Teacher Discussion Forums

Are there any outlines that detail how language is learned? i.e. first some vocab through oral, then some simple speech, etc.

Isn't any textbook series an outline of how that publisher and author think language is learned? Just look at the chapter headings and the vocabulary lists. If you get a sample of each series from publishers you can get a pretty good overview of every theory of language acquisition there is with the exception of a some that have gone out of favour - those you would have to find in the libraries of universities who tend to keep old series like that - audiolingual method, Suggestipedia and so on.

The best way to find what is current is read the course outlines for ESL teaching at university and then look up key words on Google to find explanations in Wikipedia or something like that.

Or you can look at past discussions on Dave's here in the Applied Linguistics forum. Just type in Curriculum or How to learn English or read old posts of fluffyhamster and follow the threads listed in those posts.

Sally Olsen wrote:Isn't any textbook series an outline of how that publisher and author think language is learned? Just look at the chapter headings and the vocabulary lists. If you get a sample of each series from publishers you can get a pretty good overview of every theory of language acquisition there is with the exception of a some that have gone out of favour - those you would have to find in the libraries of universities who tend to keep old series like that - audiolingual method, Suggestipedia and so on.

Actually I think ESL textbooks in general are quite conservative and stick to a traditional structural syllabus, which is not exactly indicative of cutting edge theory. What about Task Based Teaching or Sociocultural theory? I think both these approaches are best found in teacher practice and AL theory rather than explicity laid out in textbooks for all to see.

As for L2 theories of acquisition, you basically have the cognitive school which turns to psychology and uses the mind as computer with limited processing capability metaphor. Language is basically learnt like anything else through general cognitive processes. I think you can also place Connectionism here.

You have the generative school which posits an innate Language Acquistion Device specific to modern humans and turns to linguistics for its basic orientation. This traces back to Chomsky.

You have Sociocultural theory which is based on the ideas of Vygotsky and whose key concepts include participation, imitation and the Zone of Proximal Development. This theory is more ecological and perhaps explicitly pedagogical than the rest.

All of these L2 theories have parallels in L1 acquisition theory and you can also find them battling it out in Evolutionary Linguistics (ie. LAD vs. Connectionism).

Heh, thanks for the mention, Sally, but I'm not sure that ploughing through my old posts would be the best way to become acquainted with language learning ( ~ theories), even if I might (as you imply) have a thing or two to say about syllabus or curriculum design at least.

Hi JMA, nice post. I for one keep meaning to read more about Vygotsky! And I would agree that the majority of textbooks could be a lot better in helping learners master (learn, acquire etc) the language. But Sally's suggestion that a lot can still be learnt from textbooks (I'd add: at least about how not to do things, provided one follows one's own judgements and instincts rather than just blindly whatever the book implies is always best practice), conservative though most of them they may be (I'm sure she'd agree), would probably be a more practical start for most than grappling with much (S)LA theory.

One problem is that the less adventurous teachers still like to see at least an explicit listing of, or indeed prefer the general organization and implicit methodology of textbooks to still mainly be in terms of, structural items - witness the failure of the COBUILD course, which went in for empirically-informed, wider/more detailed 'lexicogrammatical' coverage of the language, allied to a somewhat task-based approach, but failed to highlight that it had all the usual stuctutural items and more. (That being said, I am not sure that I really liked the look of the COBUILD course's semi-scripted - and thus authentic, or inauthentic? Either way, not quite 'authenticated' production by the learners themselves! - texts-as-task-demonstration samples in e.g. Willis' The Lexical Approach. It would be nice if the teacher was more, indeed almost always, the one using "the language" as authentically as possible to communicate and thus build up a socio-linguistic relationship, given vs new etc, over and across real time (most teachers would claim they are doing this already, but to what extent really? Not as much as they could be, because they are usually teaching just the book or whatever instead of taking just their cue from it)).

Anyway, I would like to see textbooks offering as many sociolinguistic and organizational options as possible! All of course informed by theory just as much as previous and current practice.

As for L2 theories of acquisition, you basically have the cognitive school which turns to psychology and uses the mind as computer with limited processing capability metaphor. Language is basically learnt like anything else through general cognitive processes. I think you can also place Connectionism here.

