Mihyang Jasmine Yang

 POSITION PAPER 

INTRODUCTION

In the year 2000, I first came to the U.S. in order to expand my limited perspectives on

language teaching as an English instructor. After completing a Bachelor’s degree in Teaching of

English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, I

thought that I would have a distinct viewpoint on the concept of language and language

education. However, it did not seem like I had a chance to explore my longstanding intellectual

curiosity to understand the meaning of language, language learning, and language teaching. I do

believe that I am now prepared to define these three key concepts, having completed various

class assignments during the past years at Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS).

While a student of language teaching at MIIS, I have also had an opportunity to be a

foreign language (Korean) teacher in Defense Language Institute (DLI). These two lines of

experience have informed my current beliefs and contributed to a more holistic understanding of

all that is involved in the arduous process of mastering a Foreign Language (FL). During my

Master’s program in Teaching a Foreign Language-Korean (MATFL-Korean), I have always

been interested in finding out whether what I learned in my classes would stand the test of real

life teaching experience. It usually did, and I found that implementing what I learned improved

my teaching. I feel that my experience at MIIS was greatly enhanced by this immediate

opportunity to put my newly-gained insights into practice.

By endeavoring to explore my curiosity about language and language education, I have

come to realize that the concepts of language, language learning, and language teaching should

be understood as a part of the process of socialization. Just as language itself is defined by its

speakers and their society, I think that language learning and teaching also emerge from a

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process of social and cultural understanding. Furthermore, being a non-native speaker of English

who has studied this language since the age of 13, I have come to realize that language learning

is a dynamic process which should be defined in terms of various competences such as

grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic (Canale & Swain, 1980; Canale, 1983). I

believe that learning a language is not just learning a subject matter, it is requiring a language

learner’s willingness to communicate in order to become a member of a society where the Target

Language (TL) is spoken. In addition, to help learners achieve and maintain a high level of

language proficiency, language teaching needs to promote the development of an individual

learner’s motivation. I also believe that language teachers are expected to understand language

learners’ needs and goals in order to prepare them to be autonomous and successful in acquiring

a TL. Language teachers can accomplish this by focusing on providing exposure to the authentic

TL and TL environment so that learners can maximize their opportunities to use the TL not only

in class but also outside of class.

In this position paper, I will describe my own perspectives and theoretical beliefs on

language, language learning, and language teaching by reflecting on my own experiences of

learning English, teaching English and Korean, and applying my Second Language Acquisition

(SLA) theories that I have learned at MIIS. I feel that both my on-going studies of FL teaching at

MIIS and my teaching experience at DLI were influenced and informed by my personal FL

learning experience. That is the reason that I want to incorporate these three strands of

experience. I believe that all three lines of experience helped me verify the validity of certain

SLA theories and thus made me more convinced of their value in practice. I feel that without

either one of these individual perspectives, my understanding of the issues surrounding language,

language learning, and language teaching would not be as comprehensive. Therefore, in this

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position paper I will synthesize my own learning and teaching experiences with SLA theories

which will provide guidance as I continue to pursue my profession as a language instructor of

Korean.

LANGUAGE

Even though language is acquired by nearly all of the people in a speech community, not

many people can provide a definition of language in a sentence or two. They might dig deep into

their memories for a typical dictionary-type definition of language which Merriam-Webster’s

Collegiate Dictionary provides, such as “a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings

by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings”

(2003, p. 699). When I first heard this definition, I thought that language was primarily a means

of expressing opinions and emotions because language is an indispensable component in our

lives. We use language everyday to talk about things around us and we cannot imagine living

without language. However, I do not think this simple definition can fully satisfy intriguing

processes and mechanisms involved in acquiring a language. Therefore, language has different

meanings to many different individuals. Some people might strongly believe that language is a

tool for communicating with others while other people believe that language is an instrument of

power by having the means to learn other things. Still, there are other people who think that

language consists of a set of rules. Based on my laborious process of learning English, I came to

realize that language is involved in a complex process, and defining what it is would lead me to a

maze in which I would continue to get lost. van Lier (2004) echoed this sentiment when he

stated, “The subject of language is so enormous and varied that one single, all-encompassing

theory of language is not to be found anywhere” (p. 23). Therefore, I would not focus on coming

up with a short and simple definition of language. I would rather focus on answering

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fundamental questions, “What are the functions of a language?” and “What main principles

should guide foreign language learning?”

Question 1: “What Are the Functions of a Language?

The fact that we have a communication tool to convey our opinions and beliefs with other

members in a society is what differentiates humans from all other animal species. Finegan (1999)

stressed the role of language as a “uniquely human phenomenon and a uniquely important one in

understanding what it means to be human” (p. 3). Reflecting on our own daily life, we tend to

identify the way we speak, and rely on language to convey to others who we are, how we feel,

what is on our mind, and what we believe in. We also rely on language to demonstrate that we

are funny and charming, to show that we are intelligent, or to prove that our beliefs are well-

substantiated. Taking these functions of language into consideration, I have realized that

language is not only related to human cognitive and affective factors but also to socialization

processes. Atkinson (2002) asserted that there are a number of linguistic phenomena that can

only be explained “if the cognizing individual’s linguistic knowledge is seen to be abetted by,

actuated within, and broadly continuous with a rich social context” (p. 530). This brings me back

to the inescapable fact that language is a social phenomenon. During my time in the MATFL-

Korean program at MIIS, I have learned how languages evolve, expand or die out, how dialects

determine prestige and influence perceptions, and how standard varieties are established and

maintained. My classes in Sociolinguistics ensured that language is inextricable from all the

social factors that shape it. Language was borne out of human need to communicate; throughout

the centuries language has continuously evolved, as society has changed. Language and human

kind exist in a mutual relationship, each affecting, changing, and shaping the other.

