Method, Methodology, Language teaching, First, and Second Language acquisition
METHODOLOGY- Set of techniques rules postulates and procedures to developand validate English language teaching activities
METHOD.- path by means of actions established in advance to achieve a specific objetive may be material or conceptual
5.2 THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN RELATION TO BEGINNING READING INSTRUCTION
Theories of First Language Acquisition
Theories of second language acquisition
No one knows exactly how acquire the knowledge but is evident that's all has the ability to undernstand, listen, speak and read her/ his first language.
The classic behaviors and neobehavioris theory
.
.Neobehavioris theory, human behavior based on the principles of psychology. The theory of classical behaviorism deals with the stimulus-response relationship
The cognitive learning theory
Learning is achieved through a meaningful procedure, but also because in the development of the teaching/learning process only the most comprehensible information should be given.
The theory of humanistic psychology
It's based on the fact that human beings develop in effective rather than cognitive operations, since the characteristics of the environment are primordial in their knowledge as they become aware of themselves and of their own way of learning for their target language.
This topic has been widely debated and researched by psychologists, linguists, educators and others interested in this process.
In the 18th century, Dietrich Tiedemann, a German philosopher, conducted research based on the linguistic and psychological behavior of how children acquire language.
Language Acquisition Theories
Behavioristics Theories
They base all their philosophy on human behavior.
Brown Douglas (1980) focuses on the innately perceivable aspects of linguistic behavior and the relationships or associations between those responses.
Skinner could be considering of his verbal behavior theory that is based of his general theory of learning by operant conditioning.
Jenkis and Palermo, they hold that children might get some syntax patterns based on stimulus response facts which are supported by imitation.
Generative Theories
They hold that children learn their first language by means of an innate language mechanism that enables them to learn the language spoken in their environment.
The Nativist Approach
Nativist means a sort of innate device that comes with children when they are born.
This approach holds that children are pre-programmed to speak.
This approach acquires language through a series of assumptions that are endowed within their brains.
DEFINITION
LEARNING
TEACHING
LANGUAGE
Language is “a systemic means of communicating ideas or Feeling by the use of the conventionalized sings, sounds, gestures or Marks having understood meanings”
(Webster, 1961, p. 1270)
We can also say that language is a system, since it has a logical order, it is used by human beings of a specific culture to communicate through signs, symbols, sounds, etc., and to share traditions and customs.
Stephen D. Krashen 1978 p. 23 argues that learning is composed of the general rules and structure of the language.
Learning is “to acquire knowledge, understanding or mastery by study or experience”. (Webster, 1984, p. 393)
The purpose of teaching is to guide, facilitate and help students to acquire any type of learning.
Teaching is " guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the condition for learning". (Brown, 1980, p. 8)
THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN RELATION TO BEGINNING READING INSTRUCTION
Nativist theories
McNeill (1966, 1968, 1968, 1970, 1970) nativist position, mentioning that anyone who wishes to study the problem of language acquisition must begin with a knowledge of what the child must acquire.
McNeill says very little about the mechanisms of acquisition.
The child must acquire a generative-transformational grammar, possess innate abilities, otherwise it is impossible to explain how random and finite linguistic input gives rise to linguistic competence.
The innate properties of the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) is the ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment.
(1970) (reflections in language of universal cognitive abilities) between what he calls "weak" linguistic universals and "strong" linguistic universals.
Lenneberg (1967) proposes a theory of language acquisition supported by biological evidence in studies of normal and abnormal language development.
The mechanisms of learning, such as perception, categorization skills and transformation abilities, are biologically given. transformation abilities, are biologically given.
There is a biologically determined critical period for language acquisition between the ages of two and twelve.
Language emerges during this maturation process when anatomical, physiological, motor, neural and cognitive development allow it to emerge; the ability to learn language is innate.
Language Acquisition
Atheoretical Studies
Fortunately, much of the data are not disputed among those who study language acquisition, since all agree that certain stages or trends can be observed.
Menyuk (1969) discusses some of the problems that arise in attempts to interpret the data in such circumstances.
Given that research on language acquisition should focus on issues such as "increasing complexity" and "developing competence".
