Hello everyone, this week we'll be talking briefly
about syntax, summarizing theories of acquisition, and prepping for the week 5
quiz.
Week 4 Reading: Lightbown & Spada. How Languages are Learned. Chapter 2 (HLAL_Chapter 2.pdf)
Directions:
**This week you will read summaries of several L2 Acquisition theories. Choose one to support, summarize it and share learning and teaching experiences that support your choice.
Week 4 Reading: Lightbown & Spada. How Languages are Learned. Chapter 2 (HLAL_Chapter 2.pdf)
Directions:
**This week you will read summaries of several L2 Acquisition theories. Choose one to support, summarize it and share learning and teaching experiences that support your choice.
Attention!!
Group leaders: If your
name has an * in front of it, you are the group leader for the week 4 journal. Please get your summary and comments posted by Wednesday.
Andrew, *Evan,
Swati, Sean
Young, *Justin, David
Greg, *Michael,
Julie
My summary for Young and David to comment on...
ReplyDeleteSecond Language Acquisition (SLA) theories include behaviorist, innatist and cognitivist theories.
I will focus on a theory from the cognitivist / developmental perspective.
The Interaction Hypothesis
This argues that conversational interaction is essential to SLA. Researchers focus on the ways teachers modify their speech and interaction patterns in order to promote positive classroom discourse.
Long (1983) argued for modified interaction, where the teachers don’t simply focus on simplifying language for understanding. Instead teachers should create opportunity for Ss to interact together and work towards mutual comprehension.
Long (1983) summarized modified interaction as follows:
1. Interactional modification makes input comprehensible.
2. Comprehensible input promotes acquisition, therefore
3. Interactional modification promotes acquisition.
Some examples of conversational modification are:
. Comprehension checks
. Clarification requests
. Self –repetition or paraphrasing
In Long’s (1996) revised version of the interaction Hypothesis more emphasis is placed on the importance of corrective feedback during interaction. When teachers have to ‘negotiate for meaning’ and students have to ‘find better ways’ to express themselves, so that students are pushed ahead in their developments.
Since videoing the 1st methodology class assignment, I have put more focus on modifying conversation in the classroom, as well as trying to create more interactive opportunities for my students. This has helped raise the Ss interest in the class, and is in my honest opinion more helpful in Ss language retention than rote memorization. You can see examples of Comprehension checks, clarification requests and paraphrasing in my first blog video.
I can see some of the benefits of the other theories, however, I would have to support the sociocultural perspective, specifically Vgotsky's theory. I think that modified speech may improve acquisition my concern is that it may impede fluency. I mean that if the learner is constantly receiving modified input that they may produce modified output. We all do it, but I actually make an effort not to use modified speech in my class, especially past the beginner stages. If you watch my full 15 video there are some instances of modified speech, but they are few. I prefer to speak more naturally and let the students put it together, I encourage, even at a lower level students to work together to comprehend. I am inclined towards the ZPD. You can see (in my posted videos) how my speech patterns and length of utterance change between my first beginner class and my higher level class. I am sure that we all do that. Before I knew what I was doing or what it was called I often butted heads with institutions about the speed of my speech when teaching. I told them to just wait and that the students would be accustomed to my speed. After the first few weeks, I didn't receive these comments from students or parents any more. My thinking was that as a language learner immersed in Germany I didn't receive modified speech from the people I was having a conversation with. I had to use my construct my own knowledge. The benefit being in Germany was that they all spoke English fairly well, so I could comprehension check myself by simply questioning the speaker if necessary.
Deletetl/dr I think that modified speech can impede fluency
A five year old playing with bilingual friends and a high school exchange student are learning second languages in very different settings. Linguists and other folks who want to make a 'theory of everything' for SLA have to consider a wide range of learner characteristics and learning conditions. The reading looks at how SLA theories have changed over the years and how the theories influence L2 teaching methods.
ReplyDeleteSome of the theories come from animal research that was applied to human learning models, some are from linguists and others are from cognitive psychologists. Even within categories such as behaviourism , innatism and information processing, there are lots of pieces of the puzzle that still being researched, debated and refined.
I thought that Monitor Model was closest to my own experiences learning French and Korean and teaching English. I understood the 5 key points like this:
1. People can acquire L2 without formal study, just like they acquire their first languages.
2. There's a bank of language knowledge in your head that you modify and use to produce L2 output, but this modification/production takes time.
