Second Language Acquisition - La_test PDF

Willingness to Communicate: "an underlying continuum representing the predisposition toward or away from communicating given the choice" or "the intention to initiate communication given a choice" Attribution Theory: Focuses on how people explain the causes of their own successes and failures. Psych...

Willingness to Communicate: "an underlying continuum representing the predisposition toward or away from communicating given the choice" or "the intention to initiate communication given a choice" Attribution Theory: Focuses on how people explain the causes of their own successes and failures. Psychologist Weiner and others describe it in terms of four explanations in achieving a personal objective: ability, effort, perceived difficulty of a task, and luck, where ability and effort are internal factors and difficulty and luck are external factors. Students with high self-efficacy (belief in your own capabilities to successfully perform an activity) will put a degree of effort into achieving their goals whereas others with low self-efficacy may attribute their success or failure on external factors. Interlanguage: The second language knowledge/system developed by the language learner. It continually evolves along the learning stages, as the learners receive more input and revise their understanding of the second language. Fossilization: When there isn't enough or appropriate exposure to the instructions or feedback, some features in a learner's language remain unchanged. The differences between the interlanguage and the target language will not be recognized and will become a habit. Audiolingualism: a method of learning a foreign language based on principles of behaviourism, especially mechanical repetition; it focuses on drilling pronounciation and grammatical structures/vocabulary; also called the Army Method. Affective factors in SLA: emotions or personality traits which may influence language- learning; self-esteem, self-efficacy, inhibition, risk-taking, anxiety, empathy, motivation, extroversion/introversion. Intrinsic motivation - Expending effort to engage in an activity for its own sake rather than for some external reward or pressure. Stems from internal desires such as curiosity, a passion for learning or a sense of personal accomplishment. X Extrinsic motivation - The drive to act is fuelled by external factors such as rewards from beyond the self - money, prizes, good grades, positive feedback or punishment avoidance. - Community Language Learning - A “Counseling-Learning” model of education by Charles Curran that attributes the highest priority to the students and teacher joining together to facilitate learning in a context of valuing and prizing each individual in the group. Anxiety caused by traditional educational context is lowered, the teacher’s (counsellor’s) presence is not perceived as a threat and serves a supportive role, students are encouraged to try anything and have free rein to “emit” any language forms they want to. The goal is for the students to slowly move from dependence to independence. Error: Happens when a learner doesn't know the correct rule or pattern. It's a gap in their understanding, so they consistently use the wrong form (e.g., "He go to school" instead of "He goes to school"). Mistake: Happens when a learner knows the correct rule but makes a slip due to distraction, tiredness, or similar reasons. They can usually correct it if pointed out (e.g., saying "He go" by accident but knowing it should be "He goes"). Transfer: elements of the native language which get (or are tried to be) applied onto L2 structures Obligatory contexts: the places in a sentence where the morpheme is necessary to make the sentence grammatically correct Input: Everything that the learner reads and hears when learning a language. Positive input - in class (textbooks, materials, teacher’s notes, exercises…). Not always positive input (should be filtered) - outside of the class (entertainment, people’s speeches, movies, games…) Intake: The part of input that the learner is able to remember and internalize. Focus should be on maximizing the intake. Zone of proximal development: The distance between learners' existing developmental state and their potential development Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity: According to this hypothesis, each language imposes on its speaker a particular "worldview" Transfer: Refers to the influence of prior knowledge or skills (such as those from the first language, or L1) on the learning of new skills (a second language, or L2). Positive transfer occurs when L1 helps in L2 learning. Interference: is the negative transfer when L1 hinders L2 learning. Habits from the first language interfere with the correct production of the second language. Debilitative/Facilitative anxiety: Anxiety is one of the most important items in second language acquisition. Debilitative anxiety impacts the learning process in a negative way: learners who suffer from this anxiety usually have difficulties concentrating, making decisions or taking risks in speaking or writing. Facilitative anxiety is called helpful anxiety and motivates learners to perform better, increasing their motivation and helping them to stay focused on achieving their goals. Constructivism: Linguistic school of thought mostly represented by Piaget. Integrates