Approaches to Teaching and Learning How people learn languages Session 2

What does a child have to learn? ___ vowels and ___ consonants and ____ ways of combining these 50,000 active words and _____ ‘passive’ words ____ aspects of grammatical construction Hundreds of ways to use prosodic features How to join text together Understanding of how _____ of English differ according to gender, class, region, occupation and so on How all rules above can be bent to achieve _____ effects e.g. jokes. (Adapted from Crystal D The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Developmental sequences Morphemes Negation Questions

Order of Acquisition (morphemes) Put these into the order that children acquire them… Possessive ‘s Auxiliary ‘be’ (he is coming) Present progressive (mummy coming) Copula (Jane is a nice girl) Third person singular (he runs) Plural s (two books) Regular past (she walked) Irregular past (she went) Articles ‘the’ and ‘a’

Actual order Present progressive Plural s Irregular past forms Possessive ‘s Copula Articles Regular past Third person singular Auxiliary ‘be’

Questions Rising intonation (Rosie button?) What? (Whatsit?) Where? Who? Why? How? When?

Hot dogs! Task Note down as much as you can of what the little girl says. Look back at your notes on child language learning: what can this child do/not do? What do you expect her to learn next?

How do people learn languages? Theories of second language acquisition are related to theories of first language acquisition. Three of the most influential are: 1. Behaviourism 2. Nativism (Innatism) 3. Sociolinguistic (Interactionist) 4.Constructivist (input vs output debate)

Reading Task for Chapter 2 With a partner, answer the questions about Chapter 2 in Lightbown and Spada.

Input vs output hypothesis Swain (1985) criticised Krashen’s input hypothesis. Emphasised output and interaction as a way to achieve competence in L2. Practice, production, interaction – all output focused. VanPatten (1993; 1996; 2002; 2007) reassessed role of input and its importance.

VanPatten’s input hypothesis Learners process meaning before form Learners process content words before anything else Learners prefer processing lexical items to grammatical items Learners prefer processing meaningful morphology before nonmeaningful morphology For learners to process form that is not meaningful, they must be able to process information at little cost to attention. (VanPatten 1996)

How to teach English What theory/theories seem to influence this teacher’s approaches to teaching and learning a language? &NR=1

Factors affecting second language learning 1. I___________ 2. A__________ 3. P__________ 4. M_________ and a________ 5. L________ p________ 6. L________ b________ 7. A___ of a___________.

Age of Acquisition Group Task 1. When does learning English begin in your home country? 2. When did you start to learn English? 3. Do you agree that younger is better? If so, why? If not, why not?

Critical Age Hypothesis suggests: ‘there is a time in human development when the human brain is predisposed for success in language learning’. (Lightbown and Spada, 2003:60)

The Critical Age Hypothesis According to Robinson (1998:3): “some evidence suggests that adults initially learn faster than children, but the levels of ultimate attainment are much lower in adults, especially in phonology and areas of complex syntax”. How does this statement reflect your experience of learning and learners?

Is younger really better? Initially CPH focused mainly on speech (native- like accent) but in recent years has been extended to embrace other aspects of language competence such as grammar (particularly morphology and syntax), opening up the possibility that there may not be one “critical period” which applies at the one time “across the board” but that different aspects of language competence may go through different periods which are particularly sensitive for their development. (Johnstone R. 2002)

Use of L1 in teaching English Complete the questionnaire.