Popular ideas about

language learning
revisited
 Activity
Give your opinion on these statements
Indicate the extent to which
you agree with each statement SA-STRONGLY AGREE
A- AGREE SOMEWHAT
by marking an X in the box
D- DISAGREE SOMEWHAT
associated with your opinion SD -STRONGLY DESAGREE

SA A D SD
Languages are learned mainly through imitation

Highly intelligent people are good language learners

Intelligence and language acquisition

The best predictor of success in second language acquisition

is motivation.
The earlier an L2 is introduced in school programmes, the
greater the likelihood of success in learning
Teachers should use materials that expose students only to
language structures they have already been taught
When learners are allowed to interact freely, they
copy each other’s mistakes
 Languages are learned mainly
through imitation

• Learners produce novel sentences.

• Children imitate selectively.
• Individual learning strategy.

• Careful listening and imitation can be

valuable.

• The slavish imitation and rote memorization

led many learners to a dead end.

As playwright George Bernhard Shaw once said:

“Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery
– it’s the sincerest form of learning.”
 How Do Humans Learn?
• How babies learn so
much, so fast?

• Babies brains are

making connections.

• They know how to

imitate. Thanks to
mirror neurons.

• A mirror neuron is a type of

neuron that fires both when an
action is performed and when
you see someone doing the same
thing.

• Why is this important? The

same neurons are fired.
 Highly intelligent people
are good language
learners.
• Emphasis in on learning about the language.

Vs.

Emphasis through interactive language

• Language learning involves different

skills that are not measured by IQ
tests.
 Intelligence and language
acquisition

• There is a link between general intelligence

and second language learning ability (Gardner &
Lambert, 1972).

• Pimsleur (1971) stated that a school learner's

average grade in all school subjects was often a
good means of predicting how good he would be at
language learning.

• Littlewood (1984) stated that a person's

motivation to learn and the qualities of the
opportunities to learn are two of these
factors.

• The third set of factors:"language aptitudes".

 The best predictor of
success in second language
acquisition is motivation.
•Age: Learners who begin
learning a second language as
adults rarely achieve the
fluency and accuracy that
children do in first language
acquisition.

•Language learning aptitude,

how the instruction interacts
with individual learners’ styles
and preferences for learning.
 Language learning: what
motivates us?.
What happens in our brain
• One specific
neurotransmitter plays a
leading role in
motivation: dopamine.

• one neuron to the

next.
• One particular path:
mesolimbic pathway.
• One of its stops is
the:"nucleus
accumbens.
 The earlier an L2 is introduced in
school programmes, the greater the
likelihood of success in learning.

• The decision about WHEN to introduce second

or foreign language instruction must depend
in the objectives of the language
programme.

• The language is Disadvantages

better to begin
exposure to the If an early start
language as early as means that children
posible. have Little
opportunity to
• Children will be more continue to develop
self-confident. their first language.
 Learners’ errors should be
corrected as soon as they are
made in order to prevent the
formation of bad habits.

• Teachers have a responsability to help learners

do their best, and this includes the provision
of explicit, form-focused instruction and
feedback on errors.

• Of course, excesive feedback on error can have a

negative effect on motivation; teachers need to
be sensitive.
 Teachers should use materials that
expose students only to language
structures they have already been
taught.
• Such a procedure can provide comprehensible input of
course.

• However, given a meaningful context-learners can

comprehend the general meaning of oral or written texts
that contain vocabulary and structures they have not
'mastered'.

• Students also need to develop strategies for dealing

with 'real' or 'authentic' material if they are
eventually going to be prepared for language use outside
the classroom.
 When learners are allowed to
interact freely, they copy each
other’s mistakes.
• Research has shown that learners do
NOT produce any more errors in
their speech when talking to
learners at similar levels of
proficiency than they do when
speaking to learners at more
advanced levels or to native
speakers.

• Group and pair work is a

valuable addition to the
variety of activities
that encourage and
promote second language
development.
 Students learn what they are
taught

• Some aspects of the second

language emerge and evolve
according to 'natural'
sequences of development

• Learners may be more likely to

learn certain language features
when they are developmentally
'ready'.

• Students learn much more than

they are taught.
 Most of the mistakes that
second language learners make
are due to interference from
their first language.
• Knowing one or more
languages could be an
advantage when we are
learning a foreign
language and it’s easier
when the languages have
the same origin. For
example: French and
Spanish.
The best way to learn
new vocabulary is
through reading.
• It is true that reading is the best
way students can broaden their
vocabulary.

• second language learners do not read

the necessary amount to develop
their vocab.

• students learn more when they

develop strategies to memorize and
not focusing on catch the main idea
of a text.
 It is essential for
learners to be able to
pronounce all the
individual sounds in the
second language.
• Learners focus more on the melody
of the language more than on
their ability to articulate
sounds when they want to be
understood
 Teachers should respond to
students’ errors by correctly
rephrasing what they said
rather than by explicitly
pointing out the error
• It is formally called ‘recast’, it
is quite common in second language
classrooms.

• It has the advantage of not

interrupting the flow interaction

• To give the students the

information they need to
communicate well in a polite way
so that students do not feel
ashamed.
The earlier a second language is introduced
in school programmes, the greater the
likelihood of success in learning

Introduction of a Disadvantages
second language

Period of limbo Substractive

Objectives bilingualism

Performance as
Social context native speakers

Promotion and Better development

reinforcement of L1 of L2
 Non-bilingual
Schools

Development of Then L2 teaching

L1

Foreign Language

Basic communicative
skills
 Teachers should teach simple
language structures before complex
ones
No matter how language is presented to learners,
certain structures are acquired before others

Restriction of
To Grammar structures
learners’ exposure

Second language
learners ‘Complexity’

Frequency and usage

Context of structures
 Students can learn both language and
academic content simultaneously in classes
where the subject matter is taught in their
second language
Content-based
Immersion classes
instruction
No improvement on
1. Immediate need to languages features that
do not usually interfere
learn the language.
with meaning
2. Spend more time in
contact
3. Motivation Gender of nouns
4. The range of
Content–based
vocabulary instruction is also
5. Communicative language learning

competences
 Classrooms are good places to learn
about language but not for learning
how to use language
Communicative language
Structure-based teaching, content-based,
approaches task- based instruction

Set of grammar rules

Usage of language to
achieve a goal

Communicative tool
 Second Language Teaching

Knowledge about Explicit

language

Comtemporary
Content-based instruction approaches to L2

The ability to use language Implicit

Parents usually correct young
children when they make
grammatical errors
• When children are very young-
schoolers, parents rarely
comment on grammatical errors.

•As children reach school age,

parents often correct non-
standard speech.

•Parents tend to focus on

meaning.

•Without corrective feedback and

guidance, second language
learners may persist in using
certain ungrammatical forms for
years.
 Once learners know roughly 1,000
words and the basic structure of a
second language, they can easily
participate in conversations with
native speakers.

• Pragmatic features are also

important.

• The decline in accuracy may

show that learners are
incorporating new information
about the language into their
own internal system of rules.
 Teachers should present
grammatical rules one at a time,
and learners should practice
examples of each one before going
to another

• Isolated presentation
and practice of one
structure at a time does
not provide learners
with an oportunity to
discover how different
language features
compare and contrast in
normal language use.
 CONCLUSIONS
• Language learning is affected by
many factors.

• Although teachers do not have the

controls over all the factors in
the language learning,
nevertheless, a better
understanding of them will permit
teachers and learners to make the
most of the time they spend
together in the twin processes of
teaching and learning a second
language.