3. There's a sequence to L2 acquisition,
4. People learn material that is reasonably challenging.
5. Sometimes emotions/states of mind get in the way and prevent a person from acquiring language even if #4 is met.
The points 1,2 and 5 are the ones that resonated with me most. I can remember times in France when I would start using new vocabulary and expressions only because I heard friends using them in context.
This past year I taught a section of kindergarten students who had no previous English experience. There was one girl in my class who could communicate with me, but she always needed time to think before speaking. Sometimes the other kids would use words and expression that I use in my speech, but didn't teach directly - I suppose that's a bit like building their internal word bank.
For the last one - for my first four or so months in France, I was exhausted everyday from language immersion. I don't know how much it affected my ability to acquire language, but I remember having trouble producing language in situations that I should've been able to handle after about 4pm.
RE: my teaching now, I'll have to think some more about it after my classes tomorrow. This is the first time I've seen most of these ideas.
Although I found the Interaction Model to relate closer to my own beliefs and experiences, I also found Krashen's Monitor model to be quite useful. The points I found particularly pleasing were 4 and 5. Point 4 explains that I can learn more if I learn in smaller incremental steps. For instance speaking Korean with someone who knows I'm not fluent and adjusts their language use accordingly, based on my own use, will be more beneficial than speaking with someone who ignores my ability. In the first case I'm still being challenged and am learning and reviewing and practicing. I understand the majority of the dialogue so I can focus more of my attention on what I don't know and contribute to discussion instead of just focusing all of my attention on comprehension in general. In such a discussion I can also build fluency. In the second case the speaker is not giving me an opportunity to contribute because all of my attention is focused on comprehension, not response.
DeleteFor point 5, I agree strongly with its position to the point where it is stating the obvious. If we are emotionally distraught, have no motive, bad feelings, little need, etc. no amount of studying or exposure will advance us beyond a certain point. I find it is my job as a teacher to try and get students to see past or work around these negative influences when possible. For instance in an ESL environment one could stop the academically intense language class for a time and try something else. For instance sometimes I used to skip my language classes just because I didn't want to or feel capable of learning Korean that particular day. It wasn't because my brain wasn't working right, it was because I had other things on my mind that would make attending class a waste of time. Pushing yourself too hard can lead to burn out.
As for my experiences with point 4 and 5 as a teacher. I often speak with cow-teachers in class just before the bell starts about strategy or something else. In all cases my co-teacher's level of English proficiency are so far beyond my students level our semi-private discussions wouldn't be much benefit to their learning. They simply laugh, say wow, or pick out a single word and can't even guess the topic. Alternatively if I was just to review constantly, students wouldn't develop. Everyone must be challenged by new material, but it can't be too much at once.
DeleteIn regards to filters, it's obvious. My students can't simply decide not to attend English class. Every day there is at least one or two students in the class who would be better off out in the field playing or in the nurse's office sleeping. Other than filling chairs they have little purpose to be in the class. If they don't distract the lesson, I leave them be usually unless it becomes a trend. When it becomes a trend I try to get to the bottom of their filters and usually it's a lack of motivation. Often it's being frustrated because learning English is hard and not important in their eyes, or they are bored because it's too easy. In both cases, I just try to make things more fun for the little guys. I encourage the smarter students to be models and I pay extra attention when monitoring individual work to the students who are behind.
Sean, what do you make of the criticisms of Krashen's ideas on p. 10?
DeleteThat part made me wonder if it's really even possible to conclusively test any SLA theory given all the different learner characteristics and conditions.
I remember one of my French teachers always rambled on about how people learned languages different ways - all of which boiled down to practicing one of the 4 skills. Are human brains really so similar that it's possible to make an SLA theory of everything?
I’m not Sean, but I'm sure how anyone can disagree with what the infamous Krashen says about affective filter hypothesis, that students block out additional information when they’re distracted or stressed out. Anyone who has taught a language class knows that even if you teach something one week, the next week it could all be forgotten. If it was ever learned at all. Additionally, and this goes to your fifth point, he talks about people who reach a glass ceiling in their ability to learn a language. I’ve seen this firsthand. A student at my previous university studied English for years. She kept getting levelled up, since she worked hard and no one wanted to fail her, but her level seemed stuck at point where new information just wouldn't stick. Consequently, while she was once one of the top students in the class, by the end she was near the bottom. I guess the only question is whether it’s due to strictly linguistic or processing problems outside the student’s control, or if motivation and laziness play a factor in the inability to absorb new information.
