Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition
1.Learning is what many students experienced in high
school or college foreign language classes.Learning is a
coucious process that involves studying rules and
vocabulary. 2Acquistion is subconscious.Students
acquiring a language may not even be aware that they
are picking up vocabulary or sentence
structures.Acquisition occurs as students use language
for a variety of purposes.
Learning Concious: We are aware we are
learning It's what happens in school when
we study rules and grammar.
Schumann's Theory of SLA It accounts for the psychological
process of language development. Factors that contribute to
social distance: Only limited integration of the two cultural
group The minority group itself is large to be self-sufficient
When the group is very tight-knit When the group has
characteristics very different from those of the mainstream
culture When the majority group has a negative attitude
toward the minority group The learner intends to stay only a
short time in the country
What is lateralization? Division of the left hemisphere of the brain and
other functions tot he right hemisphere.This process begins at about age
two.Children who acquire a second language before puberty usually
speak the new language without an accent.Since people who learn a
second language after puberty generally retain an accent,researchers
have hypothesized that people are no longer able to acquire some
aspects of language,such as the phonology,once the brain is lateralized
and language is located in the left hemisphere.
Cognitive Factors
According to Piaget,
children who develop a
second language with a
nativelike pronunciation
have not yet reached the
formal operational stage(it
happens at age 11 and it is
at the point at which more
abstract though is
possible).Children in the
concrete operational stage
may be able to acquire the
language without needing
to analyze the structure of
th language.
Affective Factors 1.Adolecents
or adults learning a second
langauge may be more
self-concious than
children.Older learners may be
hesitant to try out a new
langauge for fear of appearing
incompetent.Nervousness can
be another factor.The idea of
ego is related to general
attitudinal factors.Older learners
who acquire a SL and speak
with little or no foreign accent
are often people who are
Americanized.
What is fossilization?How we help students
overcome it? It's the prececence of certain
kinds of errors that persist in the speech of
adult second language learners.
Advantages of bilingual
programs over English
immersion: When use
appropriately,enhences English
instruction by making the
English more comprehensible.
The instruction builds the
necessary background for
understanding lessons in the
content areas given in English.
Students in these programs
more fully develop their first
language.
Acquisition Subconcious: We are not aware
we are acquiring It's what happens in and
out of school when we recieve messages we
understand.
Schauman also considered psychological
factors,such as motivation,attitude,and
culture shock.His concepts of social and
psychological distance complement
Krashen's theory.Social distance limits
opportunities for students to receive the
comprehensible input needed for
acquisition.Psychological distance serves
to raise the affective filter and prevent
input from reaching the language
acquisition device.
Goal:Sociopsycholinguistics
The goal of reading from a
sociopsycholinguistics
perspective is to construct
meanig.Readers are focused on
making mening,not on
identifying the individual
words.To construct
meaning,readers use their
background knowledge and
cues from three linguistic
systems:
graphophonics,syntaxt,and
sematics.Different readers
construct different meaning
depending on their prior
knowledge and their purpose for
reading.
Two Views of Writing:
Learning view: Traditional Writing Classroom
Goal:Learn how to produce a good piece of
writing. Method:Begin with the parts and build
up to writing a whole text. Teacher directly
instructs students in how to form letters,then
words, then how to combine words into
sentences,and then sentences into
paragraphs. Approach to correctness:Writing
product must be conventional from beginning.
The teacher corrects each piece of writing.
Acquisition View: Process Writing Classroom
Goal:Produce good writing and acquire
knowlwdge of the writing process.
Method:Begin with a message and develop
the skills needed to produce the message.
Teacher creates conditions for authentic
written responses and then helps students
express themselves in writing. Approach to
correctness: Writing moves naturally from
invention to convention. Classmates and
others,including the teacher,respond to drafts.
Goal:Word Recognition The
goal for a teacher who takes a
word recognition view of reading
is to help students learn to
identify words.Word
identification involves recoding
the marks on the paper into
words readers already know in
their oral vocabulary and then
combining the meanings of
individual words to get at eh
meaning of the text.There is a
possibility with recoding that
readers may change written
language to oral language
without ever getting at the
meaning.Even though there is
an assumption that word
recognition will lead to meaning
construction,there is a danger
that students will simply learn to
say the words without knowing
what they mean.
Two views of Second/Foreign
Language Development
Traditional Learning View Goal:Teach
language directly so students can produce
correct language forms. Method:Break
language into component parts and teach
each part. Classroom activities:Students
do drills and excercises to practice
language. Attitudes toward errors:
Teachers correct errors to help students
develop good language habits.
Current Acquisition View Goal: Make
language comprehensible so students
can use language for different purposes.
Method:Use various techniques to make
the linguistic input understandable.
Classroom activities:Students use
language in communicative situations.
Attitude toward errors: Errors are
natural,so teachers keep the focus on
meaning and help students understand
and express ideas.