One question that has never been satisfactorily addressed, even in recent work, is the in recent work, is the specification of the final linguistic knowledge or skill being acquired.
Working in such a way, investigators may try to discover when the child learns to distinguish.
The child's language becomes more and more like what traditional grammars ascribe to those who speak the language.
According to McCarthy's studies, children's language appears to drift through several stages replete with errors and deficiencies, toward the clearly articulated speech of an ideal standard English speaker.
INTRODUCTION
The Theory of Learning
Linguistically-oriented Theories Versus Learning-oriented Theories
Behaviorist, Nativist and Cognitive stimulus frequency, imitation, meaning expansion.
The child is able to associate meanings to complete
words through images or concepts.
It requires abstraction to relate symbols, sounds and concepts.
Cognitive Theories :
Schlesinger (in press) claims that linguistic structures are “ determined by the innate cognitive capacity of the child”.
Sinclair-de-Zwart (1968) claims that ‘‘ linguistic universals exist precisely because thought structures are universal”.
Slobin regards language acquisition as an active process in which certain abilities of the child develop.
One is the cognitive ability
to deal with the world
The second is the mental ability to retain items in short term memory, to store items in long term memory, and to process information increasingly with age.
McNeill uses linguistic data to postulate the presence of innate linguistic principles; Slobin uses the same data to support innate principles of cognition.
Cromer (1968)
The child suddenly discovers that he can free himself from the immediate situation and the real order of events and can imagine himself in other moments and see events from this perspective.
This increase in his cognitive ability enables him to express new meanings, and he immediately masters the necessary syntactic apparatus to do so.
The development of the organism's capacities and how they mature throughout life.
Slobin's
The child is gifted to perform extremely complicated tasks.
he acquires language according to general laws of development, learning and perception.
he brings a particular ability to the task rather than the knowledge of a set of innate linguistic principles.
to the task rather than knowledge of a set of innate linguistic principles.
The rules help learners in their performance, are already defined and are not difficult to learn.
On the other hand, the structure helps learners who want to know a little more about the target language.
Method
Approach
Design
Procedure
Is considered as the theoretical foundation for all of the language teaching approaches and methods.
Theories divided it in three groups
Structural
Functional
Interactional
Holds that language is an arrangement
Language is a means in order to state meaning
Remarks that language is a device used to facilitate two types of relationships among people
Instructional materials are basic in any language teaching approach or method because they reinforce what the teacher in class.
According to Richards Jack (1989, p. 20) there are four elements
Syllabus
Learner role in the system
Teacher rol in the system
Instructional materials types and funtions
Talks about the selection of the subject matter to be taught in any language teaching program
It's about the role that students play in the teaching/learning process
Based on the role that teachers play in the reaching/learning process
It's about the role that instructional materials play in the teaching/learning process
Emphasizes the role that some techniques play during the development of the teching/learning process in regard to any teaching approach method
According to Richards Jack (1989, p. 26) it is divided in three aspects
Types of teaching and learning techniques
Types of exercise and practice activity
Resources required to implement recommended practices
Behavioristic
Staats and Staats (1962,
1963, 1968)
The facts of language are abstractions which children must acquire from masses of highly variable data.
Language is a mentalistic phenomenon
S-R theories are unable to account for either its acquisition or use.
This theory involves the learning of a finite set of responses according to certain probabilities of occurrence.
Jenkins and Palermo (1964)
The basic problem in language acquisition is that of explaining how the child acquires the frames of a phrase-structure grammar and the ability to substitute items within these frames
They propose that the child learns the simulus and response equivalences that can occur in the frames
Emphasize imitation
Principal theories were criticized by N. Chomsky and Weksel.
Braine (1963a, 1963b, 1965)
Contextual generalization
He makes generalizations about positions rather than about the sets of items that occupy them
This theory attempts to explain how the child acquires the hierarchical grammatical structures of sentences
Slobin
Objects to Braine’s proposal
He argues that no dominant patterns of word order exist for the child to generalize from, even in a language such as English, and that word ordering also occurs during language acquisition when the language has free word order.