DeletePersonally speaking now, I’m a big believer in the interaction hypothesis on page 15 and often pair or group students up so they can interact with each other and receive feedback from others with similar proficiency levels. This way they can get feedback that’s less intimidating than the correct feedback they might receive from me. As for interacting with the students myself, depending on the levels of the EFL students I teach, the more my gestures will be exaggerated, my speech rate slowed and relatively complex terms explained. I’m also well aware of the practice of “negotiating for meaning” as even the synonyms for the words you want to explain might be too complex for the learner and you’re sometimes sidetracked by giving simplified definitions of what certain terms mean.
-* obviously first sentence should be "but I'm NOT sure how anyone can disagree..."
DeleteI also see problems with differentiating between acquiring and learning. Acquiring is a type of learning anyway, but I think there is value in pointing out the differences. Students can learn what needs to be learned and then taught how to acquire things on their own. It would be difficult to test some of his ideas because everyone is different. For this same reason a unified SLA theory that isn't vague or full of exceptions seems unlikely. There will always be competitive models, it's up to us to choose which one works best for us in our situation. His theory is getting rather dated and there is more research out there now, but like all good theories it is still valuable. Everything in social science should be strongly criticized and not accepted as universal truth.
DeleteI am myself learning Korean language here,I believe kershner's fifth point is true to my learning procedure. When I reflected upon the vocabulary I have acquired till date, The list shows only vocabulary used in a convenient store, grocery market or any local market dealing with kitchen ,household etc.
ReplyDeleteEven though the availability of material do not motivate me to learn thorough Korean language.The natural order hypothesis is working for me at present ,where I am learning things in a set sequence....my mandatory needs forced me to learn certain things early then others.
I find it real hard and at times too tough to learn the numbers in Korean language ,I am often pushed into mugging up them.Till date I can't tell my cell phone number in Korean.I guess that it is not yet into the sequence of mandatory things for me to earn.
I believe Kershner's theory worked equally well ,while I was teaching in India.Some low proficient students preferred learning certain scoring topics just in order to pass the exam.Thus the affective filter hypothesis,rules them.
After in depth study ,it is hard to assign any one single particular SLA theory to every individual,I guess every brain works differently and thus every one needs different theory.It surely depends upon the cognitive understanding too.Connectioists argument is valid here
The major theories on second language learning presented in this chapter are behaviourism which relies on mimicry and memorizaton, innatism which leans on the idea of Universal Grammar to explain how language is acquired, and cognitivist/development theories that include information processing (newly learned information is processed slowly at first and gradually becomes automatic), connectionism (language basically "sinks in" after hearing it often enough, kind of like in the movies), the competition model (very similar to connectionism), and the hypotheses of interaction, noticing, and input processing.
ReplyDeleteSociocultural theory is also discussed, although it seems to echo some the other theories presented. The main difference is that socioculturalism connects the thinking process to interactions encountered in social activities.
Of all the theories covered in this chapter, the one that I'd support first is the group of hypotheses that include interacting, noticing, and processing. The chapter points out that "there are no cases of beginner-level learners acquiring a second language from native-speaker talk that has not been modified in some way" (Long 1983,1996). Having spent three years teaching English conversation classes to university students, this doesn't surprise me at all, and the validity of this statement becomes even more obvious when I think back to the days when I had to try communicating in this country without knowing a single word of Korean. Modifying, or "dumbing down" speech as I secretly like to call it, is absolutely essential for beginning learners. Speaking with English language beginners in the same way I'd talk to another native English speaker is as much a waste of time as it is for Koreans who try talking to me as if I've lived in Korea all my life.
My official assessment of Schmidt's "noticing hypothesis" is that it sounds dumb, but it's true. You can't learn something until you've noticed it. I'm not entirely clear on why Schmidt felt the need to research this idea and call it a theory, but I agree with him. To be fair, he seems to be referring specifically to noticing things in the speech of others rather than in a textbook, but the point still seems rather obvious.
The third part of this hypothetical trio involves input processing, such as the need to understand that the target language's sentence structure might be very different from the learner's L1. It also points out that the learner has to have a certain amount of skill in the target language before being able to use their L1 knowledge to process L2. Like most English teachers in Korea, I generally avoid using Korean in the classroom because (a) my students will laugh at how bad my Korean is, and (b) it's usually detrimental and counterproductive to teaching my students. However... there have been a few times where I've pointed out to students that "you say it in Korean this way, but in English it's this other way". Sometimes that kind of thing really does help them to process what's being taught, especially if they're having trouble grasping the "why" of it all.