linguistic, psychological and sociological paradigms and emphasizes the active role of learners in constructing their own understanding of language. Language is not seen as something that is passively absorbed from external sources: learners are active participants who build their linguistic knowledge based on their interactions, experiences and social contexts. Communicative Competence: Originally introduced by Dell Hymes, communicative competence refers to the ability to use language effectively and appropriately in social contexts. Unlike mere grammatical competence, it encompasses grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic skills, allowing for fluent and contextually appropriate communication. Nonverbal Communication: Nonverbal communication encompasses the use of body language, facial expressions, gestures, and proxemics (personal space) to convey meaning in communication. Scaffolding: In social-constructivist theory, scaffolding is a teaching method where instructors or peers provide temporary support to learners to help them accomplish tasks they cannot perform independently. This support is gradually removed as learners become more competent, allowing them to complete tasks on their own. Chaining: In behavioral psychology, chaining refers to the process of learning a series of responses where each response triggers the next. Applied to language learning, it means linking words or phrases to form more complex expressions or sentences, allowing learners to build fluency by connecting individual language units. Overgeneralization: (Chapter 9) Overgeneralization is an error in language learning where a learner applies a rule too broadly, leading to incorrect forms. For example, using "comed" instead of "came" by overapplying the past tense rule for regular verbs. This is a common stage in L2 development as learners form hypotheses about language rules. Stabilization: Chapter 9 Stabilization is the stage in interlanguage development where learners' language systems become relatively fixed, with fewer changes and corrections. Unlike fossilization, stabilization implies that learning and improvement are still possible, though the learner’s progress may slow significantly. Language Competence: competence includes knowledge of grammar, phonology, semantics, cultural knowledge, lexicon, listening rules, reading strategies, and more. Language Performance: performance involves how well individuals use their underlying knowledge (competence) to produce language in real situations. Simultaneous Bilingualism: Learning two languages from birth. Sequential Bilingualism: Learning a second language after the first. Additive Bilingualism: Maintaining the first language while learning a second leads to positive cognitive and social outcomes. Subtractive Bilingualism: Losing the first language while learning the second can harm self-esteem and family relationships. Learning Style: An individual’s natural, habitual, and preferred way of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information and skills; how learners perceive, interact with, and respond to the learning environment (e.g.: Visual, Aural, Kinaesthetic, Reading) Speech Acts: Actions performed by language (e.g.: promising, ordering, apologizing, requesting). Communication is a series of communicative acts. Speech acts include 3 different forces: locutionary (the basic meaning of an utterance), illocutionary (the intended effect of the utterance), and perlocutionary (the actual effect the utterance has on the hearer). Learner beliefs: This term refers to the second language learners' opinions on how they should be taught the language. A mismatch between what learners consider effective and the teacher's actual teaching style can cause dissatisfaction (and problems connected to it). Identity and ethnic group affiliation: This is one of the societal factors affecting language learning success. There are several ways in which identity or ethnic group affiliation can influence language learning. They stem from potential power relationships between languages. For example, members of a minority group learning the majority language are often judged or labelled, e.g., as successful or unsuccessful; this can lead to the learners reluctance to speak in certain situations (particularly in those of power imbalance). On the other hand, those who mastered the pronunciation of the second language can be perceived as less loyal to their ethnic group than those who retained a strong accent. - Compensatory strategies: used by language learners to fill the gaps and compensate for the the lack of knowledge of L2. Such tactics include for example, topic avoidance, nonverbal signals (gestures, sound imitations), or code-switching. Code-switching: the use of a first (or a third) language within a stream of speech in the second language. Could occur subconsciously between advanced learners with a common first language, or it could be a compensatory strategy for learners in early stages of acquisition to fill in missing knowledge with their native language, whether the hearer knows that native language or not (eg. “Hey, where is the vařečka?”). Pidginization. Bickerton describes pidginization as second language learning with restricted input. It is a linguistic process that occurs when people who do not speak the same language come into contact. Pidgin languages begin restricted, used