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 The definition of language depends on individuals’ understanding of language throughout

their language learning and teaching experiences. Larsen-Freeman (2003) emphasized the

importance of understanding the nature of language because that is what affects teachers’

practices. In other words, the teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching, will

influence what they actually do in a language classroom.

With this in mind, I will define language for the purpose of informing my future teaching

practices by focusing on key concepts of language. I will proceed by discussing functions of

language and defining the concepts of communicative competence.

Functions of Language

Halliday (1973) defined language in terms of its functions. He outlined seven different

functions of language: 1) instrumental; 2) regulatory; 3) heuristic; 4) interactional; 5) personal; 6)

imaginative; 7) informative. Halliday (1973) described the instrumental function as the simple

purpose of using language as the equivalent of necessary communication, and the regulatory

function as an attempt to guide others to one’s purpose (i.e., a rally speech). In the context of

exploring the surroundings of communication, the heuristic function is considered important in

the linguistic processes of acquiring, retaining, and assimilating (i.e., a baby’s imitation). The

interactional function considers language as a bridge between personalities and a tool for

relationship building (i.e., on-line chatting), and the personal function reflects one’s personal

thoughts, feelings, and fears. Halliday (1973) described the imaginative function as one that

portrays complex human emotional creativity. As such, it is a combination of the personal and

heuristic functions of language. Finally, the informative function implies the deliberate and

practical use of language such as in conveying information, organizing data, and educating

people.

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 Halliday’s (1973) seven functions of language illustrate speakers’ purposes to use a

language, and they view language as interpersonal, interactive, and influenced by social context.

Thus, these seven functions certainly correspond to the concept of communicative competence

proposed by Canale and Swain (1980) and extended by Canale (1983). Although the concept of

communicative competence was originally introduced by Campbell and Wales (1970), Hymes

(1972), Savignon (1976), and Munby (1978), I think that Canale and Swain’s (1980) extended

notion of communicative competence is more applicable to the educational field, and more

relevant to this discussion of my personal beliefs about language.

Question 2:“What Main Principles Should Guide Foreign Language Learning?”

Communicative Competence

Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983) introduced communicative competence,

which refers not only to a learner’s ability to use grammatical rules, but also to form correct

utterances. Communicative competence consists of four contextualized competences:

grammatical, sociolinguistics, discourse, and strategic. They imply an adequate level of

communicative competence in terms of knowledge of language use. Canale and Swain (1980)

suggested that when acquiring languages, learners need to become competent in these four major

domains. By looking at each type of competence in detail, I will formulate a concrete concept of

language itself.

Grammatical competence refers to the linguistic characteristics of a language. It includes

knowledge of linguistic components such as “rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar

semantics, and phonology,” and knowledge of producing grammatical sentences by applying

these linguistic components (Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 29). Grammatical competence enables

language learners to use a language accurately. Reflecting on my own language learning and

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teaching, I believe that grammatical competence is essential. When learning the Korean

language, my students have to become familiar with Korean morphology and syntax, which are

entirely different from English. For instance, in Korean we have subject, object, and topic

markers which indicate the functions of nouns in a sentence. In English, these functions are

indicated by the word order. However, in Korean, students must use markers (i.e., subject

markers 은/는/이/가, object markers 을/를, and topic markers 은/는). Thus, from the beginning

of the course, students learn about these markers, but it is difficult to properly use the markers

consistently. For example, considering this expression, “나는 물이 필요해요/na nun mul i

philyo he yo” which means ‘I need water,’ students often say “나는 물을 필요해요/na nun mul

ul pilyo he yo” by using an object marker when a topic marker is appropriate. The reason that

students make this mistake is that Korean syntax often allows having both a subject marker and a

topic marker in a sentence, where it looks like there are two subject markers in the sentence.

Also, in English, the word, “water” is an object in the sentence, while it requires a topic marker

in Korean. Therefore, I explicitly teach these differences in class to make sure that the students

are able to use the markers properly in order not to create any miscommunication. In speaking

practice, I often write down students’ errors while engaging in conversation with them. After the

speaking session, I provide feedback to help students be aware of their own errors and let them

correct the errors. Especially for markers, students often respond, “I knew that I had to use an

object marker. I keep forgetting to use it.” This response can be explained by an emergentist’s

viewpoint. Hopper (1998) assumed that languages are originally incomplete. He posited that

linguistic knowledge emerges in the combination of various interactions in the unfixed structure.

In his view, my students’ knowledge of Korean was latent in that they just had not had many

opportunities to put the knowledge into real-world practice. Hopper’s (1998) viewpoint indicates

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that memorizing all grammatical rules of the TL does not ensure the production of the TL.

Therefore, I believe that it is very important that grammar is not just knowledge of the language,

but it is rather perceived as a communicative skill to produce the language.

Sociolinguistic competence consists of two sets of rules: “sociocultural rules of use and

rules of discourse” (Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 30). Sociolinguistic competence deals with the

relationship between utterances and the appropriate acts within a given sociocultural context.

