3] 19th Centuries of Language Teaching

- the Classical Method: focus on grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary and of various declensions and conjugations, translation of texts, doing written excercises

- not taught primarily to learn oral/aural communication, but to learn for the sake of being scholarly or for gaining a reading proficiency in a FL.

 

- Grammar Translation Method:
1) taught in L1, little use of the L2
2) ↑ vocabulary taught as the lists of isolated words
3) Elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar
4) Reading of difficult classical tests begun early
5) Texts treated as exercises in grammatical analysis
6) Occasional drills and exercises in translating
7) Little or no attention to pronunciation

 

 

[4] Language Teaching in the 20th Century

- Series Method

- Audiolingual Method:
▪ overemphasis on oral production
▪ rejection of its classical predecessor, GTM

- Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)