class notes

One significant line of research following Linguistic coding differences hypothesis – Sparks and Ganschow

• One capacity to learn L2 is closely related to L1 learning skills

• L2 learning difficulties stem in part from L1 learning difficulties

• Childhood problems acquiring spoken L1 > difficulties with learning to read > L2 learning difficulties

• They do not process sound efficiently – inability to distinguish sounds of FL, to segment sounds effectively into words, memory problems for sounds and words

• Kuhl – Native language neural commitment hypothesis – an infant early skill in native language phonetic perception (in the first year of life) should predict that child’s later success at language acquisition

• Dyslexia – the zooming in to the sounds you use in your L1 does not happen -> it stay noisy and you are hearing all the little differences, that is why you are unable to focus and become faster

8. ROLE OF INSTRUCTION

• CLT = communicate language teaching

• Four competences (Communicative competence – Hymes)

• Output hypothesis (Swain) x comprehensive input hypothesis (Krashen)

• For Krashen, L1 and L2 learning is the same, he wants to create conditions for learning that are the same to L1

• Slightly beyond the current level of Ling. Comp.

• Respects UG, the built-in syllabus

Theoretical influences of CLT

1) Communicative competence (Hymes, 1972)

2) Functions of language (Halliday 1973, 1975)

3) Functional-notional syllabus (Wilkins 1976)

4) Comprehensible input hypothesis (Krashen, 1984)

5) Interaction hypothesis (Long -input is not enough, they need interaction to learn grammar)

Communicative competence (Hymes)

= ability to participate appropriately in speech events that are relevant to a community

• objected to linking performance to imperfection (false starts, speech errors).

• objected to the notion of idealized speaker-hearer in a homogeneous speech

• community and stressed individual variation and community diversity.

• stressed the importance of social and cultural factors controlling use of grammatical sentences

• four components: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic

Functional linguistics (Halliday)

• a theory built around the notion of language function (meaning) -> function & meaning can help shape linguistic form

• Context is integral to the process of making meaning (study of “natural language in actual contexts of use”).

• 7 functions of language in early L1 acquisition Learning L2 viewed also as acquiring the linguistic means to perform these functions (Instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal)

L2 learning results from

• interaction between the learner and users of the language

• Collaborative creation of meaning

• Negotiation of meaning

• Paying attention of the input, assimilating new forms

• Attending to feedback

• Facilitation through scaffolding (idea of scaffolding is Vygotsky’s) by an expert

• Scaffolding – finishing other’s sentences (you where it is going, what they are talking about – you can help them)