reading sla

A4

• How the speech is processed in our minds?

• Starting point – conceptualiser, generates “preverbal” message and contains meaning intentions that have to be put into words and sentences in the next two stages

• Preverbal message is full of conceptual characteristics – leads to selections of a set of lexical items (lemmas = word to represent a concept) in formulator

• Grammatical encoding – lemmas are put into meaningful sentences

• Phonological ecoding – phonological info associated with selected lemmas is matched to phonologically encoded word frames

• Two separate elements – lemmas (conceptual, semantic and systactic information) x lexeme (phonological form associated wit the lemma

• Tip of the tongue phenomena – the model predicts it (people cannot retrieve the word, but they can retrieve number of syllables or the stress pattern)

• This model, made by Levelt, is a very good starting point for studying the speech process, but it is sometimes criticised in terms of the stages, the process of going from one to another and whether the process can go back to certain stages – also, it refers only to monolingual mind!

• The central assumption in Weinreich’s approach is that concepts and words are stored separately. With this assumption in mind, Weinreich argued that there are three different ways in which the multilingual lexicon could possibly be organised (see Figure A4.3): as a compound, as a co-ordinate and as a subordinate one. In a compound organisation, it is assumed that there is one common concept with a different word in each language. In a co-ordinate organisation, there is a complete separation between the different languages: each word in each language has its own concept. In a subordinate organisation, there is just one set of concepts, but the items in the second language can only be reached via the items in the first language: there are no direct connections between the concepts and the words in the second language.

• Another opinion: there is one conceptual system, but that there are independent lexicons for the words in each language, as L2 develop, the lexicon can change from initially subordinate to compound organisation at later stages

• They have to be connected in some way! Even in French text the word four (oven) lead the speakers to the idea of five (the English number) – even though four was in French

• It changes depending the words we are studying, or the level of proficiency

• Words are categorized prorably in our mind – not only by languages, but also by formality

• Not only lemmas and lexemes, but also language node – in multilingual mind, we have also the English counterpart of the czech word

• Easily retrieved are words that we use very often

• Selective vs non-selective access to lexicon – selective (only one language, non-selective – we have ability to more than one language form of the word)

• Spreading-activation model – most appropriate of the mental lexicon

A5

• LEARNING IN DTS APPROACH

• Edelman: humans and other animate beings are endowed with ‘very general biases that are the heritage of natural selection’; these are called ‘values’ (Thelen and Smith, 1994: 185). One ‘value’ is that humans tend to keep moving objects in view. Another may be that humans tend to grasp objects for feeding or exploration or tend to categorise objects and sounds.

• seeing a ball moving in the air and hearing the word ‘ball’ leads to learning through the interaction of three activities: following the object (visual),moving the head (gestural) and hearing the word (auditory)

• The category of ‘ball’ is not the moving of the head nor the visually following it, nor the sound sequences in themselves, but the mapping of these activities onto each other. Then other co-occurring activities may become part of the complex of ball.

• Eventually, the child realises that the sound ‘ball’ stands for a concept of ‘ball’ with all the relevant associations that the child may have experienced up to that time: it is a thing, it is round, it can move, it can hurt a bit if it hits, it can have different colours and sizes, some squeak, people play with it

• In L2 learning, the learner does not need the co-occurring activities to grasp the concept of ball because he has already learned the concept

• complex language processing may result from the interaction of some basic simple rules which are inferred from the input

• The Competition Model is based on the assumption that there is a direct mapping between the form and meaning of an expression. For example, the sound of /kaet/ is associated with the whole concept of ‘cat’, involving the connection of one set of nodes to another, including connections to the words that usually precede and follow it. Also with sentences there is a form–meaning mapping

• Piaget has argued that development is a process of equilibration between internal knowledge and input. He distinguishes two mechanisms: ‘assimilation’, which is ‘the integration of external elements into evolving or completed structures of an organism’, and ‘accommodation’, which is ‘any modification of an assimilatory scheme or structure by the elements it assimilates’.

• Many L2 learners of English have difficulty producing and keeping apart the initial sounds of sea and she. By intensively practising and finally mastering the production of a sentence such as ‘She sells the sea shells on the sea shore’, the learner can pronounce these sounds better in other situations. – example of more automatisation of an activity and an increase in mastery which leads to a decrease in error and increase in generalisation

• The process of vocabulary acquisition can be simplified down into recursive stages that are usually referred to as ‘semantization’ (formal characteristics of a word are matched with semantic content) and ‘consolidation’ (a newly acquired word is incorporated in the learner’s permanent memory)

• Within this network a great number of ‘retrieval paths’ are possible, but the more retrieval paths are linked to a particular unit of information, the better the recall of information will be. If activation of a certain retrieval path fails, information can be reconstructed by an alternative retrieval path

• According to DST, a system continuously changes as it interacts with its environment. However, there are moments of equilibrium (attractor states) and moments of great variation, which are moments in which the system is changing more rapidly and developing, either through interaction with the environment or through internal reorganisation of the system.

• To be able to read a text on his own without too much trouble, a learner needs to know at least 90% of the words in the text

• Explicit teaching – memorization of vocabulary, rules

• Krashen’s theories are based on a non-interface position, i.e. that what is learned explicitly and consciously can be used only in a controlled manner and will never become part of implicit knowledge, which is used automatically

• Paradis (1994; 2004) shows, there is evidence that implicit and explicit memory each have their own circuits in the brain and that the processes of implicit and explicit acquisition are fundamentally different and unrelated.

• The explicit, controlled type of use may gradually be replaced by the implicit, automatic use

• Metalinguistic knowledge is acquired consciously, while implicit knowledge is acquired unconsciously. Both types of knowledge can be used as a monitoring system in language use, but, according to Paradis, they never merge.

• According to Paradis, implicit learning,which usually takes place without instruction and the learner being aware of learning something, may also result as a by-product of explicit learning. Instruction leads to explicit knowledge that is then used to produce and understand language

• ZPD – zone of proximal development