Van Patten'sTheories
Emergentism or Usage-based Approach 💥
Late 1980s
Nick Ellis, William O'Grady, Brian MacWhinney
Central theory: all human learning uses the same structure for knowledge development
Learning and representation is sensitive to frequency
The more frequent, the representations get stronger. Experience with the enviroment has a great influence in the performance.
Applied to language:
Sentence structure is a result of frequencies of occurrence in the input exposed to.
There is no such thing as something that regulates language in the brain.
Claims:
Language learning is an implicit statistical learning process: things that are more recent and relevant to a particular context are those that come to mind
Language and its propeties emerge over time: as complex and abstrac as the propeties of language may seem, they are the result of cognitive-learning mechanisms interacting with information from the enviroment.
L1 inhibits the establishment of associations in L2
Complexity Theory - Dynamic Systems ⭐
Diane Larsen-Freeman, Kees de Bot, Wander Lowie, Marjolin Verspoor
Early 2000s
Central Theory: the sum is grater and more complex than the parts.
Complexity arises as a result of the interaction of various individuals or components, it is also adaptative and may change in response to the enviroment.
Applied to language:
It focuses on the process involved in the creations of a linguistic system (performance on an specific task, mental representation)
Language as stages that evolve.
Fundamental question: How did the linguistic system arose?
Claims:
Learning is not just about taking in data: the system is more complex than just features and rules.
Components are constantle interacting within the learner's system: to understand development one has to see how these components interact in the meaning-meaking process.
What hets strengthened and what gets weakened within the system may depend on who the learners interact with and the environments they find themselves in.
They see L2 development in the same way they see L1 development.
Processibility Theory ♻
Manfred Pienemann
Linguistic Theory:
Grammatical information needs to be exchanged between elements during output processing.
Two psycholinguistic dimensions
1. Developmental dimension:
language processing for speech production is incremental.
Output processing procedures emerge over time and in a stage-like way.
Stages:
1. Lemma access: nouns
2. Category procedure: adds grammatical informations that does not need to agree with anything else in the sentence (subject + verb)
3. Phrasal procedure: exchanges grammatical information within a phrase (subject agreement)
4. S-procedure: exchanges grammatical information across phrasal boundries in a singles clause (subject + verb + agreement)
5. Clause procedure: exchanges informations between a matrix clause and an embedded clause.
2. Variational dimension
explains the existence of possible learner strategies for a given structure before they have acquired a particular processing procedure.
Claims:
Language acquisition consists of stage development: they can only occur in a particular processing procedure.
Teaching of formal structures is constrained: teaching won't make learners skip stages.
Sociocultural Theory 🍻
1990s
James Landtolf, Steven Thorne, Amy Ohta, Richard Donato
Central Theory: Vygotsky's psycology theory
Cognitive funtions derives from social interactions and the usage of those funtions are possible thanks to social activities
Applied to language:
Language learning is a socially mediated process
Language is a cultural artifact that mediates social and psychological activities
The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): learning occurs in this zone and it is achieved through the cooperation of experts and begginers working together
Claims:
All development takes place as people participate in culturally formed settings
The highly knowledgeable participant can create good learning conditions for the begginer learner
Learners use tools such as speech and writing to mediate their social environments
Concept-Oriented Approach ✏
Robert DeKeyser, Peter Robinson, Peter Skehan,
Jan Hulstijn, Rod Ellis, Nick Ellis, Richard Schmidt, Zoltán Dörnyei
Central Theory:attempts to understand how humans create and use knowledge
Applied to language:
Individual differences that affect acquisition: motivation, memory, and aptitude
Sees acquisition as the formation of a knowledge system that L2 learners must open for speaking and undertanding.
Interested in factors that affect acquisition: how they come to understand a particular feature, the strategies they use.
Restructuring: how the learning of new information causes changes in already existing knowledge.
Skill Acquisition 💥
Based on Adaptive Control of Thought model (ACT)
Central Theory: Learning a second language is like learning any other skill
Its roots can be found in branches of psychology
Cognitivism
Connectionism
Behaviorism
VanPatten-Benati
Learning begins through
Largely explicit process
Subsequent sufficient practice and exposure
Utilization of declarative knowledge followed by procedural knowledge
Practice as the key of learning
Universal Grammar: 🔥
Noam Chomsky (1986)
Central Theory Language as a mental representation: an abstract and complex system residing in the mind/brain
Language
Or linguistic knowledge happens
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Composed by abstract principles
These principles constrain the way in which acquisition happnes
Due to the interaction between
Input
Universal Grammar
Operates outside of awareness
Only implicit learning can be involved
Features from which languages may select principles that regulate
All human languages
Basic syntactic operations
Declarative/Procedural Model (DP)
🚩
Has its roots in neuroscience and structure of the brain
DPM uses the result of bran activity to claims
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Language processing
And by inference
Language learning
Two memory systems
Declarative
Procedural
Entrenched in one set of neural structures
Responsible for "idiosyncratic" knowledge
Unpredictable knowledge
Served by a different network of neural structures
Used for
Statistical relationships
Sequencing, sets of rules, categories
Implicit language
Central Theory:
Argues that lexicon and language depend on two neural systems that are intensively studied in the context of memory: declarative and procedural memory.
Lexicon
Grammar
An innate mechanisms of language learning
An unconscious and potential knowledge which exists in human brain without
learning and determines the existing appearance of human language.
*Input processing Theory 🏁*
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VanPatten (1996) Krashen (1982)
Central Theory
The idea that learners bring processing strategies for making form-meaning connections to the task of comprehension.
Focus on input processing, form-meaning connections and the mapping of syntactic structures.
The linking of meaning to a specific linguistic data
Words
Phrases
Pieces of words
Learning processing strategies are couched in terms of principles that guide processing
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To comprehend should tag and encode linguistic features in the input for use by the internal mechanisms responsible for developing mental representation.
Learners must filter input as they attempt to make sense out of what someone is saying
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Research on input processing attempts to undterstand what this "filtering" mechanism is
Interaction Framework 🏴
Central Theory: Comprehensible input is a key factor in second language
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Early 1980s
VanPatten
Focused on how input can be made comprehensible
Interaction refers to conversations between learners and other interlocutors.
Interaction Hypothesis how interactions might affect acquisition by positing that interactions play a central role in second language acquisition processes.
Claims of input's role
By modifing input
Or providing feedback
Occurs when the interlocutor perceives that the learner does not understand what is being said
Restates something by simplifying, exemplifying, or otherwise altering the original statement.
Occurs when the interlocutor uses particular devices to inform the learner about something he or she has said.
Input is crucial but it is not sufficient, interaction also plays a key role
Output is necessary for the development of language
Input plays a crucial role in second language acquisition
Negative feedback obtained during negotiation of meaning might facilitate the acquisition of vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and pronunciation.
References
B, VanPatten. (2015). Key Terms in SLA.
By: Andrea Giraldo & Maria Sofía Cadavid 😃