Sociocultural context varies according to factors such as participants, circumstances, or norms of

interaction. Canale and Swain (1980) asserted that languages entail not only linguistic forms or

literal meanings of words, but also functional or pragmatic meanings, which account for the

appropriateness. According to Canale (1983), appropriateness refers to “both appropriateness of

meaning and appropriateness of form” (p. 7). Thus, it is especially important for language

learners to understand TL culture in order to use the language appropriately within a social or

cultural context. I learned English in a formal setting, so when I interacted with my American

friends, I often heard their comments that I talked too politely. Even when I went to a

McDonald’s, I said “I would like to have a Mac burger,” instead of saying “One Mac burger,

please.” I did not think being too polite would interfere with the appropriateness of my utterances

until I started teaching Korean at DLI. When one of my students used a formal register, “이름이

어떻게 되십니까?/ilum i ettuckey toy sip ni kka?” ‘what is your name?’ to a young child who

was a lot younger than he, his communicative function was grammatically correct, but he

sounded awkward. This experience made me aware of the fact that what is perfectly appropriate

in one situation (i.e., using formal speech to a boss), might not work so well in another (i.e.,

using formal speech to the children). Therefore, I believe that sociolinguistic competence is

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important because it enables language learners to use an appropriate register and express a

particular attitude in a particular language context appropriately.

Discourse competence refers to the ability to combine language structures into different

types of cohesive (i.e., organized as a whole unit) and coherent (i.e., logically unified) texts. This

competence entails the ability to understand a piece of discourse in terms of its connectedness

and relationship to the whole discourse (Hu, 2002). At the end of the 63-week Basic Korean

Program, students take an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the graduation requirement is a

level 2 in speaking based on Interagency Language Roundtable skill descriptions. In order to

achieve 2 in speaking, the students are expected to complete six tasks successfully which are past

narration, present narration, future narration, description/direction, role play, and current events.

Thus, during the speaking practices, I provide appropriate situations/tasks which give students a

chance to speak Korean by internalizing grammar features that they learned explicitly during the

class on that day. For narration tasks, there are commonly asked teacher-elicited monologue

questions for OPI preparations, in the form of tedious drills (something that I try to avoid), such

as “Tell me what you did last Saturday in detail from the morning until you went to sleep (past

narration),” “Tell me about a typical Monday schedule at DLI (present narration),” and “If you

have any plans after the graduation, tell me what you are going to do (future narration).” When

students are participating in these three tasks, I often get confused even when they produce

grammatically correct sentences because students often do not use cohesive devices to make

their thoughts unified. Thus, I make sure that my students use cohesive devices such as “first,”

“second,” and “third” to help listeners follow their story as a logically organized whole unit

rather than unrelated small pieces of information.

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 Strategic Competence consists of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies that

encompass both grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence. When language

learners are in unfamiliar situations, learners who attained strategic competence can function

well using the TL, despite insufficient grammatical competence (Canale & Swain, 1980). In my

personal opinion, I do not think I can prepare my students to survive in all second language (L2)

situations. However, setting a goal for my students to achieve strategic competence in some areas

would eventually lower their anxiety when they have to confront unfamiliar L2 situations. In

addition, they will build autonomy when they are dealing with future challenges by applying this

particular strategic competence as well as other related competences.

In this section on language, I have expressed my belief that a language is a social

phenomenon, and language consists of multiple meanings that incorporate various components

of communicative competence. Through discussion and analysis of seven functions of a

language and these four communicative competences, I will be able to address various aspects of

language learning and language teaching in the following section.

LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

Principles that govern learning inform teaching. Also, because teaching facilitates

learning and guides learners to acquire a language, teaching and language learning cannot be

explained separately. Therefore, I hereby combined my perspectives on language learning and

language teaching.

As an inexperienced language teacher, I was fascinated by learning SLA theories and

observing experienced teachers’ classroom practices. SLA theories have helped me understand

the process of acquiring language, while classroom practices have provided me with rich

resources of teaching ideas to promote exciting, interactive, and meaningful learning

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environments. Through my teaching experiences, I have come to believe that it is essential to

consider a number of factors such as the age of learners, learning styles, levels of motivation,

their interests, and their reasons for learning a language. I also have learned that based on my

students’ proficiency level, it is necessary to adjust my teaching style, materials, and activity

types to make lessons relevant to them and to meet their needs. Thus, I must be sensitive to many

factors influencing my students’ ability to learn, and I should be ready to alter and adjust my

goals based on my students. If I have groups of students who want to learn from practicing the

language, I need to provide more opportunities to try out their language hypotheses by their

participation in class activities. Lightbown and Spada (1999) stated that “Virtually all learners,

particularly older learners, have very strong beliefs and opinions about how their instruction

should be delivered” (p. 59). Keeping this in mind, learners do not think that they are learning

efficiently when the instructional approaches are different from their beliefs about the best way

to learn. This suggests that teachers must be aware of learners’ beliefs, individual differences,

and preferences, and must take them into consideration. I truly believe that the perspectives

guiding language teaching should not be seen as fixed but rather fluid, adjustable, and dependent

on a number of external factors, ranging from administrative limitations (i.e., mission of the

school, assessment requirements, and working independently or as a part of team) to the

individual differences of the students (i.e., the age of learners, learning styles, and their interests).

As a teacher who is responsible for enhancing students’ learning, I want to combine SLA

theories and classroom practices to help my students become good language learners. Since

teachers need to constantly remain flexible and responsive to the learners’ needs, the concepts

and principles that will guide my teaching and that I am about to present to you are rather broad,

and will leave me some room for maneuvering in the ever-changing teaching environment. In

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this section, I will describe six main SLA concepts that I draw on in making decisions about my

pedagogical practice. These concepts are knowing the language vs. knowing about the language

as well as motivation, autonomy, willingness to communicate, interaction, and feedback.