Thanks for the summary Michael (Mike?!--Just realized I’m not sure what you prefer to be called!). Let me weigh in on the noticing hypothesis. You mentioned that it seemed so obvious that you’re not sure why anyone bothered to research it. I was surprised when you said that because it DIDN”T seem to make sense when I read it.
ReplyDeleteI decided to look into it a bit more. According to an critical article by a researcher named John Truscott that I found five minutes ago, there are two different understandings of the noticing hypothesis. He calls them the weak form and the strong form. I’m guessing that you are talking about the weak form, which says you have to notice something generally, but not be aware of it’s details. I was thinking of what Truscott is calling the strong form, which says people have to notice details like how the grammar works. It is the strong form which I disagree with.
I used to work at Yonsei University’s Wonju Campus, and I remember having a conversation with the director of the language institute there. She was telling me about a professor in a different department that she didn’t have a high opinion of. She said he was very proud of his English, and then she snorted and asked, “Where do you think he learned it?” Then she answered her own question and said, “A gas station! He stayed in the United States, got a part-time job at a gas station, and practiced speaking with the customers and his coworkers!” She thought this was ridiculous and said that he couldn’t explain certain grammatical rules in English. I had met the professor she was talking about, and I didn’t find it difficult to communicate with him, but this director was looking down on him partly because she seemed to feel that if he didn’t have a certain amount of metalinguistic knowledge, then his English couldn’t be that good.
And here’s where we come full circle. This Truscott fellow seems to make a good point when he says the noticing hypothesis should be limited to metalinguistic knowledge. To go back to the reading Adam assigned us, the author does say a little later that, “From the connectionist perspective, the likelihood of acquisition is best predicted by the frequency with which something is available for processing, not by the learner's awareness of something in the input.” That’s something I can get behind.
Hi Greg, first of all thanks for asking what I prefer to be called! Nobody does that anymore. I meet people named Richard and I don't automatically start calling them Rich or Rick or Dick unless they tell me to, and so far nobody has ever once instructed me to call them Dick. Anyway, I go by Michael but will answer to Mike.
DeleteRegarding the "noticing hypothesis" I have to confess that I probably oversimplified it in my own mind in order to make sense of it. You can't learn something unless you notice it... that's kind of like saying you can't see something unless you look at it first. Thanks for the clarification on the weak/strong forms of noticing. Although I think the connectionist theory is pretty sad all on its own, I can certainly see where "noticing" certain speech patterns, vocabulary, and grammar usage can be of benefit to those who are frequently exposed to the target language.
There are many theories mentioned in this article and they all apply to different types of learners and their situations.In my case of learning French and English at the same time even before entering a classroom setting, I strongly have to agree with the sociocultural perspective.
ReplyDeleteVygotsky's theory which assumes that language development is a result of social interactions is right on the money for my case.
I didn't start learning these languages in the classroom. In the beginning I only had my family which consisted of my mother who is bilingual as are my brother and sister and my dad who only speaks English. I also had many neighborhood friends who all spoke French. The only way of learning was by interacting with others.
I was always surrounded and interacted with people who were within my zone of proximal development. my parents played the roles of teachers at first. They helped and corrected my use of the language when need be. My mother was always very supportive and always helped us understand and be understood.
Years later, my husband is always amazed at the way my best friend and I can interact by switching from English to French even mid sentence sometimes.
Even today as a teacher I always encourage my students to try ans speak as much as they can. I was surprised once when I asked my adult students how many of them interacted in English outside of our classroom. They all responded by saying none of them interacted in English outside of the classroom. I was puzzled by this answer and thought to myself: How can you acquire a language without practicing???
If I could claim one mutant superpower as my own, it would be acquiring a language without practicing. My own failures at improving my Korean stem from not practicing which is pretty stupid considering we live here in Korea.
ReplyDeleteI understand why Korean students don't speak English to each other... it's for the same reason that I don't speak Korean to my American friends who also speak varying levels of Korean. I don't even speak Korean to Korean people when I know they speak English! To do so just seems awkward. But if it didn't seem awkward and if I spoke Korean to every Korean person I know, I'd probably be a lot better at it.
The only kind of Korean that I "practice" regularly is that which I need to survive, ie: buying stuff, ordering food/drinks, and telling cab drivers where to take me. I handle all those situations with ease about 95% of the time, so I guess practice totally works.