Wednesday, February 22, 2012

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR HYPOTHESIS


This theory is related to the innate knowledge (the author claims) is inside us for acquiring the mother tongue. It is important to highlight that this theory was not thought for giving an explanation to the acquisition of the second language, but just to the understanding of the first language acquisition.

There is an endowment located in the broca area in the brain which is the responsible of permitting children acquire the language during a critical period. There are divided opinions when explaining this theory because some authors think this hypothesis can be used for explaining second language acquisition, while some others think it cannot.

“Others argue that, although it is a good framework for understanding first language acquisition, UG is no longer available to guide the acquisition of the second language in learners who have passed the critical period for language acquisition.”

When reflecting upon the critical period we see it cannot be used for acquiring a second language because that period has been overcome by the acquisition of the first language.




Posted by: Jessica B. Liberato

SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY

We were interested in talking about this theory because its insights have a pedagogical and psychological relationship with some of the other hypotheses (Output and Interaction hypotheses). We can conclude this, due to the importance offered to Vygotskian thoughts. From this author’s point of view, language is a socially mediated process. Language mediates social and psychological activities.

When applying this theory, it is necessary to group all the actors involved in the process of acquisition of language because Vygostki confers a high importance to the role of social interaction to the social being.

Leraners, observe and imitate others target language speakers models for having an example to follow.  Collaboration is really important in this theory, which promotes interaction among apprentices that can facilitate the movement from one stage to a more advanced one.

Scaffolding is a key word when discussing important concepts in the sociocultural theory. Scaffolding is related to the support offered from another person in order to solve a task.

4. Page 18 and 19. Intercultural Communicative Competence. Mychael Byram.




Posted  by: Jessica B. Liberato

ACCULTURATION HYPOTHESIS


Schumman holds there is a relationship between the social and psychological distances from the target language and the amount of acquisition from the learner; this is to say, the more degree of interaction and comfortable relationship with the language that the learner experience, the more the student acquire the target language.

Acculturation is the action generated from the learner when it is integrated with the target language. At this point when talking about acculturation, we could think about the worth study of the meaning of Intercultural Communicative Competence. 

For us as future teachers, culture must be an important issue when teaching a foreign language, but we have to be careful when administrating these kinds of information or competence to our students. Related to this topic about the necessary skills for an effective intercultural and cross-cultural management,  “Gudykunst, proposes “the need for a sense of a common shared world” The qualities of the “competent communicator“, which he identifies , are the psychological preconditions  for satisfying this need, but a common shared world has to be created in interaction with other people. It is not simply there, wanting to be discovered and accessed”3

It is essential for the teacher to have a clear concept about these terms because they will help her/him to distinguish which kind of competence is necessary for the students. As Gudykunst proposed, we need to be conscious that all of us are part of the same world; for that reason, we are a social group where all the people need to accept others and at the same time, be accepted by them.

Socialization is a process in which we accept and respect differences in behaviors, beliefs and meanings from different groups. Those differences are presented when negotiating meaning; by the time that the learner has a contact with one integrant from a different culture, he has to respect the other beliefs without forgetting his/her own costumes.

“FLT should not attempt to provide representations of other cultures, but should concentrate on equipping learners with the means of accessing and analyzing any cultural practices and meanings they encounter” 4. The Role of students must not be one of imitators of foreigners, but social actors in interaction.

3. Page 17. Intercultural Communicative Competence. Mychael Byram.


Posted by: Jessica B. Liberato

OUTPUT HYPOTHESIS


Previously, we were examining and looking at the most important issues in the INPUT HYPOTHESIS; now, we want to link these two hypotheses because it is important to think of the role of production in English. From our point of view, output is closely related to the process of production.

For Swain, constant practice facilitates the learner to be conscious of her/his production. Output makes to move the learner from the semantic processing to the complete grammatical processing for accurate production.

