Readings
I remember talking about the “U-shaped development” in class briefly the other night (feet-foots-feet). Reading about it again has further peaked my interest in the subject -- and to think that this sequence can happen in both L1 and L2! If I ever get married and have children, I am going to be recording all sorts of linguistic observations on them, the poor little dears.
On page 81, one counterargument against a strong deterministic role for frequency of input is that “the most frequent words in English… are relatively late to appear, and among the last (if ever) to be mastered.” This sentence REALLY stuck with me after having read the chapter. I think about how I still can mess up gender-plurality agreement in Spanish, which is a very basic and formulaic linguistic form. Why is this? If a language is so dependent on certain forms, our natural instinct would be to think that this is the first element that would be acquired in our L2.
The factors of language success mentioned in this chapter are as follows: age, sex, aptitude, motivation, cognitive style, personality, and learning strategies. The table on page 82 (4.3 Age differences in SLA) will be and continues to be relevant in my TESOL experiences. I have now had a taste of both worlds, the younger and the older language learners. Each category definitely has its advantages; and each one definitely encompasses the learning obstacles as well.
“The Wild Child” (Question #3)
Victor learned best when Dr. Itard first gave a model for the desired outcome, for example when the nurse and the doctor demonstrated how to best ask for milk (lait). Without a doubt, Victor was a hands-on and visual leaner. The doctor eventually was able to gradually increase the level of linguistic difficulty, yet first he had Victor match visually the drawing of the tools with the particular tool itself. Being a visual learner myself, I was brainstorming on various ways to present the basics of a language. It's harder than it looks! It would feel like a never ending game of charades at times, but eventually the visual is formally processed. Additionally, it was extremely important for Victor to have a “breather” time set aside each day to just explore the outdoors. I think each of our students have this “breather” element, and we must both discover and respect it. Such case studies as Hellen Keller, Genie and Victor test the limits of language.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
This is a Wug
“Mockingbird Don’t Sing” is the film I was thinking of in class, which is based off of another case study called Genie. (click on the film title for more information)
Chapter 1 (Lightbrown-Spada)
While my family was still living in Bloomington-Normal, I attended Metcalf Lab School in my elementary days. This meant that I was able to start Spanish in 5th grade, and furthermore, I started learning Sign Language even earlier. I was become rather proficient in the language when I transferred school and no programs were offered. Therefore, my Spanish language skills crept in, and ASL exited. Although I would love to learn other romance languages, I must declare that ASL is the very next language on my list to learn. With this being said, I was intrigued by the comments on page 18-19: “The researchers studied the ability to produce and comprehend grammatical markers in Native signers…, Early learners…, and Late learners.” When you stop to think about it, this very factoid proves how fascinating language really is.
Lastly, it was very interesting to see the familiar phenomena of subtractive bilingualism and additive bilingualism finally put into words. These two concepts play out many times within my heritage Spanish speakers. I personally root for “additive bilingualism.”
I was laughing out loud about the "wug" study because all of my linguistic, nerdy friends have some sort of t-shirt or sticker that looks like the following (just google it):
Chapter 1 (Lightbrown-Spada)
While my family was still living in Bloomington-Normal, I attended Metcalf Lab School in my elementary days. This meant that I was able to start Spanish in 5th grade, and furthermore, I started learning Sign Language even earlier. I was become rather proficient in the language when I transferred school and no programs were offered. Therefore, my Spanish language skills crept in, and ASL exited. Although I would love to learn other romance languages, I must declare that ASL is the very next language on my list to learn. With this being said, I was intrigued by the comments on page 18-19: “The researchers studied the ability to produce and comprehend grammatical markers in Native signers…, Early learners…, and Late learners.” When you stop to think about it, this very factoid proves how fascinating language really is.
Lastly, it was very interesting to see the familiar phenomena of subtractive bilingualism and additive bilingualism finally put into words. These two concepts play out many times within my heritage Spanish speakers. I personally root for “additive bilingualism.”
I was laughing out loud about the "wug" study because all of my linguistic, nerdy friends have some sort of t-shirt or sticker that looks like the following (just google it):
Chapter 2 (Lightbrown-Spada)
I enjoyed relearning about the different word orders of languages, in the competition model section. Spanish is MUCH more flexible with word order than English, which raises both pros and cons to students trying to learn Spanish. Americans tend to like structure, even in a language setting.
With my past pedagogy and linguistic classes, I was familiar with most of the methods, theories, and models presented. However, I had never really discussed before the competition model, the interaction hypothesis, processability theory, or the noticing hypothesis. As stated in my previous blog, I think each of the ways presented all have both solid and poor instructional elements. It is key to know all the different ones, however, to better formulated your own personalized, holistic views of teaching language.
Comprehensible output hypothesis with an ounce of Krashen’s input hypothesis is what we promote in the Language, Literatures & Culture department (or at least that is my perspective of our pedagogy). Even within the first two semesters, we immerse the students in the target language, all the while saturating them with input and later requiring output (yes, even verbal). I promote this to a certain extent, but I really think that some students need a silent period of just soaking in the whirlwind of another language. Who knows, eh?
