Teaching Methodology – How People Learn Languages and Mistakes In Learn Languages

We look at some of the background issues which language teachers need to think about when they plan how they want to teach to reach and what kind of lesson they want to offer their students. We consider student mistakes and errors as part of the learning process, rather than something terrible that they do wrong!

We look at various differences in language learning. For example, learning takes place Many different Situations. But whatever the situation, learners are not all the same: a lot depends on what level they are at, how old they are and what kind of learners they are. We discuss how to deal with these differences.

We emphasise the importance of student engagement and consider how students can Take responsibility for their learning ‑ and we look at the crucial issue of student motivation.

Acquisition and learning

Unless some physical or mental condition gets in the way, all of us speak and understand at least one language well. We got that language from our parents and from other people around us. As far as any of us can remember, we didn’t have to think about the process of getting that language; it just happened. All we had was a lot of exposure to the language (we heard it all the time, especially when people talked to us) and opportunities to use it as much and as often as possible. In other words, this kind of Language acquisition is a subconscious process.

•  Many children acquire more than one language in childhood. Indeed, in many and countries and societies it is unusual for people to be Monolingual (able to speak only one language). 

• Age seems to be an important factor in language acquisition. Children often acquire (and forget) languages easily, partly because they get such a lot of exposure to them, and partly because of their Developmental stages and the lives they are leading. Teenagers and Adults don’t seem to acquire languages so automatically. However, they may, in fact, be more efficient learners, in part because their circumstances and developmental stages are different.

• If acquisition is a subconscious process, Learning, by contrast, is something we do consciously — for example, when we study how to use the Present perfect,  think carefully about what order adjective go in, or concentrate on which part of a word we should stress.

Why does the difference between acquisition and learning matter?

In classrooms all over the world, students learn languages. They are taught Grammar, Functions and Vocabulary But perhaps that’s the wrong way to do it. Perhaps we should only give students a lot of exposure to the language, together with opportunities to use it — just as we do with children.

• In a theory that he called the Input Hyphotesis, the linguist Stephen Krashen suggested that people acquire language if they get Comprehensible input. This means that they are exposed to language that is just above their own level but which they more or less understand. He suggested that this is all they need.

• Krashen also suggested that the language that we learn consciously is different from language we acquire through comprehensible input. We can use ‘learnt’ language to check (or monitor) our conversation (or writing), but these checks may stop us being fluent because we are worrying about whether we are speaking correctly. In the 19803, Krashen said that learnt language could not become acquired language.

• Many researchers questioned Krashen’s Input Hypothesis. They said it was difficult to test because people cannot usually say if their language was acquired or learnt, and if you can’t say which it was, then the theory cannot be proved or disproved.

• Many people suggest that exposure to comprehensible input is not, in itself, enoughfor people to know and be able to speak a language. There has to be an element ofconscious attention to the actual: language that is being used in the input. This is especially important for learners who have reached (or gone through) puberty teenagers and adults.

Which Way is best?

Perhaps the best way to get a new language would be to go and live in a country where the language is spoken. There would be both exposure to the language and opportunities to use it. But would that be enough for children or adults?

• Most people learn languages in classrooms. They don’t have the opportunity to live in a foreign country, and they don’t get the same amount of exposure to the language that children do when they learn their first language.

• Some students seem to acquire a new language without too much effort. Many others, however, like, need and want to examine and understand what they are being exposed to. 

• Most language—learning lessons today include a mixture of activities, some more focused on acquisition and some more focused on learning.

• Many teaching methods have focused more on learning than acquisition. Teachers following these methods have offered their students individual grammar and  vocabulary items one by one.

• Some teaching methods have concentrated more on acquisition than learning. Teachers have involved their students in communication and encouraged them think more about the content of what they say or do than the form of the language they are using.

How Fernando learnt English

Fernando Torres, a footballer from Spain who has played in the UK, says that he learnt English there by listening to the radio a lot and (while he was doing it) trying to concentrate on what he was hearing. He also looked at big advertisements at the side of the road and tried to see — to NOTICE — what they said and what the meaning was. When he had noticed the words in the advertisements (= concentrated on the words so that he could recognize them again), then he could learn them. In other words, he had exposure to the language, but then he thought consciously about what he was seeing and hearing. 

1. Grammar-translation

Grammar -Translation was the most common way of learning languages for hundreds of years. Students studied the grammar of sentences in the Target Language (the language they wanted to learn). They translated them into their own language — or the other way round.

Grammar-translation became unpopular because students translated written sentences rather than spoken conversation, and because they didn’t do enough speaking. However, it is clear that asking students to translate into and out of their language and English can teach them a lot about the similarities and differences between the two languages.

2. Audio-lingual methodology

AUDIO-LINGUAL METHODOLOGY (A—L) gave students a lot of speaking practice by using habit—formation DRELLS. Students repeated sentences again and again until they were

memorised. A—L methodology is connected to the theory of BEHAVIOURlSM.

• A­­-L methodology uses a Stimulus-Response-Reinforcement approach to language learning. A stimulus (a teacher’s prompt) provokes a student response (a sentence), and this response is reinforced by the reward of, for example, teacher PRAISE and Student satisfaction. If you repeat this procedure often enough, some people suggested, the language will be learnt.

