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 OUTLINE
‡ Education, Learning,
Language and Teaching

‡ Learning Theories

‡ Language Teaching
Methodology
 Education, Learning, Language and
Teaching
‡ Learning a (second) language is a long and complex undertaking.

‡ Total commitment, total involvement, a total physical, intellectual

and emotional response are required.

‡ Language learning is more than a classroom experience.

‡ What are the factors that affect HOW and WHY one learns or
fails to learn a second language?
( a two-minute task, think as many factors as you recall, and write
them on a piece of paper)
 The factors that affect language learning
process
WHO

WHAT
HOW

WHEN
WHERE

WHY
 WHO?
Learners
Where do they come from?
What are their native languages?
What are their socioeconomic
levels?
Who are their parents?
What are their intellectual
levels?
What sort of personalities do
they have?
Psychological and sociological
perspectives?
Teachers
What are their native languages?
Are they experienced enough?
What sort of training do they
have?
What sort of personalities do
they have?
Knowledge of the second
language and its culture?
What are their philosophies of
education?
How do they interact with
students?
 WHAT?
What is that the learner must learn and the teacher teach?

What is communication?
What is learning?
What is language?

What does it mean when we say someone knows HOW TO USE

the language?
How can both the first and second language be described adequately
What are the linguistic differences between the first and second
language?
 HOW?
How does learning take place?
How can a person ensure success in language learning?
What cognitive processes are utilized in second language
learning?
What kinds of strategies does the learner use?
What is the optimal interrelationship of cognitive, affective and
physical domains for succesful language learning?
How is the effectiveness of language learning enhanced?
 WHEN?
When does second language learning take place?
Does the age make a huge difference in learning a second
language?
If so, why does the age of learning make difference?
How do the cognitive and emotional developmental changes of
childhoood and young adulthood affect language acquisition?
Should the learner be exposed to three or five or ten hours a
week in the classroom?
Or twenty-four hours a day totally submerged in the culture?
 WHERE?
Where does second language learning take place?

Are the learners attempting to acquire the second language

within the cultural and linguistic milieu of the language?
Are they focusing on a foreign language context in which the
second language is heard?
How might the sociopolitical conditions of a particular country
affect the outcome of a learner·s mastery of the language?
How do general intercultural contrasts and similarities affect the
learning process?
 WHY?
Why are learners attempting to acquire the second language?

What are their motives?

Are they motivated by the achievement of a successful career?

Or by passing a foreign language requirement?

What other affective, emotional, personal or intellectual reasons

do learners have for pursuing this task?
 Our task as a teacher
‡ Thomas Kuhn (1970), a process of puzzle solving in which part
of the task of the teacher is to discover the pieces and then to fit
the pieces together.
‡ Our task should be, then, to fit the pieces together into a
paradigm- an interlocking desing, a theory of SLA.

The second language teacher, with eyes open to the total picture,
needs to form AN INTEGRATED UNDERSTANDING of the
many aspects of the process of second language learning.
 Language
‡ What is language?

´Language is a system of arbitrary conventionalized vocal,

written or gestural symbols that enable members of a given
community to communicate intelligibly with one anotherµ
(Brown, 2001: 5)

How about the characteristics of a language?

 The characteristics of a language
1. Language is systematic.
2. Language is a set of arbitrary symbols.
3. Symbols are primarily vocal, but may also be visual.
4. They 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 to
humans.
8. Language is acquired by all people in much the same way,
language and language learning both have universal characteristics.
 Language fields
1. Explicit and formal accounts of the system of language on several
possible levels (phonological, syntactic and semantic)
2. The symbolic nature of language, the relationship between
language and reality.
3. Phonetics, phonology, writing systems, kinesics, proxemics, and
other paralinguistic features of language.
4. Semantics, language and cognition.
5. Communication systems, speaker-hearer interactions.
6. Dialectology, sociolinguistics, language and culture.
7. Human language and nonhuman communication.
8. Language universals, first language acquisition
 A question to consider!

Can foreign language teachers effectively teach a language if they do

not know, even in general, something about the relationship between
language and cognition, writing systems, nonverbal communication,
sociolinguistics, and first language acquisition?

Possible connections?
 What determines the way you teach?

Your understanding of the components of language determines to a

large extent how you teach.

