COGNITIVISM/THE COGNITIVE APPROACHES

Cognitive theory assumes that responses are also the result of insight and intentional patterning. Insight can be directed to (a) the concepts behind language i.e. to traditional grammar. It can also be directed to (b) language as an operation - sets of communicative functions.

 A variety of activities practiced in new situations will allow assimilation of what has already been learnt or partly learnt. It will also create further situations for which existing language resources are inadequate and must accordingly be modified - "accommodation". This ensures an awareness and a continuing supply of learning goals as well as aiding the motivation of the learner

 Cognitive theory therefore acknowledges the role of mistakes.

Cognitivist emphasizes on designing our lessons and language laboratory tapes to ensure the minimum number of mistakes made by learners which contributes to learning new rules.

How much cognitive theory do English language teachers need to know?

Step 1: make your trainees supply examples of all types of "meaningful" and "meaningless" pattern drills exploiting various relationships
Step 2: allow your trainees to experience what it is like to be in a beginners class in a language outside their current knowledge.

 Trainers of English language teachers can achieve practical coverage of cognitive learning theory by reviewing the history of language teaching, especially the period in the mid 20th century when "meaningful drills" were being advocated and the shortcomings of "meaningless drills" were being highlighted.

 Although drilling (training/coaching) and rote learning (memorization & repeating) became subject to considerable prejudice in some educational circles in the late 20th century, no language learner will proceed very far without recognition of language structure and nobody will succeed in learning much without practice and repetition. Therefore, the knowledge of the "types of drill" is very essential for those whom are responsible for learning and teaching.

 Another strategy often used by teacher trainers is to put trainee teachers into the situations encountered by language learners. This is often done through demonstrations where new languages are presented. It is hoped that they will be reminded of the problems, especially the conceptual ones. Often, there is not enough time to do this on short teacher training courses.

What are the principle drawbacks of mechanical or controlled drills and the ways of overcoming them?
The aim of language practice drills is to train learners to talk and to help them master the basic structural patterns of the target language. As a method of language practice, drills are difficult to reconcile when the language becomes "meaningless".

Meaningless Drills
The drawbacks of meaningless drills:
lack of context failure to offer learner an element of discrimination or choice failure to give rise to naturalistic speech they fail grammatically in many instances.

Lack of context results from behaviourist principle of focusing uniquely on form: the one-step-at-a-time approach which attempts to prevent mistakes. Drills attempting to prevent mistakes show only positive examples of what can be done. Without this wider context, drills run the risk of overgeneralization.

Meaningful Drills
In order to qualify as "meaningful", a drill must provide: A context for the utterance it contains - without context, there is a risk of over-generalization. (The meaning conveyed by an utterance is a matter of the function of the sentence as a whole in the larger context in which it occurs.) It should give rise to naturalistic language It should allow the learner some element of choice or discrimination.

Track record and variety of exercise-types

An early example was the Minimal Language Acquisition Programme, designed by Charles Fries and Richard Lado. A later example was "Streamline Departures" [Oxford 1979], a UK English course book with a remarkable long shelf life, though the orginal method recommended in the Teacher's Book depended on many of the following drill-types.

Type of Drills Substitution drills

Explaination Require the learner to substitute in the previous response the word provided or embedded in the next prompt. The stimulus to which the response is trained is therefore the prompt taken in conjunction with the previous response. The prompts signal the internal changes and the series of responses set the pattern. For the teacher who sees the need for isolation and practice of mechanical production of sentences to improve learners' command of structure or pronunciation. Require systematic changes in the form of words provided in the prompt before a substitution is made. They may therefore be useful in practicing inflection of verbs or nouns, agreements between such constituents in the sentence as subject and verb, adjective and noun (in French & Spanish) and case endings.

Mutation drills

Type of Drills Transformation drills

Explaination Embody the changes outlined above but also require at least the option of a change in word order, the addition or deletion of grammatical constituents and may exact the alternation of grammatical pairs. They can accordingly practice changes from affirmative to negative, changes in voice from active to passive, changes in mood, from indicative to interrogative(questioning) to imperative to subjunctive and changes in sentence-type from simple to compound or complex. between vocabulary items in a sentence prompted by hint words or whole sentences. The relationship is completely verbal and responses depend on a knowledge of lexical inter-dependencies.

