Scribd
Upload
14 views

Chapter 1.

Uploaded by

fq8sr6dr9n
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
14 views

Chapter 1.

Uploaded by

fq8sr6dr9n
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 11

Introduction to Applied Linguistics

Chapter 1: Language, Learning, and Teaching


CHAPTERS Language, Learning, and Teaching

First Language Acquisition

Age and Acquisition

Human Learning

Styles and Strategies

Personality Factors
Language
Possible definitions:

• The Merriam-Webster's Dictionary: “Language is a systematic means of communicating


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

• The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia: “Language is a system of communication by vocal


symbols.”

• Pinker’s definition: “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.”
Language is systematic.

Language is a set of arbitrary symbols.


All possible
definitions of Those symbols are primarily vocal, but may also be visual,

language The symbols have conventionalized meanings to which they refer.

yields the Language is used for communication.

following Language operates in a speech community or culture.


combined Language is essentially human, although possibly not limited to humans.
definition.
Language is acquired by all people in much the same way; language and
language learning both have universal characteristics.
Questions and issues in second language acquisition
Learner characteristics (Who does the learning and the teaching?)

Linguistic factors (What should be learned and taught?)

Learning processes (How does learning take place?)

Age and Acquisition (When does learning take place?)

Instructional variables (Do all people acquire language successfully?)

Context (Where should learning take place?)

Purpose (Why acquiring a second language?)


Learning vs. Teaching
Learning: Teaching:
It is acquiring or getting of knowledge of a It is showing or helping someone to learn how
subject or a skill by study, experience, or to do something, giving instructions, guiding
instruction. in the study of something, providing with
knowledge, causing to know or understand.
1- Learning is acquiring or getting.
2- Learning is retention of information or skill.
3- Retention implies storage system, memory, 1- Teaching cannot be defined apart from
cognitive organization. learning.
4- Learning involves active, conscious focus on and 2- Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning,
acting upon events outside or inside the organism. enabling the learner to learn, setting the
5- Learning is relatively permanent but subject to conditions for learning.
forgetting. 3- Your understanding of how the learner learns
6- Learning involves some form of practice, will determine your philosophy of education, your
perhaps reinforced practice. teaching style, your approach, methods, and
7- Learning is a change in behavior. classroom techniques.
Schools of Thought in Second Language Acquisition/Learning/Teaching

Structural (descriptive) Generative Constructive


1940s-1950s 1960s-1980s 1980s-2000s

-It emerged through the influence of -It emerged through the


Bloomfield. -It emerged through the influence of jean piaget. -It
-It used the scientific observation of influence of Noam Chomsky. emphasized social
human language. -A distinction was made interaction and cooperative
between competence and learning.
-Only the publicly observable performance.
responses could be studied.
-It described human languages
and their structural characteristics.
-Behavioral approaches in teaching
(drills, repetitions, etc.).
19th century and Language teaching

• Classical method (Grammar-translation method)


• The focus on grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary, translation
of texts, and doing written exercises.
• The Classical Method was adopted as the chief means for teaching
foreign languages.
• Little thought was given at the time to teaching oral use of languages;
after all, languages were not being taught primarily to learn oral
communication, but for gaining a reading proficiency in a foreign
language.
19th century and Language teaching
• The major characteristics of Grammar Translation:
1. Classes taught in the mother tongue; little use of the L2
2. Much vocabulary taught in the form of lists of isolated words
3. Elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar
4. Reading of difficult classical texts begun early
5. Texts treated as exercises in grammatical analysis
6. Occasional drills and exercises in translating sentences from LI to
L2
7. Little or no attention to pronunciation
20th century and Language Teaching
• Audiolingual Method (ALM) in the late 1940s and 1950s • It has an
overemphasis on oral production drills.
• Not focusing on form
• It is connected in the 70s to constructivism and socio-cultural theory
• Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
• It stresses the importance of self-esteem, intrinsic motivation, students
cooperatively learning together, of developing individual strategies for
constructing meaning, and above all of focusing on the
communicative process in language learning
Questions End

of chapter 1

You might also like