BACKGROUND ISSUES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

BACKGROUND ISSUES

IN

LANGUAGE LEARNING

MIRACLE OF LANGUAGE

Children’s language acquisition;

• Subconscious

• Result of massive exposure

• Can be more than one

• By the age of six or seven

Children have ;

• Powerful insentive to communicate

• Instinct to let people know if they are hungry..etc at the pre-word phase

• Expose to speacial kind of lanuage by adults; exaggerated intonation, higher pitc,shorter sentences, simplified

Can the sucess in first language acquisition be replicated in language-learning classrooms?

ACQUISITON & LEARNING

• Picking up a language (in target language community,

no formal attention)

closer

First-language acquisition

This fact is recognized by HAROLD PALMER

SPONTANEOUSCAPABILITIES

STUDIAL CAPABILITIES

Acquisition of languagenaturally & subconsciously

Students’ organizing their learning,application of conscious knowledgein the task

ACQUISITION-LEARNING HYPOTHESIS

by STEPHEN KRASHEN Acquisition Learning

-Subconscious-Easily used in spontaneous conversation-İnstantly available

-Conscious-Taught and studied as grammar and vocab.-Help us to monitor our spontaneous conversation

MONITOR HYPOTHESIS

COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT

• i + 1

Comprehensible input slightly above learners’ level

Roughly tuned (aids acquisition)

•İ Finely tuned (as most instructors do)

CONTRIBUTIONS OF BEHAVIORISM

DIRECT METHOD

• Only target language in classroom

• Form and meaning association

• Use of real objects,pics or demonstrations

• A very antithesis of purely acquisition-based view of SL(second language)

• Depends on the idea ;

input Ss receive= intake

Combination of DM and behaviorist view leads AUDIOLINGUALISM

• Emphasis on drilling

• Follows stimulus-response-reinforcement model

Deschooling society by Ivan Illich

• Questioned the purpose of formal education

• Claimed that learning is not the result of instruction

• Stated that involving Ss in solving communication problems is effective

• Shifted the attention from product of learning to the process of learning

FOCUS ON FORM or FOCUS ON FORMS?

• Solving communication problems in TL

Task-based language teaching

Learning through preformance of communicative tasks

• Focus on form focus on forms

Conscious attentionTo some feature of language;Verb tense,organization of paragraphsİncidental,opportunisticGrows out of communicative tasksMore effective

Focusing on the series of languageForms one by one because they areOn the syllabus

Making sense of it all

• Behaviorism is not completely absurd

• Repetitions clearly works

• Exaggerated concern for monitoring impedes spontaneous speech

• Acquisition and learning are seperate process

• Individual differences of learners are important in learning process

THE IMPORTANCE OF REPETITION

• The more ss come across the language ,the more repeated encounters they have

• The better chance they have of remembering

• Gains from repeated tasks

THINKING ABOUT LANGUAGE

-better learning when Ss think about language

Ex:thinking about the sentence elements, verb tenses ..etc

- cognitive depth enables more understanding and remembering

- examples for guidance instead of explicit teaching of grammar,

• Discovering is effective but may not be suitable for all learners

• Exposed to language over-complex ,Ss may not make any meaningful analysis.

Arousal,affect and Humanistic Teaching

• Ss feelings in learning process

Positive feelings

learning potential

Negative feelings

• Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis

Carl Rogers and Humanistic View

-experience learning rather than taught

-Ss emotionally involved

-reflection and creativitiy

-whole person

-self actualization

-feelings and emotions

Critic

• Concentration of inner-self limit language learning

• Too much attention to affective domain therefore neglecting the cognitive and intellectual development

• Teacher role ; monitoring