You have the generative school which posits an innate Language Acquistion Device specific to modern humans and turns to linguistics for its basic orientation. This traces back to Chomsky.

Chomsky likes to think of his linguistics as 'cognitive', but for all the meaning he imbues the word with, it surely has to remain spelled with a small c when describing his work, as opposed to that of the Cognitive Linguists proper (who at least give "psychological" considerations their due, even if the real psycholinguistics or rather neurolinguistics still seems a bit absent in their writings too, from what little I've read); that is, I'd give the 'cognitive' a big C in the first paragraph of the above quote. I am not sure though about the 'mind as computer' (with or without 'limited processing') fitting in with all the more genuinely big C stuff - it's Chomksy and his followers who seem to be the ones who most want to e.g. "program" things the most (with algorithms etc), with his posited LAD etc (though the complexity of the machinery and its workings seems to be getting so pared down that I wonder if it is all still quite so 'modularized' in Minimalism; that is, the apparent rivalry and distance between the various schools of linguistics might be lessening as the main protagonist runs out of pep and fight if not influence (malign ~ ? )).
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 1176#41176 (etc - stuff with 'cognitive' in it).

Anyway, Pengyou, you could/should try searching for 'SLA' at least, first here on Dave's (to get some idea of whatever our opinions might be on language teaching-learning), and then on the internet generally. Oh, but wait (I've just tried such a search myself), I've suggested that to you before, haven't I! (On e.g. the Elementary Ed forum's earlier and somewhat similar thread you started, entitled 'What is current/modern theory for (T)EFL?'). Sorry if the answers you're getting seem a bit nebulous, evasive or even "cryptic", but if you want a really considered and truly "expert" opinion on what is (or can at least seem, be (made); become? By others if not oneself, with the possible danger of never being reduced back down to manageable, pressing and entirely relevant proportions!) a quite complex area then you could just buy at at least one book on the topic(s)! (Apologies if you have read one or more such books...and if so, it would frankly come as no surprise if you had found them a little bit "wanting"!). The people here are "only" teachers, and probably generally quite busy ones at that. But personally, I do enjoy coming back to central questions (even such general and "wide" ones), despite not always having the time to do them much justice, so thanks for posing it (again), and here's to hoping we've given you even a little (more) food for thought.

fluffyhamster wrote: I'd give the 'cognitive' a big C in the first paragraph of the above quote. I am not sure though about the 'mind as computer' (with or without 'limited processing') fitting in with all the more genuinely big C stuff - it's Chomksy and his followers who seem to be the ones who most want to e.g. "program" things the most (with algorithms etc), with his posited LAD etc (though the complexity of the machinery and its workings seems to be getting so pared down that I wonder if it is all still quite so 'modularized' in Minimalism; that is, the apparent rivalry and distance between the various schools of linguistics might be lessening as the main protagonist runs out of pep and fight if not influence (malign ~ ? )).

Cognitive L2 acquisition theories have been based on the computer metaphor. I don't think this is controversial (see Rod Ellis' "The Study of Second Language Acquisition" 2nd Edition OUP 2007). The subject processes input through general cognitive abilities and uses cognitive abilities to form output as well. Krashen's N+1, Long's Interaction Hypothesis, and Swain's Output Hypothesis fit squarely into here. I think Connectionist (Nick Ellis) and Complex Dynamical Systems (Diane Larsen Freeman) SLA theories are changing things but to be honest this is an area I am only starting to learn about. I am not sure whether Connectionism constitutes an entirely new metaphor (the brain) or whether it is a new "computer" metaphor.

My point is you can't peg the computer metaphor solely on Generative linguistics because it's in the Cognitive L2 theories as well. I also don't agree with your characterization of Chomsky's "followers" - some of the most brilliant minds on the planet (ie. Martin Nowak) have worked with the concepts of LAD and UG and spearheaded development in Evolutionary Linguistics.

