Week 4 English language teaching (ELT)

 In language teaching we must practice and practice.. As a child learning his first language he repeats over and over again  Language learning is mainly a matter of imitation  First we practice the separate sounds, then words, then sentence. That is the natural order and therefore right for learning a foreign language 22/05/2012 ELT2

 Child language development: first listens and then speaks  A small child listens speaks and one would dream to make him read and write. Reading and writing are advanced stages of language development.. The nature order for l2 & L2 is listening, speaking, reading and writing  don’t have to translate when you were small. If you were able to learn your first language without translation then you should be able to learn a foreign language without translation in the same way 22/05/2012 ELT3

 A small child simply uses language. He does not have to learn formal grammar 22/05/2012 ELT4

 First and second language acquisition in children (C1-C2), holding age constant  Second language acquisition in children and adult (C2-A2), holding second language constant  First language acquisition in children and second language acquisition in adults (C1- A2) 22/05/2012 ELT5

 Whether there is a critical period for language acquisition: a biologically determined period of life when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire.  The critical period hypothesis (CPH) claims that there is such a biological timetable. 22/05/2012 ELT6

 Function of the brain during the process of language acquisition (See Schuman 1998, Jocobs & Schman 1992, and Scovel 1988).  How might neurological development affect second language success?  Does the maturation of the brain at some stage spell the doom of language acquisition ability? 22/05/2012 ELT7

 Lateralization of the brain as the key for answering the previous questions. There is evidence in neurological research that as the human brains matures, certain functions are assigned, or lateralized to the left hemisphere, certain other functions to the right hemisphere.  Left hemisphere: intellectual, logical and analytic functions  Right hemisphere: controls functions related to emotional and social needs 22/05/2012 ELT8

 Language functions appears to be controlled mainly in the left hemisphere…  Conflicting Evidence: patients who have had left hemispherectomies have been capable of comprehending and producing an amazing amount of language.  Central question2: when lateralization takes place? And how it affects language acquisition? 22/05/2012 ELT9

 Lennberg(1967): it is a slow process that begins around the age of two and is completed around puberty. During this period the child is neurologically assigning functions little by little to one side of the brain included in this function, of course, language.  It has been found that children who suffer injury in the left hemisphere are able to relocalize linguistic function to the right hemisphere, to relearn their first language with relatively little impairment.  Thomas Scovel (1969): the plasticity of the brain prior to puberty enables children to acquire not only their first language, but also a second language and that once lateralization is accomplished, it is difficult for people to be able ever again to acquire fluent control of a second language 22/05/2012 ELT10

 Walsh & Diller (1981): different aspects of a second language are learned optimally at different ages:  Lower order processes : Pronunciation is dependent on early maturing and less adaptive circuits which makes foreign accent difficult to overcome after childhood.  Higher-order language functions such as semantic relations are more dependent on late maturing neural circuits, which may explain why college students can learn many times the amount of grammar and vocabulary that elementary school students can learn in a given period of time. 22/05/2012 ELT11

 Ober (1981) noted that in second language learning, there is significant right hemispheric participation and that “this participation is particularly active during the early stages of learning the second language”… strategies of acquisition.  Genesee (1982): “there may be greater right hemisphere involvement in language processing in bilinguals who acquire their second language relative to their first language and in bilinguals who learn in informal contexts” 22/05/2012 ELT12

 Adults acquired an authentic accent in second language after the age of puberty.  Jane Hill (1970): non-western societies adults can, in normal course of their lives, acquire second languages perfectly.  Sorenson (1967) in Tukano culture of South America: at least two dozens were spoken among these communities. People must marry outside the group, and hence almost always marry someone who speaks another language. 22/05/2012 ELT13

 Individuals actively began to speak two or three languages to which they had been exposed at some point.  In adulthood, a person may acquire more languages ; as he approaches old age, he will go on to perfect his knowledge of all the languages at his disposal. 22/05/2012 ELT14

 Human cognition developed rapidly throughout the first sixteen years of life and less rapidly thereafter.  Piget & Inhelder (1972) outlined the course of intelectual development in a child through various stages: 1. Sensorimotor (birth to two) 2. Preoperational (two to seven) 22/05/2012 ELT15

3. Operational (seven to sixteen)  Concrete operational (seven to eleven)  Formal operational (eleven to sixteen)  A critical stage for the consideration of the effects of age on second language acquisition to occur at puberty (age eleven). It is here that a person becomes capable of abstraction, of formal thinking which transcends concrete experience and direct perception. 22/05/2012 ELT16

 Humans are emotional creatures.. We are influenced by our emotions:  Affective factors: empathy, self-esteem, extroversion, inhibition (about self- identity…fearing to expose too much self- doubt), imitation, anxiety, attitudes, language ego (the identity a person develops in reference to the language he or she speaks). 22/05/2012 ELT17

 Bilingualism; children can learn two languages natively. A separate context of each language is needed.  People learning two languages in separate contexts are called coordinate bilinguals; they have two meaning systems.  People who have one meaning system (from which both languages operate) are called compound bilinguals 22/05/2012 ELT18

 The linguistic and cognitive processes of second language learning in young children are in general similar to first language processes.  Similar strategies and linguistic features are present in both first and second language learning in children.  Dulay & Burt (1974): 86% out of 500 errors made by Spanish-speaking children learning English reflected normal developmental characteristics-expected intralingual strategies, not interference errors from the first language.  Adults more cognitively secured, appear to operate from the solid foundation of the first language and thus manifest more interference. 22/05/2012 ELT19