1)
Acquisition
Vs Learning
v Acquisition
is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend
language, as well as to produce and use words
and sentences to communicate.
For
example,
all
of this is bound up with the age child and what happens to us as our brains
develop and grow. Language acquisition is guaranteed for children up to the age
of six, is steadily compromised from then until shortly after puberty, and is
rare thereafter’ (Pinker 1994:293).
However,
at around the time of puberty, children start to develop an ability for
abstraction which makes them better learners, but may also make them less able
to respond to language on a purely instinctive level.
v Learning
is the human activity which least needs manipulation by others. Most learning
is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered
participation in a meaningful setting.
For
example,
they had asked students to study grammar; they had explained vocabulary and
taught paragraph organization. But it didn’t seem to be working and it did not
feel right. How would it be, they wondered, if they abandoned all that and
instead devoted their efforts to exposing students to English and getting them
to use it, particularly given that they were highly motivated to learn.
Finally, the suggestion
that acquisition and learning are such separate processes that learnt language
cannot be part of the acquired store is not verifiable unless we are able to
get inside the learner’s brains.
2)
Innatism,
Behaviorism, and Interactionism.
v Innatism
is believes that human beings were born
with language acquisition devices in their brain which contains language universals.
The language development is a biological function development.
Noam Chomsky is the main person for
this theory. He suggested that there is no need to teach children language
since all children were born with an innate ability to discover themselves. His
idea also links to critical period hypothesis which it stated that one would
have a very hard time to learn or master one language after they passed a
certain period of time, usually before the puberty.
Innatism view language as a create process,
and they treat environment as nourishment to support the use of the language.
v Behaviorism
is sometimes derided and its contribution to language teaching practice heavily
criticized. Behaviorist
believes that environment plays a very important role in acquiring language,
especially during children early language development.S.F. Skinner was the
person who best known of this theory. He emphasized the importance of imitation
and repetition in learning process.
Children got “positive
reinforcement” during the learning process, thus encouraged them to repeat the
same words or phrases, practice and more practice, gradually they would produce
the words or phrases by forming “habits”, so that children could acquire
language.
However, the behaviorism cannot
fully explain how children acquire language because children are not only
imitating same words or phrases from adults; they also creating the new words
and forming the new sentences.
v Interactionism
is believes children learned language
mainly through through interacting with people, included adults and their
peers. This theory was represented by Swiss psychologists Jean Piaget and Lev
Vygotsky.
Piaget believes that children acquire language
through their physical interactions with the environment. He also stated that
language is a symbol system. Vygotsky concluded that children were able to have
a high achievement if they would have the social interact with the others. This
is his famous “zone of proximal development”.
3)
Input, Hypothesis – Comprehensible
input
v The input hypothesis, also known as the
monitor model, is a group of five hypotheses of
second-language acquisition developed by the linguist
Stephen Krashen in the 1970s and
1980s. Krashen originally formulated the input hypothesis as just one of the
five hypotheses, but over time the term has come to refer to the five
hypotheses as a group. The hypotheses are the input hypothesis, the
acquisition–learning hypothesis, the
monitor hypothesis, the
natural order hypothesis and the
affective filter hypothesis. The input hypothesis was first
published in 1977.
The hypotheses puts primary importance on the
comprehensible input (CI) that language learners are exposed to.
Understanding spoken and written language input is seen as the only mechanism
that results in the increase of underlying
linguistic competence, and language output is not seen as having any effect on learners'
ability.
Furthermore, Krashen claimed that linguistic competence is only advanced
when language is subconsciously acquired,
and that conscious learning
cannot be used as a source of spontaneous language production.
Finally, learning is seen to be
heavily dependent on the mood of the learner, with learning being impaired if
the learner is under stress or does not want to learn the language. Krashen's
hypotheses have been influential in
language education,
particularly in the
United States, but have been criticised by
academics. Two of the main criticisms are that the hypotheses are untestable,
and that they assume a degree of separation between
acquisition and
learning
that does not in fact exist.
v Comprehensible Input
A hypothesis that learners will acquire language best when they are given
the appropriate input. The input should be easy enough that they can
understand it, but just beyond their level of competence. If the learner is at
level i, then input should come at level i+1.
Comprehensible input is an
essential component in Stephen Krashen's
Input
Hypothesis, where regulated input will lead to
acquistion
so long as the input is challenging, yet easy enough to understand without
conscious effort at
learning.
One problem with this hypothesis is that i and i+1 are impossible to
identify, though arguably teachers can develop an intuition for appropriate
input. That is, teachers develop an intution of how to speak to be understood.
4)
Source Language – Target Language
v Source Language ;
Source Language as the name suggests is the language in which you will
receive the document to translate into another language. A tip, source language
should be the language which you have learnt and not necessarily your native
language.
This is the language which your
client understands very well, so your expertize in this language can even be
upto a moderate level. If you can comprehend this language very well, but
cannot think much in this language, then its fine.
v Target
Language ; The idea that students should be involved in ‘solving
communication problems in the target language-that is, performing communicative
tasks in which they have to (mostly) speak their way out of trouble-has given
rise to Task-based language teaching. Task-based learning has at its core the
idea that students learn better when engaged in meaning-based tasks than if
they are concentrating on language forms just for their own sake. But that
learning should grow out of the performance of communicative tasks rather than
putting the learning first and following it by having students perform
communicative tasks.
For example, or it might happen because the teacher gives
feedback on a task the students have just been involved in. focus on form is
often incidental and opportunistic, growing out of tasks which students are
involved in, rather than being pre-determined by a book or a syllabus.
5)
ZPD (Zone of
Proximente Development)
The zone of proximal development (sometimes abbreviated ZPD), is the
difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do
with help.
It is a concept developed by Soviet psychologist and social
constructivist Lev Vygotsky (1896 - 1934). Vygotsky stated that a child follows
an adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks
without help or assistance. Vygotsky's often-quoted definition of zone of
proximal development presents it as "the distance between the actual
developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level
of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance,
or in collaboration with more capable peers."
Vygotsky among other educational professionals believes the role of
education to be to provide children with experiences which are in their ZPD,
thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning. The concept of ZPD
has been expanded, modified, and changed into new concepts since Vygotsky's
original conception.
The concept of scaffolding is closely related to the ZPD, although Vygotsky
himself never mentioned the term; instead, scaffolding was developed by other
sociocultural theorists applying Vygotsky's ZPD to educational contexts.
Scaffolding is a process through which a teacher or more competent peer gives
aid to the student in her/his ZPD as necessary, and tapers off this aid as it
becomes unnecessary, much as a scaffold is removed from a building during
construction.
According to education expert
Nancy Balaban, "Scaffolding refers to the way the adult guides the child's
learning via focused questions and positive interactions." This concept
has been further developed by Ann Brown, among others. Several instructional
programs were developed on the basis of the notion of ZPD interpreted this way,
including reciprocal teaching and dynamic assessment.
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