Principles of language learning and

teaching
Chapter 1
• Learning a second language is not an easy task. Long and complex process. Reaching
beyond the confines of your first language.
• Many variables are involved in the acquisition process. Language learning does not
come with a step-to-step manual.
• Set of questions to guide the study of SLA
◦ Learners characteristics: ethnic, linguistic, religuos background. Native language,
level of education, socioeconomic context, life experiences, intellectual capacities,
strenghts, weaknesses, personality → crucial variables affecting both learner and
teacher.
◦ Linguistic factors: what is language, communication? What must the student
learn? Teacher needs to understand the system and fuctioning of the second
language and the differences between first and second language of learner.
Difference in the teacher of speaking and understanding a language to attain the
technical knowlegde required to understand and explain the system of that
language.
◦ Learning process: how does learning takes place? How to ensure success in
language learning, what kind of cognitive processes are utilized in second
language learning? Importance of different factors, optimal inter-relationship of
cognitive, affective and physical domains?
◦ Age and acquisition: when in the life of a learner does second language learning
take place? Difference between children and adults. In whar way does the age of
learning make a difference?
◦ Instructional variables: some SLA take place outside the classroom. In natural
environments, do all people learn a language equally successfully? Instructued
SLA. Active the learner outside the classroom.
◦ Context: Are they learning within the SL culture? Or they just hear it in artificial
environment. Sociopolitical conditions.
◦ Purpose: WHY. Motivation. Emotional, personal or intellectual reasons do the
learners have?
◦ Rejoicing in our defeats: questions above address the diversity of issues in
understanding the principles of language learning and teaching. Not only look for
the answers. Field of SLA is still in its infancy, with all the methodological and
theoretical problems that come with a developing discipline. Tentative answers.
Answers must always be framed in a context that can vary from one learner to
another.

• SLA field: complex, multidimensional. Gives no right magical solution, but a variety of
theories so you can look for the answers.
• Thomas Kuhn, “normal science”: process of puzzle solving, in with part of the task of
the scientist (teacher) is to discover the pieces and then fit them together. Fitting those
 pieces together can be understood as a paradigm, and interlocking design, a theory of
SLA.
• Theory needs to be coherent and unified, yet it should not be reduced to only one point
of view or theory. Teacher should be able to look at the total picture.

Language
Different definitions of language, definition as a statement that captures the key features of a
concept. Features may vary. Definition as a condensed version of a theory.

Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary:

• a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized
sings, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings.
Pinker's The Language Instinct:
• language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously,
without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its
underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more
general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.
Ron Scollon:
• language is a multiple, complex and kaleidoscopic phenomenon.

Possible definitions of language:

1. Language is systematic
2. Language is a set of arbitrary symbols
3. Those symbols are primarily vocal, but may also be visual
4. The symbols have conventionalized meanings to which they refer
5. Language is used for communication
6. Language operates in a speech community or culture
7. Language is essentially human, although possibly not limited for humans
8. Language is acquired by all people in much the same way, language and learning both
have universal characteristics

Possible areas of research:

1. Explicit and forman accounts of the system of language

2. The symbolic nature of language
3. Phonetics, phonology, writing systems, paralinguistic features of language
4. Semantics, language and cognition, psycholinguistics
5. Communication systems, speaker-hearer interaction, sentence processing
6. Dialectology, sociolinguistics, language and culture
7. Human language and nonhuman communication, neurolinguistics
8. Language universals, first language acquisition

The teacher's understanding of the components of language determines to a large extent how
he/she teaches a language.

Learning and teaching

Learning:
Traditional dictionary definition of learning
• acquiring or getting of knowledge of a subject or skill by study, experience, or
instruction.
Educational psychology would define learning as:
• a change in an individual caused by experience.

1. Learning is acquisition or getting

2. Learning is retention of information or skill
3. Retention implies storage systems, memory, cognitive organization
4. Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside
the organism
5. Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting
6. Learning involves some sort of practice, perhaps reinforced practice
7. Learning is a change in behaviour

Both language and learning definitions are complex.

Teaching:
Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning,
enabling the learner to lear, setting the conditions for learning. The teachers understanding of
how the learners learn will determine her or his philosophy of education, teaching style,
approach, methods and classroom techniques.
Schools of thought in second language acquisition

Disageement between linguists, psychologists and educators comes with the diferent points
of view, usually over the extent to which one viewpoint or another should receive primacy.

Structural Linguistics and Behavioral Psychology

Structural or descriptive school of linguistics
• 1940's, 1950's
• Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, Charles Hockett and Charles Fries
• Was defined by its rigorous application of scientific observations of human languages.
• Only publicy observable responses could be subject to investigation, data from the
mind was ignored.
• Linguistic's task was to describe human languages and identify the structural
characteristics of those languages.
• Languages can differ from each other without limit, and no preconceptions could apply
across languages.
• Language could be dismanteled into small pieces or units and those pieces cpuld be
described scientifically, contrasted and addep up again to form the whole.

Behavioural Paradigm:
• Also focused on observable responses
• Scientific method
• Typical behavioral models:
◦ Classical and Operant conditioning
◦ Rote verbal learning
◦ Instrumental learning
◦ Discrimination learning
◦ Other empirical approaches

Generative Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology

Generative-transformation linguistics:
• 1960's
• Emerged through the influence of Noam Chomsky
• Trying to show that human language cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of
observable stimuli
• Generative linguist: not only describing language but also arrivinf at an explanation
level of adequacy in the study of language.
• Difference between parole and langue
◦ Parole: whats observable, performance
◦ Langue: unobservable language ability, competence
• Langue was later ignored
Cognitive psychologists:
• Meaning, understanding and knowing were significant data for psychological study
• Tried to discover psychological principles of organization and functioning
• Rational approach: logic, reason, extrapolation and inference in order to derive
explanations for human behavior
• Going beyond descriptive → explanatory
• Not asking only what questions, but why questions
• More profound insight about human behavior

Constructivism: A Multidisciplinary Approach

• Hardly a new school of thought
• Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky
• Yet, constructivism emerged as an important paradigm only in the last part of the 20 th
Century, and is now almost an orthodoxy
• Integration of linguistic, psychological and sociological paradigms
• Two branches of constructivism:
◦ Cognitive
◦ Social
• Cognitive: