EAL; lightbown and spada how languages are learnt

P43 hatch 1992 & Picca 1994;

SLA takes place through conversational interaction, interactionism

Agrees with Krashen that comprehensive input is crucial, but extends on how the input must be structured; simplification of language doesn’t work the interaction must be natural and supported either by context or visual aid , therefore interaction that is modified in a natural way

This means COMPREHENSION CHECKS THAT AREN’T CONDESENDING, CLARIFICATION REQUESTS BY LEARNER, REPITITION OR PARAPHRASE

This supports the notion that the best thing for EAL students is to group them as much as possible with the students with the clearest English

p52 Genesee 1976

Academic aptitude helps with remembering grammatical structures, reading and vocabulary however has no correlation with capacity to learn a language conversationally and orally meaning that MFL is incredibly inclusive if taught with a focus on speech

Schmidt 1991;

P57

Students are motivated by positive reinforcement

Varying activities and materials

Using cooperative rather than competitive goals

p72 Bown and Spada; 1999

The concept of learner language abolishes the notion that the speaker is using an incorrect version of the target language but rather their own learner language that they are building on to develop their own individual fluency of said language


If you think about it no two native English speakers used speakers using a prescribed version of the target language but rather express themselves and engage with the culture using it, for EAL this means the students are to be able to express themselves in English as an aim rather than being grammatically correct as this comes from a development of their learner language

Lightbown 1992 p192

A study in 1992 in which over a course of 8 weeks students read and listened to tapes during a 30 minute daily ESL period was shown to not only be able to maintain the language but also showed that they were able also to speak, however they did not fare as well as students in the study that involved interaction


This showed that whilst it is possible and a big support to have 30-minute English time sessions but this must be supported by interaction

P163 Lightbown and Spada 1999;

Corrective feedback is necessary otherwise speakers will continue with the same mistakes for years

P167 Lightbown and Spada 1999;

Errors are a natural part of language acquisition and should only be corrected when persistent

'language processing in bilingual children' Ellen Bialystok and Lalif M Al-Harbi

language formulation is independent of other knowledge types

bilinguals experience the world completely in the two languages not separately of each other

when children mix languages it is called code mixing

because of these three factors children are unable to translate until later because they need to develop other cognitive tools to do so