According to Merrill Swain, “The output hypothesis claims that the act of producing language (speaking or writing) constitutes under certain circumstances, part of the process of second language learning”1. As it can be noticed, there is a need for implementing and improving the use of these two skills  which are different from the Input Hypothesis and that could be grouped together, forming  a whole construct necessary for students to be able to convey meaning and communicate their ideas.

According to this author there are three specific functions of output; they are as follows:

1. The noticing/triggering function: It refers to the awareness or “noticing” students find when they cannot say or write exactly what they need for conveying meaning. With the use of this function, learners realize there are some linguistics problems they need to manage, so that, it pushes the student to look for the adequate knowledge they require for completing the new discovered gap.

“Learners may notice that they cannot say what they want to say in the target language” (Swain 1995) Noticing this “hole” (Doughty and Williams 1998) may be an important step to noticing the gap. 2

2. The hypothesis-testing function: This function suggests learners may use the method of “trial and error” for testing her /his production expecting to receive a feedback. This feedback can be applied in two ways: recasts and elicitations or clarifications requests. Example: 


 
3. The metalinguistic (reflective function): Language is seen as a tool conducive to reflection on the language used by the teacher, their partners and the student himself/herself. (Vigotsky´s sociocultural theory)
Stetsenko and Arievitch (1997:161) state: “Psychological processes emerge first in collective behavior in co-operation with other people, and only subsequently become internalized as the individual’s own possessions.”

When explaining this theory, it is necessary to highlight the importance of the negotiation of meaning, which is not simply related to understand the meaning of the message the transmitter sends to the receiver despite the problems in its structure, but a clear, precisely, coherently and appropriately message=Pushed output.  Pushed output example:


This theory has a great importance since thanks to it, we can move from the input data provided to the student from the environment to the capacity of the learner to produce a clear and coherent   language.

We considered it is important to make our students to produce language through writing exercises or activities and speaking interaction among students. If we are able to store information in our student’s brain, they will have the necessary background for conveying meaning and make their communication activities an efficient practice.

Comprehensible input + Comprehensible output = Effective Second language Acquisition.

Some important advantages applicable to the classrooms when reflecting upon this hypothesis are the collaboration and interaction necessary for students to feel comfortable and work together. Language in this case will serve as a mediating tool, which allows students to lead with the solving-problem process they encounter in the path of acquiring the second language.

It is something of great importance to be conscious of our role of individuals who have a more advanced conscious process in contrast to our students and consequently the ones able to provide correction for students applying new accurate and proper constructions when providing feedback. This feedback is important in our context, especially, because it is one of the few settings in which students have a contact to the target language and they need advices and corrections for improving their production. 

1,2 Power Point Presentation: The output hypothesis: Its history and its future. Merril Swain. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.


Posted by: Jessica B. Liberato

Focusing on Input

The main feature which highlights this theory in that the language acquisition occurs when the acquirer understands (via hearing or reading) input language that contains structures which go a little bit beyond his/her current level of competence.

Krashen explains it like this:

i +1 this means that the language exposure should go from the current stage the students is in, to other which is a bit challenging (the student understands most of the things, but not everything), without going too far (i + 2)
and neither should go so close to their current level (i +0).

Other important feature in this theory is the affective filter. Krashen claims that the best acquisition will occur when the student is relax and without any kind of anxiety or stress, and when the defensiveness is absent, in other words, the affective filter is low, and the person is relax and ready to get the language easier.

Another aspect when talking about Input is the intake which are the actual things learner save in their long term memories, and a prove of the intake in when the learner becomes a High Input Generator in i.e people who are good initiating interaction and making the teacher to generate input, such interaction is close related with the Output Hypothesis that gives credit to the production.

Posted by: Jessica B. Liberato

INPUT HYPOTHESIS

 
One of the theories who called our attention was the COMPRENHENSION HYPOTHESIS firstly proposed by Krashen.  It has had certain changes through time; at the very beginning, it was known as the “monitor model”, then “input hypothesis”.  The basis of this theory relies on the subconscious acquisition of the language with a non-stressful or at least a low stressful situation (low affective filter); in addition to that, it is required a lot of exposure to comprehensible Input in the target language for the learner to be able to acquire a second language.