only when communication is necessary. Creolization. It is described as first language learning with restricted input. The language of new generations who learn the pidgin as their first language is called creole. Instrumental and integrative orientations - two different “attitudes” of L2 learner motivations. The former means learning a language for practical purposes (academic/career oriented). The latter refers to aiming to learn a language to integrate within the culture and become involved in social interchange of that language group (socially/culturally oriented). Motivational intensity – Within each orientation, learners can have high/low motivation. Demotivation: losing interest that one once had due to external or internal forces. Amotivation: complete absence of motivation, usually due to internal factors (when feeling like one lacks the ability to learn or is overwhelmed by how ‘enormous’ the task seems). Critical period – (also called a "sensitive period") for language acquisition, a biologically determined period of life when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire Autonomy – individual effort and action through which learners initiate language, problem solving, strategic action, and the generation of linguistic input. Language aptitude - specific abilities thought to predict success in language learning. John Carroll has characterized aptitude in terms of the ability to learn quickly Tabula rasa - a clean slate, bearing no preconceived notions about the world or about language. An extreme behaviourist position would claim that is what children come into the world with and then they are shaped by their environment and slowly conditioned through various rewards. BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills). BICS refers to the type of language skills needed for everyday communication in social contexts. It encompasses the language used in casual, informal situations such as conversations with friends or family. BICS typically develop more quickly than CALP and are often associated with conversational fluency. CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency). CALP refers to the language skills required for understanding and producing academic content. These skills are needed for tasks such as reading textbooks, writing essays, and understanding complex academic language in various subjects. Negation - Ability that children acquire at an early age, even during the single-word stage of language development. This ability allows them to express concepts such as the disappearance of objects, refuse suggestions, or reject assertions. Multiple discrimination - the ability to differentiate and respond appropriately to stimuli that may be similar but require different responses. This skill develops as individuals learn to make distinctions based on specific features or contexts. (Brown ch.4 p.93) Transaction: process which includes reaching out beyond the self to others, and language contributes to this process in a huge way. A lot of transactional variables can apply to second language learning, such as: imitation, modeling, identification, empathy, extroversion, aggression, styles of communication. Introversion/extroversion in SLA: Extroversion is the extent to which a person needs to receive self-esteem and a sense of wholeness from other people, while introversion is the extent to which a person derives these things within oneself. There are a lot of stereotypes associated with these concepts among teachers and educators, but in reality it cannot be said with certainty whether extroversion/introversion helps or hinders the process of second language acquisition, despite a common belief being that extroverts might have it better in language classes due to their activity and expresiveness. Some studies confirm that this dichotomy might be a factor when it comes to the development of oral communicative competence, but not in other areas (listening, reading, writing). Connectionism: psychological theory that attributes greater importance to the role of the environment in language acquisition than to any specific innate knowledge in the learner. Connectionists argue that the only thing innate is the ability to learn, not any specific linguistic principles, and that learners gradually build up their knowledge of language through exposure to the thousands of the linguistic features that they eventually hear (hence developing a network of connections between these features). Communicative competence: abilities that enable a person to communicate functionally and interactively. Coined by Dell Hymes, that aspect of our confidence that enables to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific contexts. Sandra Savignon, communicative competence is relative, not absolute, and depends on the cooperation of all the participants involved. It is not so much an interpersonal developmental process, as we saw in Chomsky’s early writings, but rather a dynamic. Interpersonal construct that can be examined only by means of the overt performance of two or more individuals engaging in communication. Pragmatic constraints on language comprehension and production may be loosely thought of as the effect of context on strings of linguistic events. Sociopragmatic: the interface between pragmatics and social organization. Pragmalinguistic: the intersection of pragmatics and linguistic forms.