Knowing the Language vs. Knowing About the Language

When selecting an English instructor, Korean parents prefer to choose English native

speakers to teach their children because the native speakers know the language. Native speakers

use the language fluently and accurately. However, sometimes they fail to explain language

features that characterize their use of the language when students ask questions on specific

language forms. In contrast, language learners who have exclusive formal instructions in the TL

may be able to articulate the rules regardless of their ability to use the language. This indicates

that knowing about the TL does not necessarily mean that language learners can use the language

in a communicative situation. Based on my experience as an English learner in a variety of

teaching methods and environments, I have noticed that formal instruction of English in a FL

setting is focused almost exclusively on demonstrating the mastery of English (i.e., English

grammar rules). In class, the teachers focused on ensuring that I knew all the rules and never

violated them when I translated written materials in the textbook from English to Korean. I

thought that mastering English grammar rules would make it possible to be fluent in English. I

can say that I learned English in order to pass a college entrance exam. I was good at choosing

the right answers in multiple choice items when the goal was to perform well on discrete-point

tests. I assumed that I was a high advanced student because I received very good grades in

English tests. However, I soon realized that my grammar knowledge was not in place to ensure

that communicative exchanges transpired successfully.

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 One experience taught me the differences between knowing the language and knowing

about the language, and indicated where my English level was. In 1999, I came to New York

City to learn English. At the end of the trip, I took a Greyhound bus to see my best friend in

Seattle. On the long way to Seattle, I had to pay close attention to announcements because I had

to transfer to different buses throughout the trip. It was not easy to understand natural English

which sounded very fast to my ears. I had to ask people to make sure that I got on the right bus.

In my head, I repeated a question, “Is this the bus going to Seattle?,” checking that it was a

grammatically correct sentence. However, I hardly opened my mouth. Instead, I asked, “Seattle

bus?” with a weird accent. I had to repeat myself several times to be understood because I did

not stress the word correctly (i.e., [siǽtl]) due to my mother tongue (L1), Korean, having only

monotonous tones. My English was advanced enough for me to understand the announcements

and to make grammatically correct sentences; however, my actual performance in English did

not at all match this knowledge. Therefore, I have come to realize that grammar rules were just

one of the components of English.

Why did my grammatical knowledge not match actual performance? Shedding some light

on this issue, Larsen-Freeman (2003) explained that there are two different types of knowledge:

declarative and procedural. Declarative knowledge is “knowledge about the language system,”

and procedural knowledge is “knowledge of how to use the language” (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p.

13). Ellis (2004) further explained that declarative knowledge enables students to be able to

understand explanations of rules of the phonological, lexical, grammatical, pragmatic, and socio-

critical features of language. In his view, procedural knowledge shows students’ conscious

awareness of how structural features work. He believed that procedural knowledge plays an

important role in students’ abilities to communicate fluently and confidently. He suggested that

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procedural knowledge should be the goal of teachers’ instruction, but he also emphasized the

importance of teaching declarative knowledge along with the procedural knowledge.

There have been conflicting theories on how to teach declarative and procedural

knowledge. In Skill-Building Theory, Anderson (1993) explicitly differentiated between

declarative and procedural knowledge, and argued declarative knowledge gradually becomes

procedural knowledge if students have opportunities for communicative practice to automatise

existing knowledge. In order to enable the automaticity, Ellis (2001) suggested Form-Focused

Instruction (FFI) accompanied by negative feedback to help learners use the TL for

communication purposes. He defined FFI as “any planned or incidental instructional activity that

is intended to induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic form” (pp. 1-2). For

example, learners are given an example of “어머니께서 저녁을 만드-시-ㄴ다/emeoni kkeyseo

cenyek ul mandu sin ta,” which means ‘My mother is making dinner’ (mother-subject

honorification marker/dinner-object marker/make-prefinal honorific ending-verb ending). When

they try to understand grammatical structures of this sentence, they have an opportunity to codify

declarative knowledge. After learning many examples involving the same linguistic structure, in

the process of attempting to produce a target structure to communicate, learners can

proceduralize declarative knowledge.

I think both declarative and procedural knowledge play an important role for students in

learning language. I believe that teachers need to ensure that we provide plenty of opportunities

for students to use the TL in class in order to automatise declarative knowledge to procedural

knowledge or vice versa. Foto (2002) found that teachers of English as a Foreign Language

(EFL), particularly in Asia where classes are relatively large, have common concerns: it is

difficult to supervise all the students, and the size of the class limits participation in class.

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However, it is important for teachers to provide opportunities to use the language even when

there are too many students in class. To make it possible to maximize opportunities to use the

language in class, teachers need to carefully plan activities that boost peer interactions. Since

there are only one teacher and forty to fifty students in class, teachers can design activities in

which students can complete tasks with the cooperation of their peers. Under these

circumstances, some teachers are concerned about their students developing untargetlike

utterances. However, Lightbown’s (2003) research on peer interaction contradicted these

teachers’ fear about developing untargetlike utterances. Lightbown (2003) found that:

1) Learners are able to give each other FL/SL input and opportunities for interaction,
2) Learners do not necessarily produce more errors than they do when interacting with
the teacher,
3) Learners can provide each other with feedback, in the form of clarification requests
and negotiation for meaning, and
4) Learners benefit from more one-to-one conversation than they can get in a teacher-
centered whole-class environment. (p. 4)