Chapter 3 (Saville-Troike)
Wow, these 30 pages were chalked full of theories. I hope I can remember them all! On page 44, I just stopped and stared at Table 3.2 for a few minutes. It was interesting to see the specific, natural orders for English L1 and English L2. I think this type of table is important to keep in mind as we dive into teaching English, not demanding/expecting the certain linguistic forms right away -- such as "third person -s" (which is #9 on the English L2 list). Additionally, the pragmatic functions that Halliday offers on page 53-54 are quite interesting, and I could possibly make the case for interchanging the word "function" for "motive." They seem to be intimately linked.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Week 2
Chapter 1:
Immediately, “linguistic competence” and “linguistic performance” are the two aspects that leap off of the page. As I continue to teach basic level Spanish in the target language (GA here at ISU), I am confronted by these distinctions day in and day out, especially since our students and professors are required to speak 90-95% in Spanish. At a beginning level, this can be overwhelming. The language learner has a wealth of underlying knowledge but struggles greatly with actual production. I don’t think I would have much empathy and understanding with my students if I would not have suffered from this distinction in my own linguistic endeavors years ago. Additionally, in my other TESOL courses, I don’t recall discussing the “library language” and “auxiliary language.” Those were new concepts for me.
Chapter 2:
I am never ceased to be amazed by how monolingual our country truly is, and as a linguistics teacher, this fact saddens my heart for numerous reasons. European citizens, on average, can speak up to five languages fluently! Furthermore, English is much more dominant in the L2 realm (9), which I could have guessed by traveling abroad but is useful to know formally. Although probably to be discussed in later chapters, I believe personally that English is so prominent internationally because it is very much the language of “business,” compared to Spanish for example which tends to be more relational in its features. Each language is so unique. Another concept that caught my attention – of which I had never learned the formal terminology – was that of simultaneous multilingualism. In my Spanish linguistics class last semester we learned that usually children that are raised with learning multiple languages simultaneously usually produce orally at later ages, around 3-5 years of age. Considering I would love to raise my children bilingual, this concept still astounds me.
“Early Theories in SLA” :
I have talked about my personal thoughts and experiences, but one issue that I consider crucial in teaching is maintaining the balance between the linguistic, psychological and social perspectives. Some pedagogical theories and methods obsessively focus on one, instead of acknowledging the benefits of promoting a more holistic approach to language learning. This article subtly hints at this.
I’ve learned quite a bit about “imitation” in my TESOL and other pedagogical courses, but I appreciate his following definition: “Imitation, however, is not understood as the mindless mimicking often associated with behaviorism in psychology and the audio-lingual method in language pedagogy.” Additionally, although I have learned about the zone of proximal development (ZPD), I would appreciate a further analysis and/or review over the concept.
Immediately, “linguistic competence” and “linguistic performance” are the two aspects that leap off of the page. As I continue to teach basic level Spanish in the target language (GA here at ISU), I am confronted by these distinctions day in and day out, especially since our students and professors are required to speak 90-95% in Spanish. At a beginning level, this can be overwhelming. The language learner has a wealth of underlying knowledge but struggles greatly with actual production. I don’t think I would have much empathy and understanding with my students if I would not have suffered from this distinction in my own linguistic endeavors years ago. Additionally, in my other TESOL courses, I don’t recall discussing the “library language” and “auxiliary language.” Those were new concepts for me.
Chapter 2:
I am never ceased to be amazed by how monolingual our country truly is, and as a linguistics teacher, this fact saddens my heart for numerous reasons. European citizens, on average, can speak up to five languages fluently! Furthermore, English is much more dominant in the L2 realm (9), which I could have guessed by traveling abroad but is useful to know formally. Although probably to be discussed in later chapters, I believe personally that English is so prominent internationally because it is very much the language of “business,” compared to Spanish for example which tends to be more relational in its features. Each language is so unique. Another concept that caught my attention – of which I had never learned the formal terminology – was that of simultaneous multilingualism. In my Spanish linguistics class last semester we learned that usually children that are raised with learning multiple languages simultaneously usually produce orally at later ages, around 3-5 years of age. Considering I would love to raise my children bilingual, this concept still astounds me.
“Early Theories in SLA” :
I have talked about my personal thoughts and experiences, but one issue that I consider crucial in teaching is maintaining the balance between the linguistic, psychological and social perspectives. Some pedagogical theories and methods obsessively focus on one, instead of acknowledging the benefits of promoting a more holistic approach to language learning. This article subtly hints at this.
I’ve learned quite a bit about “imitation” in my TESOL and other pedagogical courses, but I appreciate his following definition: “Imitation, however, is not understood as the mindless mimicking often associated with behaviorism in psychology and the audio-lingual method in language pedagogy.” Additionally, although I have learned about the zone of proximal development (ZPD), I would appreciate a further analysis and/or review over the concept.
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