Collocation relationships

Application relationships

(relationships of reference) prompted by pictures, sound effects or knowledge of the world.

Type of Drills Implication relationships

Explaination ... between sentences prompted by whole sentences and requiring the substitution of synonyms, hyponyms, antonyms, converse terms or consequences in place of their antecedents

Consequence, Hyponymy and S: This is a wonderful book. R: Good, I'd like to Antonym Drills & Synonymy read it. S: This is a fantastic record. R: Good, I'd Drillslike to hear it. S: Felicity is a very nice girl R: Good I'd like to meet her. S: statement R: response

The use of drills at different levels of language proficiency:

Drills are likely to be useful at elementary level or in the "practice phase" of a lesson where limitation of the learning goal is desirable. Drills are likely to be useful at the intermediate level where practice, revision and checking of learning is particularly important. Drills are likely to be useful at the advanced level to diagnose and iron out a particular difficulty. Drills may be tried with the whole class or used on an individual basis, perhaps for remedial purposes. The limitations of drills are clearly matched by useful possibilities.

The Innatist Model

This model is also known as nativist, mentalism or rationalism. In this model, language is seen not as a behavior learned through imitation and conditioning, but is rule-based and generative in nature, processed and produced through complicated cognitive processes and mechanism.

There are 2 underlying assumptions: The first assumption proposed by Chomsky, the simplest critic of behaviorism, stated that human beings possess an innate mental capacity for language. It is a special language mechanism in which individuals are blessed with syntactic principles, or rules about grammar. It is also believed, in this view, that the language has a universal nature so that any one can learn any language they are exposed to.

 The second basic assumption is concerned with the language development which is directed by a biological and chronological program.
In this model, Eric Lenneberg (1967) proposed a hypothesis known as the Critical Period Hypothesis - a critical point for language acquisition occurs around puberty and beyond this point, people who try to learn a language will not acquire it fully.
This hypothesis was supported by natural experiments in which children fail to acquire a language normally during their childhood. The well known evidences are the wolf boy, Victor, in France and Genie, the girl from California.

Piagetian View of Cognitive and Language Development

According to Piaget (1959) cognitive development and language acquisition are closely interrelated processes. During the childhood the abstract knowledge about the world can be gained through seeing objects around them and by observing how the objects function and interact each other. In Piagets view cognitive knowledge about the world, without cognitive development language acquisition will not take place, even if it does the children will only gain little.

 This kind of view is often labeled as cognitive determinism - the development of language forms is governed by cognitive growth, i.e. cognitive development before language. In other words, the sequence of development within language learning is governed by the stages of cognitive growth.

Vygotskyan View of Cognitive and Language Development

Vygotskys (1962) cognitive view in language development was inspired by Piagets at least in two ways :
the important relation between cultural and social environment and language learning; cognition closely related to language is considered unfixed manner but dynamic one since the childrens understanding will improve along with their interaction with the people around (e.g. parents, siblings, neighbors). The childs language acquisition is obtained through daily conversation with adults such as naming objects.

According to Vygotsky, language is a means of influencing later cognitive development: In this context, by getting along with the people around them and practicing their own language, the children will learn to interpret new experiences which will further develop their thinking ability. For an illustration, as the children who have mastered certain aspects of language will be more critical by asking questions about the things they see and hear. They also start to enjoy listening to stories and describing the characters in the stories.

Reference: The Language Laboratory and Language Learning by Julian Dakin (Longman 1973) "Teaching Oral English." by Donn Byrne (Longman) A History of ELT (second edition) - 1400 to the present, by A.P.R.Howatt with H.G.Widdowson (OUP) http://staff.undip.ac.id/sastra/suharno/2009/07/21/cognitivis m-and-its-implication-in-the-second-language-learning/ http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/esl0312.html