In the context of the FL settings, and its limited linguistic exposure to outside the

classroom, I believe that it is essential for teachers to promote peer interaction in order to

maximize the use of the TL even if the teacher-to-student ratio is high. In order to facilitate

interaction, learners need to be engaged in more meaningful learning opportunities and be

encouraged to become autonomous. Through meaningful negotiation activities such as group

work and projects in a class, language learners can not only learn from teachers and peers, but

also internalize linguistic knowledge to become successful. Since it is difficult to provide

frequent teacher-student interactions and individual feedback, I can design activities that students

can complete with each other’s cooperation. For example, when we were learning about

travelling, after covering the textbook, I divided the students into two groups, and asked them to

come up with three must-see spots in Monterey. While discussing and narrowing down to only

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three spots, the students actively named places and explained what these spots were famous for

by using Korean. In order to complete this activity, students frequently spoke to each other in

Korean to negotiate for meaning and often helped each other remember vocabulary words. This

reflects the important role of collaborative dialogues introduced by Swain (2005). She

introduced a joint problem-solving dialogue, collaborative dialogues, in which “students are

expected to engage in solo mental functioning, and that solo mental functioning has its source in

joint activities. In those joint activities language is used, initially to externally and

collaboratively mediate problem solution” (p. 478). I believe that Swain’s (2005) collaborative

dialogue (i.e., involved in pair work and feedback) can provide opportunities for learners to be

engaged in problem-solving and knowledge building activities which will improve their TL.

Here is an example of collaborative dialogue that I observed in my class.

One student (S1) did not know how to say aquarium in Korean so he said,

S1: “생선집”
Sengseonjib
‘Fish house’
S2: “뭐?”
Muh
‘What?’
S1: “음. 거기에서 생선이 보이고, 캐너리로우에 …”
Um. Gegi eyse sengseon i boi go, Cannery rowey…
‘Over there, you can see fish, at Canner row…’
S2: “아. fish”
Ah, fish
‘Ah, fish’
S3: “수…”
Su
‘Water’ (It is a correct syllable of aquarium which has three syllables)
S2: I remember it was a three syllable word.
S3: “수족관”
Sujokkwan
‘Aquarium’

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 In this section, I want to investigate two major elements which I believe can influence

successful language acquisition: internal and external factors. After identifying motivation,

autonomy, and willingness to communicate as internal factors, I will focus on these variables

which might be emotionally or psychologically stimulating for language learners. Next, I will

discuss external factors, such as interaction and feedback.

Motivation

“Language teachers frequently use the term ‘motivation’ when they describe successful

or unsuccessful learners,”(p. 5) says Dörnyei (2001), because language teachers believe that

learners’ enthusiasm, commitment, and persistence are the key elements that help the learners to

succeed. It might be every teacher’s dream to have a class full of motivated students who would

approach every task with equal enthusiasm and an unadulterated drive to learn. However, all of

us who have spent a significant amount of time in any type of classroom know that this is a

dream. I believe that motivation is what makes students learn a TL even though they have to put

consistent effort into acquiring complex and multifaceted languages. Corder (1981) emphasized

the importance of motivation by stating, “given motivation, it is inevitable that a human being

will learn a second language if he is exposed to the language data” (p. 8). Many characteristics

can influence the success of language learning, but there is no doubt that motivation plays a very

important role in L2 acquisition. Rather than despair over the fact that not all of my students will

have high levels of internal drive to accomplish their academic goals, I believe that it is my duty

as a teacher to create a supportive yet engaging environment, and thus promote motivation in my

classroom.

Gardner (1985) described motivation as “the effort, want (desire), and affect associated

with learning a second language” (p. 147). Gardner and Lambert (1972) strongly argued that

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integrative motivation is the most important motivation in learning a language. They made a

distinction between two types of motivation; integrative and instrumental motivation. Integrative

motivation promotes learners to acquire a language in order to be closer to a TL community. On

the other hand, instrumental motivation plays a role as a means to obtain external factors such as

job promotions or rewards (Gardner & Lambert, 1972; Gardner, 1985). The distinction between

integrative and instrumental motivation regarding their relation to success in language learning

has been the most controversial issue in the studies of motivation. Contradicting Gardner and

Lambert’s (1972) belief, Lukmani (1972), and Dörnyei and Schmidt (2001) discovered that

students who learn a language with an instrumental outlook are clearly more successful in

developing proficiency in the language than those who fail to adopt this motivation. Considering

these two extremely different results, I believe that both integrative and instrumental motivation

are important. Ever since Gardner and MacIntyre (1991) established a social psychological

framework comprising integrative motivation and instrumental motivation to learn a language

for a certain purpose, many researchers have investigated the nature and role of motivation in the

L2 learning process.

A more recent theory of motivation makes a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic

motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985; see Figure 1 on p. 19). Intrinsic motivation comes from within

the individual, and is seen as feeling the curiosity and joy of doing something. In contrast, in

extrinsic motivation, an individual performs to receive some extrinsic reward or to avoid

punishment (Deci & Ryan, 1991; Dörnyei, 2003). van Lier (1996) believed that all learners have

intrinsic motivation to learn a TL to different degrees. In general, language learners are curious

and they possess intrinsic motivation to learn something new by engaging in meaningful

activities. Meanwhile they have to engage in activities that satisfy social demands set by a

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society that they belong to. Regardless of their intrinsic motivation, language learners are

expected to engage in activities to pursue their extrinsic motivations. van Lier (1996) thus

asserted that both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are important factors in language

learning.