• Behavourist theories of language learning were heavily criticised. It was argued that if all language was the result of stimulus-response reinforcement, how come we can all say new things that we have never said before? These new things can’t be the Behavourist conditioning, surely! One of the results of this Was that teachers stopped using only A—L methodology.

• However, one the main ingredients of audio-lingualism (language drilling) is still used in many lessons because we believe that frequent repetition is a key to successful learning. One of the most popular ways of teaching new language, PPP (PRESENTATION, PRACTICE AND PRODUCTION), mixes drilling with contextualized explanation and opportunities for language use.

3. The communicative approach/communicative language teaching

• THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH/COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING  focuses on the idea that people get language if they have opportunities to use it, and that if students have a desire to communicate and a purpose for communicating (rather than just practicing a grammar item), then language learning will ‘take care of itself’. 

• In CLT, students do many speaking and writing tasks, trying to use any and all of the language that they can. CLT focuses more on CONTENT than on FORM; it concentrates on how successfully students can communicate, rather than on whether they are speaking or writing correctly. CORRECTION often takes place after the students have tried to speak or write communicatively.

4. Task-based learning (TBL)

• TASK BASED LEARNING (TBL) is an approach where teachers set their students larger tasks, such as writing a newspaper article, giving an oral presentation, creating an online film reviews page or arranging a meeting, rather than concentrating only on the language. The students may study language, too, of course, but only if this will help them do the task; it is the planning and the completion of the task that is most important. A TBL approach would base its syllabus on tasks rather than lists of grammar items. In some versions of TBL, language study comes after the task —- to deal with any mistakes that occurred during the task.

• In a task—based sequence we might get INTERMEDIATE or UPPER INTERMEDIATE students to plan a trip to a city in a foreign country by looking for information on the INTERNET and then writing an itinerary; we might ask the students to design a questionnaire which they can then use for video or audio interviews in the Street.

How people learn; how people teach

Most teachers don’t follow any one method, but use elements of many different approaches. This ECLECTICISM seems to be the best response to different claims about how different students learn. Everything will depend on the balance of exercises and activities how we get students ENGAGED, how We get them to study and the opportunities we provide for them to ACTIVATE their knowledge

A lot depends, too, on the role of the teacher. Should we transmit knowledge as lecturers do, SCAFFOLD learning (provide guidance and support) by helping what they want to achieve or facilitate learning by providing the right kind of activities?

   

We all make mistakes

When people are learning a language, they never get it right first time: they make MISTAKES. This IS a normal part of learning a first, or any other, language. Native Speakers of a language make mistakes, too, especially in informal conversation.

Why do learners make mistakes?

• When people are learning a second language, they make DEVELOPMENTAL ERRORS. These happen as a natural part of language learning because (either consciously or subconsciously) the learners are trying to work out how the language System works.

• When children are learning English as their first language, they often learn early on how to say past tense forms such as went, came, ran, etc. However, later, when they become aware of regular PAST TENSE endings, they start saying geed, mead, Farmed, etc. We call this OVER-QENERALISATION because the child is using the new ‘rule’ too widely. In the same My, learners of English as a second language often say things like he must to go, because they appear to be over-generalising to + INFINITIVE, which they have become aware of in sentences like he has to go.

• When students are learning a second language, they often make INTERFERENCE errors. These happen because they are (consciously or unconsciously)trying to use their first- Language knowledge to speak the new language for example, Japanese speakers may make sentences such as Skiing is very interesting (because the Japanese word which they would use in this sentence, ‘omoshiroi’, means both great fun and interesting), Spanish speakers may get their word order wrong and say  (because in Spanish the sentence would be es una mujer bonita), Arabic speakers may say (because in Arabic there is no subject-verb inversion for questions) and Turkish students might say I happy (because in Turkish Ben muluyum doesn’t contain an overt verb).

    Do mistakes matter?

We all know people who speak fairly ‘broken’ English (or another language), and yet they can make themselves understood perfectly well and no one worries too much about the errors they make. However, in certain circumstances, both inside and outside the classroom, mistakes do matter.

• When students speak, they may have an accent which is influenced by their first or second language. There is nothing wrong with this unless what they are saying is UNINTELLIGIBLE. PRONUNCIATION teaching is all about making sure that the students are as intelligible as possible to as many people as possible. We will need to concentrate on STRESS and INTONATION, especially, since when mistakes are made with these, they can affect meaning.

• Mistakes matter in writing. This is partly because writing doesn’t flash past like conversation, but stays there for us to look at again and again. People can think that someone’s English (or other language) is worse than it is if they see spelling mistakes, bad handwriting and poor vocabulary use — whereas if they heard the same person speak, they might have a better impression.

• In lessons we often make a difference between language activities which concentrate on ACCURACY (the students’ accurate and correct use of language) and activities  which concentration FLUENCY (the students’ ability to communicate effectively and spontaneously).

•  When we are working on the students’ accuracy, we are helping them to study language (that is, to understand the construction of GRAMMAR, a LEXICAL PHRASE, a LANGUAGE FUNCTION, etc.). Because of this, we will probably correct mistakes when they occur and try to help the students to say or write things correctly.