‡ Nonverbal communication
‡ Pieces programmatically taught
‡ Cultural issues in an interactive way
‡ Operant conditioning
‡ Deductive rather than inductive proces
 Learning & Teaching
´Learning is relatively permanent change in a behavioral tendency
and is the result of reinforced practice.µ
(Kimble & Garmezy, 1963: 133)

´Teaching is showing or helping someone to learn how to do

something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something,
providing with knowledge, causing to know or understandµ
(Brown, 2001:7)
 Learning
1. Learning is acquisition or ´gettingµ.
2. Learning is retention of information or skill.
3. Retention implies storage systems, memory, cogntive
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 form of practice, perhaps reinforced
practice.
7. Learning is a change in behavior.

(Brown, 2001: 7)
 What is learning to you?
It absolutely affects

‡ your philosophy of education

‡ your teaching style

‡ your approach and methods in the classroom

‡ classrooom techniques
 Learning Theories
1. STRUCTURALISM/BEHAVIORISM

2. RATIONALISM/COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

3. CONSTRUCTIVISM
 STRUCTURALISM/BEHAVIORISM
The 1940/1950s, school of linguistics
Bloomfield, Sapir, Hockett, Fries
A rigorous application of the scientific principle of observation of human
languages.
´Only the publicly observable responses could be subject to
investigationµ
The linguist·s task is TO DESCRIBE HUMAN LANGUAGES and identify the
structural characteristics of those languages.

Language could be dismantled into small pieces or units. These units could be
described scientifically, contrasted abd added up again to form the whole.

The scientific method, states of consciousness, thinking, concept formation, or

the acquisition of knowledge were IMPOSSIBLE to examine in a behavioristic
framework.
 RATIONALISM/COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
The 1960s, generative-transformational school of linguistics
Chomsky
Language can not be scrutinized simply in terms of observable stimuli and
responses .
The generative linguist was interested not only in describing language but also in
arriving an explanatory level of adequacy in the study of language.

Saussure (1916)- Parole & Langue

Descriptive linguistics ignored langue and studied parole
Chomsky (1956) -Competence & Performance

Competence: underlying unobservable language ability

Performance: the manifestation of language
 RATIONALISM/COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Cognitive psychologists sought to discover underlying motivations and
deeper structures of human behavior by using a rational approach.

As opposed to empirical approach, which focuses exclusively on

observable behaviors, they employed the tools of logic, reason,
extrapolation and inference in order to derive explanations for human
behavior.

The generative linguist and cognitive psychologist were interested in the

WHAT question, but they were far more interested in a more ultimate
question: WHY!
 CONSTRUCTIVISM
Hardly a new school of thought,
Piaget and Vygotsky
Constructivisim emerged as a prevailing paradigm only in the last part of
the twentieth century.
Unlike some cognitive psychologists, constructivisim argues that all human
beings construct their own version of reality. Therefore, multiple
constrasting ways of knowing and describing are equally legitimate.

´Individuals engaged in social practices« on a collaborative group,

or) on a global communityµ
(Spivey, 1997:24)
 CONSTRUCTIVISM
Emphasis on the primacy of each indivdual·s construction of reality.
Piaget (1972) stressed the importance of individual cognitive development
as a relatively solitary act. Biological timetables and stages of development
were basic.

Vygotsky (1978) believed that social interaction was foundational in

cognitive development and rejected the notion of predetermined stages.

Constructivist perspectives are a natural successor to cognitivist studies of

universal grammar, information processing, memory, artifical intelligence,
and interlanguage.
THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS

A successful paradigm is followed by a period of anomaly then crisis

with all the professional insecurity that comes therewith, and
then finally a new paradigm, a
novel theory, is put together.
Khun (1970)
 So, why would I need all of this?
As schools of thought have come and gone, so have language teaching
trends waxed and waned in popularity.

´Changing winds and shifting sandsµ (Marckwardt, 1972:5)

«with each new method breaking from the old but at the same taking with
it some of the positve aspects of previous paradigm.

GMT
DM
ALM
 The Impact of Psychology on Language Teaching
« the value of group work«
«the use of numerous self-help strategies
«the nature of communication and communicative competence
«explanations of the interactive process of language
«the importance of self-esteem
«developing individual strategies for success

´a move significantly beyond the teaching of rules, patterns,

definitions, and other knowledge ABOUT language to the point that
we are teaching our students TO COMMUNICATE genuinely,
spontaneously and meaningfully in the second language.
 To eclect or not eclect
Then, teachers have to make a decision on what particular designs and
techniques for teaching a foreign language in particular context.

The natural atmosphere of the classroom identifies what teaching

strategies to employ in most of the cases.

Every teacher-learner is unique.

There is no recipe for this.

No quick and easy method is guaranteed to provide success.

QUESTIONS?

CONCERNS?

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