Figure 1. Personal communication with van Lier (2008)

Motivation

Intrinsic motivation Extrinsic Motivation

Integrative Motivation Instrumental Motivation

van Lier (1996) emphasized the crucial role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in

learning by remarking “In the best of worlds, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations act in concert, or

at least in peaceful coexistence” (p. 99). Reflecting on my personal experience, intrinsic and

extrinsic motivations were the key factors that guided me to keep putting the best efforts to

acquire English. I was eager to learn English because I loved New Kids on the Block. In order to

sing their songs, I was highly motivated to learn English. Also, I was motivated by my

professional goals to get into a good university by achieving high scores in English tests.

As a teacher, I tackle my seemingly ambitious goal of daily motivating my students by

focusing on tasks, the “building blocks of classroom learning” (Dörnyei, 2003, p. 14). Ensuring

that all tasks I assign are relevant and engaging to my students requires creativity, a constant

19
consideration of who my students are, and what it is that grabs their attention. I am far from

achieving this in every lesson I facilitate, but every success makes me more firm in my

conviction that one of the teacher’s main roles is to provide reasons for the students to care.

One of the ways that I attempt to generate engagement is by providing authentic

materials. According to Chambers (1999), “if the teacher is to motivate pupils to learn, then

relevance has to be the red thread permeating activities” (p. 37). I have noticed that students

prefer authentic materials because they believe that they are actually learning the TL rather than

learning fake Korean, artificial sentences made for instructions. When I think of the role of

authenticity in language acquisition, the first thing that comes to mind is “language-in-use” (Gee,

2005), that is, authentic materials that use written or spoken texts not specifically intended for

Korean learners. However, van Lier’s (1996) definition of authenticity is more thorough and

comprehensive than my understanding of authenticity. He described an authentic action as an

“expression of what a person genuinely feels and believes,” and posited that it often comes from

intrinsic motivation (p. 13). Inauthentic actions, on the other hand, are driven by external factors

in that language learners are only acting because they have to do so. In order to promote

authenticity and stimulate learners’ intrinsic motivation, I think a teacher needs to tailor

instruction to promote more valuable interaction by completing tasks together.

Another way that I attempt to generate engagement is by providing meaningful activities.

For example, when we covered the topic of daily routine, and when both my students and I got

tired of describing daily routines in DLI, I asked my students to write a letter to one of their

family members to introduce Monterey, their life in DLI, and any good news. I brought nice

stationary, envelopes, and stamps to the classroom. In general, they hate to write in Korean, but

it did not seem like writing in Korean bothered them this time. The previously indifferent and

20
lethargic group of students sparked with enthusiasm. Everybody was excited to have a chance to

write a letter in class instead of rehearsing their daily routines. They consulted dictionaries or

frequently asked me to find appropriate expressions. Even though I normally check their spelling

and mark the errors in the homework notebook, they never bother to correct these errors.

However, this time, the students asked me to read their letters, and make sure that they did not

make any spelling mistakes and ungrammatical sentences. They corrected their spelling mistakes

even though their family members did not know anything about Korean at all. In addition, their

handwriting was a lot better than what they wrote in homework notebooks.

With the activities such as the one I described above, I attempted to come closer to using

my students’ interest to elicit active participation. I try to either begin or conclude each lesson

with an activity that gives the students an opportunity to personalize the material we are learning.

When my class started discussing the topic of match-making, for example, I provided one profile

of a possible date. I asked the students whether they were willing to go on a date with this person

based on the profile. Then, I divided the class into two groups based on their preference: one

group thought that the person was interesting while the other group advocated the opposing

view. Each group had to explain why they wanted to or did not want to go on a date with such as

person, using their personal experience to support their opinion. My students actively

participated in this activity because they were able to put themselves in this situation, and it

triggered their interests.

Motivation, I believe, can be turned into a self-perpetuating force, and for this reason I

feel it is particularly important for me as a teacher to continually invest time and energy into

creating motivating activities and helping my students become autonomous in order to see ways

in which their language study can continue to benefit them in their lives.

21
Autonomy

Autonomy refers to “being self-initiating and self-regulating of one’s own actions” (Deci

& Ryan, 1985, p. 327). In this light, according to van Lier (1996), autonomous learners are those

who can “make significant decisions about what is to be learned, as well as how and when to do

it” (p. 13). Making use of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation autonomous learners can take

responsibility for their learning (or lack of learning) as long as the learning circumstances are

adequately available (van Lier, 1996). I have noticed that students who are highly motivated in

intrinsic and extrinsic demands, and who are autonomous, are more likely to surmount obstacles

and be willing to challenge themselves in order to acquire a language. One of my students, for

example, was an average student at the beginning of the course. Even though he constantly put

efforts to achieve higher proficiency, his scores were not as good as he expected them to be. He

expressed his frustration, and soon he decided to immerse himself in the Korean language and

culture. He had a speaking partner from MIIS and practiced his Korean twice a week. He ate

kimchi (spicy cabbage) and kim (seaweed) everyday hoping that he could speak like native

Koreans since he was eating Korean food. He went to a Korean church on Sundays to make

Korean friends. He watched only Korean movies. He said that at first, he forced himself to do

these things in order to become like a Korean so that he could speak as well as native Koreans.