When thinking about that assertion and comparing such hypothesis with the one concerning OUTPUT, we have realized that theoretically speaking, a learner could be exposed to “tons of comprehensible input” but never be able to “achieve” the production process. (in this way, hearing and reading are two important necessary skills for the acquisition of a second language)

For this theorist, grammar skills are learnt in a predictable order. He also declares there are five constituent domains in this hypothesis:

THE ACQUISITION-LEARNING HYPOTHESIS

THE MONITOR HYPOTHESIS

THE NATURAL ORDER HYPOTHESIS

THE INPUT HYPOTHESIS

THE AFFECTIVE FILTER HYPOTHESIS

At the moment of analyzing and thinking about the practice application of this theory we have found some difficulties for getting excellent results by using these postulates. First of all, it is difficult to be exposed to the “comprehensible input” since we are in an artificial environment; it is not possible to have long hours of exposure to the target language because it is only implemented in some schools and in formal institutions.

On the other hand, most of the public schools are not really concerned about English Teaching for the students. Sometimes, teachers feel disappointed because of the large number of students they are assigned and the lack of educational aids. (We state this, based on the contact we have already held with some of the teachers when applying our observations for developing our research project). Sometimes, it is difficult to face the reality, but we have to do it for recognizing the shortcomings presented when teaching this foreign language; if we want to make a change in these aspects, we have to change first our minds. Input hypothesis is not applied in the public context because teachers had the conception that students will never speak in English for many reasons; above all, (now that we are leading with this topic) because there is not an enough comprehensible exposure to the language.

Another problem is that students in public schools are studying just three hours; some others schools have reduced this number to one hour per week, (E.g. Colegio San Pedro Alejandrino) making the English Leaning for our students a difficult task to achieve.

We as future teachers must notice those problems and look at the importance of acquiring this foreign language. We have an important role as individuals in search of a constant improvement in society; therefore, we must try to change these beliefs and make others realize that the process of acquiring English is necessary and can be implemented in the best way possible.

This can be done if the institutions in which we are working show an impact with the different uses we can make from this language; if they do not notice the importance of this, they will continue being blinded. Teachers must put away that bandage and start applying the language in several activities organized from the school. Through working on projects, interacting with other teachers and students themselves on special dates, organizing activities in other schedules (term period) different from the habitual ones, this so-called impact could be displayed.  As much students as teachers could have some fun by using English in several ways to show the rest as “ izadas de bandera” and the like.

If activities related to English are promoted and their efficacy is proved in activities like those proposed in the previous paragraph,  probably administrators will want to contribute for making an environment like this a good tool for the students to have a closer contact with the target language. Both (students and administrators) will give their best for making this a meaningful project.

We are the only ones responsible for looking at the ways in which students and society can be interested and exposed to meaningful input for them to learn. We, who have the knowledge about teaching, must create the necessary means for making English a tool opened to everybody.


Posted by: Jessica B. Liberato

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

WELCOME EVERYBODY


This blog is created to show the most relevant information about second language acquisition by contrasting some theories, analysing and linking the theories with some common cases in real life. It  shows reasons why we consider some features appropriate and unapropriate in teaching.

To do so, we are also going to add our own conclusions explaining why to apply them in classes, based on our experiences.  



At the moment of studying Second Language Acquisition Theories, our working group has concluded that it is necessary not to focus on just one of the theories, but to highlight the principal issues of each one of them, because these theories have been thought as a way of complementing a gap which was not covered by previous hypothesis in second language acquisition and consequently there was a need for starting to build a better explanation for this process in the human being.

We define all of these theories as a continuous evolution process, raised by the need of offering a better understanding to this process of learning a second language.


Posted by: the team