Going back to Vygotsky, SLA's foremost authority on Sociocultural theory is Jim Lantolf. I liked this book: http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780 ... estMatches

Heh, it seems I was reading a bit too much into what you'd written in your second paragraph (As for L2 theories of acquisition, you basically have the cognitive school which turns to psychology and uses the mind as computer with limited processing capability metaphor. Language is basically learnt like anything else through general cognitive processes. I think you can also place Connectionism here), JMA; that is, I was assuming (seeing how your third paragraph could be taken as implicitly in contrast to rather than simply following the second) that you were talking about the Cognitive Linguistics of Lakoff, Langacker etc. Part of the apparent terminological "problem" (with the rise of Cognitive Linguistics, that is) is that everybody appropriates the label 'cognitive', or they don't mind being labelled with it, but who is actually most worthy of the "crown"? It could be quite hard to decide (and would it ultimately matter much, if one were well-read enough to know the real underlying differences as well as similarities), but most theories of SLA (as espoused by Krashen, Long, Swain, Larsen-Freeman etc) have never struck me as being particularly 'cognitive' (though I suppose those ones just mentioned are, compared to the more sociocultural models supported by Lantolf - not that sociocultural models would have no place for any conception of mind and cognition). Maybe I have just not read enough about SLA or even FLA, or it's been a while, or the theories are implicitly or "explicitly" 'cognitive' without banging on about it so much that one would begin to question the term rather than accept it almost in passing; as for the sociolinguistic or sociocultural, I guess I have not got far enough into Hallidayan-like stuff ("surface" level) let alone "beyond" it. Anyway, like many teachers probably, I seem to depend on the fact that humans at whatever age simply have some capacity for learning (foreign) languages, rather than worrying too much about how they exactly do this; I've been more busy trying to find convincing exemplars and creating contexts and conditions in which at least the "language itself" will be seen to be working...which I guess satisfies quite a few of the points that would be on any SLA theory checklist! Hmm, just giving Pengyou a bit more fluff to stuff!

I will try to check out Martin Nowak's work. One would certainly need to be made of pretty tough stuff to have ploughed through Chomsky's stuff and then some, and of course there are at least a few linguists who have been inspired by Chomsky but are not in complete thrall to him. (Sorry, have been writing a script for Stir Trek! ). Anyway, I wonder who'd win in a Celebrity Death Match between Martin Nowak and Mark Liberman (of Language Log)!

fluffyhamster wrote:Heh, it seems I was reading a bit too much into what you'd written in your second paragraph

Hi! Yes, I was referring to Cognitive L2 Acquisition theories. They contrast with Generative theories because acquisition is thought to occur through general cognitive abilities rather than a LAD, of course. I suppose this is why you can say Connectionism is cognitive even though the metaphor seems to have fundamentally changed, because it does not posit a language device. I was not referring to Cognitive Linguistics.

You can find an article by Nowak in the following book. Otherwise he publishes mainly in Science, Nature and academic journals, and usually not on linguistic topics. http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780 ... estMatches

That's an impressive array of authors for sure! I'll be taking a look at the GBS preview available (extensive, it seems).

This thread has also inspired me to heave out some boxes of stored books and find Peter Robinson (ed)'s Cognition and Second Language Instruction (got it for £1 years ago in a sale, but didn't have time to read it before heading back to Asia).
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KADO ... navlinks_s

Also spotted this in the GBS search results for PR + cognition:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YdGd ... navlinks_s
(Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, edited by Peter Robinson & Nick C. Ellis. Routledge 2008).

I highly recommend:

How Languages are Learned
Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada (1993)
Oxford: Oxford University Press

It goes over the results of a lot of research and testing of different ideas and theories about language learning and summaries what this means for language teachers. Fairly short and very easy to read.

What I've gleaned from it is that language learning (for both 1st and additional languages) seems to happen like this:
1) People learn small chunks or phrases (eg. "Whatsthat?" "How'reyou?")
2) Later they learn to break them down a bit (eg. "Whats that?" "How're you?")
3) Then they learn to break them down further (eg. "What is that?" "How are you?")
4) Finally they learn how to build them up from scratch and create new or original chunks/phrases/sentences, etc.

An oversimplification, of course, but something along those lines.