Later, he realized that he had become a member of the TL community due to his endless effort to

be like a Korean, and it did affect his attitude toward learning Korean. His overall proficiency of

Korean increased tremendously. As he achieved a high proficiency, he was able to help other

classmates understand difficult Korean features. In addition, his unit recognized his diligent work

and he was promoted faster than other Army personnel. I can say that he had high levels of

internal drive to accomplish these academic goals and he showed the importance of motivation,

22
autonomy, and willingness to communicate in L2 learning. I will move on to the next internal

factor, willingness to communicate, as another crucial element determining one’s success in

language acquisition.

Willingness to Communicate

According to MacIntyre, Clement, Dörnyei, and Noels (1998), Willingess to

Communicate (WTC) is “the individual’s readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time

with a specific person or persons, using a L2” (p. 547). WTC was originally conceptualized by

McCroskey and Baer (1985) to refer to the likelihood a person was going to engage in an L1

conversation if free to choose to do so. As defined by McCroskey and Baer (1985), WTC was

seen as a personality trait rather than a variable susceptible to change across situations.

MacIntyre and Charos (1996) applied the concept of WTC to L2 context, identifying its two key

components as “anxiety about communication” and “the perception of communicative

competence” (p. 7).

While interviewing Cecil (see Section B2, Summary 2), a successful learner of English

for the case study project in the SLA class, I noticed high WTC in her language learning, and she

did not seem to have an anxiety to communicate in English even though she thought that her

English proficiency was not high enough. I want to introduce her characteristics using Rubin’s

(1975) explanations. Rubin (1975) listed characteristics of what good learners would be like in

her article. She introduced seven hypotheses to represent her beliefs regarding what strategies a

good learner uses. Among seven hypotheses, I will illustrate three hypotheses that are related to

Cecil’s language learning and WTC.

Active learner participation

Rubin (1975) claimed that a good learner “has a strong desire to communicate, or to learn

23
from communication. He is willing to do many things to get his message across” (p. 46).

Moreover, Rubin (1975) discovered that a good learner practices a lot.

View language as communication, realizing the need to go and seek opportunities to talk

to real people.

Based on Rubin’s (1975) strategies, Naiman, Frohlich, Stern, and Todesco (1978) conducted a

large-scale research to identify learning strategies that good language learners apply. The study

provided some support to Rubin’s (1975) strategies, particularly in the adult interview study.

Naiman et al. (1978) found that one of the good language learners in the study had a girlfriend in

every language. They believed that language comes alive when learners get to know individuals

who speak the language.

Practice

Good language learners seem to make efforts to create opportunities to use the TL. By doing so,

they can test hypotheses on language in the process of developing their TL (Rubin, 1975).

Since these three characteristics of good learners stress the importance of interaction,

which overlaps with Swain’s (1995, 2005) Output Hypothesis, I will discuss the importance of

Output Hypothesis in L2 acquisition. In the early 1980’s within the SLA field, educators and

researchers strongly believed that students could improve their SLA only when they were

exposed to sufficient comprehension input (Kreshen, 1985). However, based on the results of

French immersion programs in Canada, the validity of the comprehension input theory was

doubted. Swain (2005) came up with an alternative explanation, “comprehensible output” (p.

472). She believed that one of the benefits of output production is “noticing the gap,” realizing

learners’ linguistic problems (Swain, 2005, p. 474). In other words, learners can notice what they

do not know how to convey and what they want to say. Another benefit would be an opportunity

24
to test hypotheses about how language works. The hypotheses are refined in the light of received

feedback, confirmation checks, or clarification. Under these circumstances, the students are

rather expected to produce a TL “precisely, coherently, and appropriately” (Swain, 2005, p. 473).

I find it is important to occasionally remind myself that my goal as a teacher is to help my

students learn more efficiently than they would be able to do on their own. By providing students

with opportunities to practice TL forms by using authentic materials to promote interactions

between teacher and students, and between students and students, I believe I can improve the

learning process.

Interaction

As was discussed in the first section of this paper, language is a tool for communication,

a system of symbols intended to carry meaning. However, it is ironic that for such a long time

language was taught by methods that did not involve communication and did not focus on

meaning. In my own experience of learning English, for example, interaction played no role.

Fotos (2002) detailed several characteristics of the EFL classroom that I experienced as a student

in Korea. She stated that much English language instruction overseas occurs not in English as

Second Language (ESL) situations but in EFL situations, and in those contexts, instruction is

mainly provided by teachers who are non-native speakers of English. She pointed out that in the

relatively large classes, it is difficult for teachers to supervise students, and the size of the class

limits participation in class. Thus, aspects of one’s learning environment can either help or

hinder opportunities for interaction. In my English class, if a dialogue ever took place in the

classroom, more likely, it was something rehearsed from a book. Similarly, if a student ever

produced language output, it was, most likely, in a response to a simple question by the

25
instructor. The importance of output and interaction were simply not recognized, at least not by

the teachers I encountered.

Fortunately, the times have changed and students’ output and interaction are now an

unavoidable part of any language course. I see this as a great improvement. The challenge now is

to ensure that these communicative opportunities are not limited to a few isolated instances of

unrelated role-plays, but rather that language instruction provides students with a safe and

interactive environment. Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (1996), offered partly as a response to

Krashen’s (1985) overemphasis on comprehensible input, argued that it is interaction that

ensures the modification of the input as well as expands learners’ internal capacities, thus aiding

comprehension and ultimately allowing acquisition. One of the central ideas of Long’s (1996)

hypothesis is negotiation for meaning, which refers to a joint attempt that “triggers interactional

adjustments by the NS (native speaker) or more competent interlocutor” (1996, p. 451). What it

means is that by engaging in task-based activities, students will become involved in meaningful

negotiation that ultimately develops their communicative competence. Long (1983)

demonstrated that negotiation for meaning frequently leads to utilization of comprehension

strategies such as repetition, confirmation checks, and clarification checks, which help ensure

that the language received by the learner is comprehensible, thus leading to acceleration in the

learning process. In my opinion, Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (1996) feels intuitively true. The

part that appeals the most is that negotiation implies both input and output, thus promoting a

more holistic approach to teaching that does not overemphasize one skill at the expense of

others. However, Long (1983) limited the collaborative interaction only to the NS and to the

more competent interlocutor, such as more knowable peers and adults. By reading van Lier’s

(1996) argument whether the learner has to have a NS or more competent peer around to interact

26
with, I have learned that three other interactions also promote a certain threshold of language

acquisition: interaction with equally capable peers, interaction with less capable peers, and self-

access.

Based on my observation of classrooms, I was surprised to see how often students use

negotiation for meaning in a naturalistic environment. As a teacher, I want this interaction to

provide the learners with opportunities to practice the TL structures not in the form of tedious

drills that decontextualize language forms, but rather in the framework of meaningful and

engaging tasks.

Feedback

The last principle of language learning and teaching I would like to discuss is feedback.

In an FL environment, teachers think that they should be a model of a proficient speaker since

many of the students do not find native speakers of the TL outside of the classroom. In addition,

teachers tend to think that they are responsible for monitoring students’ language production by

promptly correcting students’ errors. Corder (1967) made a distinction between errors and

mistakes. Errors are “systematic errors of the learner from which we are able to reconstruct his

knowledge of the language to date,” while mistakes are “errors of performance” (p. 167).

Teachers consider errors something that students need to get rid of immediately. Corder (1967)

presented a different perspective on errors. He believed that students’ errors reflect useful

sources to teachers to be able to assess the development of students’ language. In other words,

students’ errors can be a window into their language acquisition process and can provide much

insight to teachers. Students constantly try out language features they have learned, and in the

process of learning how language works, students make errors. Errors do not interfere with the

27
development of L2 acquisition, nor do they mean that teachers fail to teach certain language

features.

In terms of effective feedback, I believe that a teacher should not solely depend on

positive feedback (i.e., input that gives explicit information about what is acceptable in the TL),

but should also incorporate negative feedback (i.e., input that gives explicit information about

what is not acceptable in the TL). While some researchers have found negative feedback from

teachers helpful on students’ language learning, others have not. Truscott (1999) argued that

negative feedback that teachers provide to correct students’ production has no effect on students’

acquisition. On the other hand, Norris and Ortega (2000) evaluated 77 individual study reports to

investigate effectiveness of negative feedback in L2 instruction and discovered that explicit

feedback is more effective than implicit feedback in overall language proficiency. Whether

teachers should give negative feedback or not is one of the most controversial issues in this field,

but I believe that teachers should provide negative feedback to guide students to be proficient

speakers.

I once attended an Error Correction Workshop at DLI. Most teachers know the

importance of assessing students’ learning styles so that teachers can provide effective

instruction. The underlying assumption is that there are individual differences among students.

However, teachers have little or no interests in assessing students’ preferred ways of receiving

negative feedback. I think I have always utilized the same method of providing negative

feedback to my students. After attending the workshop, I decided to discuss with my students

how they want to receive feedback. For example, students can receive feedback as soon as they

make an error, or after the speech event is completed. Students can also receive feedback on

language features that they had just learned or on problematic language features that have

28
commonly shared by Korean language learners. Another potential approach could be to produce

feedback to students when errors interfere with comprehension.

One general rule that I came up with from reading articles on feedback is working on

errors and not mistakes. When students make an error, which is a consistent mistake on a

language feature, it reflects lack of knowledge and practice about the correct form, and I need to

help students understand the feature. However, if students make a mistake (errors of

performance), I will just ignore the mistake so that students can focus on fluency. In addition, if

students learn a new language feature, I will make sure that students are able to internalize it by

practicing. If they make errors on today’s new language features, I will provide negative

feedback. The most important thing is that I need to be consistent in how often I correct errors,

and in the manner in which I correct them, while taking into account individual differences.

CONCLUSION

The more I learn about theories of language, language learning, and language teaching, the

more I find contradictory and ambivalent results. Theories examine very different perspectives

on how instruction can promote language learning. Furthermore, research that has been carried

out to support the theories sometimes doesn’t have clear-cut results. Therefore, as a teacher, I

need to develop an ability to adapt theories to my teaching so that I can try them out.

While writing my position paper, I noticed how my beliefs about language, language

learning, and language teaching have changed during the MATFL-Korean program, and I have

learned about my own latent beliefs and preferred practices. I have developed a deeper

understanding of the principles of language teaching that I can strongly believe in, and I have

had to determine and explain why they play an important role in my teaching philosophy. From

an initial view of language as a primary tool for communication, I have grown to understand

29
seven functions of language and four communicative competences: grammatical, sociolinguistic,

discourse, and strategic. By examining both internal and external factors in successful language

learning based on the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996) and Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1995;

2005), I was able to perceive that language learning is shaped by an individual’s motivation,

autonomy, and WTC, all of which fall within the overarching sociocultural context. Even though

I have presented my beliefs in this position paper, I still remain committed to never growing so

firm in my beliefs that I become inflexible and unwilling to consider change. I hope to always

revise my views in light of new research findings as I continue to work as a FL teacher.

Word Count: 8,997

30
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