Knowledge of Students

Question 1

Behaviorist Theory of First Language Acquisition

Answer 1

humans learn language through a process of reinforcement; through operant conditioning, they learn the rules and patterns of language

Question 2

B.F. Skinner and operant conditioning

Answer 2

a change in behavior in response to feedback

Question 3

theory of the mind

Answer 3

an important social-cognitive skill that involves the ability to think about mental states, both your own and those of others. It encompasses the ability to attribute mental states, including emotions, desires, beliefs, and knowledge.

Question 4

Innate/ Universal Grammar Theory of First Language Acquisition

Answer 4

Noam Chomsky: humans are born with innate language abilities that can be adapted or activated by any language a child is exposed to.
+ all languages share certain properties
+ children exposed to a common language will all converge in competence
+ children will learn linguistic forms for which they have received no input.
+ focuses on developmental aspects of language, not social or psychological

Question 5

Cognitive Constructivist Model of First Language Acquisition

Answer 5

Jean Piaget: cognitive and language development occurs in universal, identifiable stages
+ learning occurs when a child has a challenge in their understanding of the world
+ Learning is a form of adaptation to one’s environment
+ stages of complexity– you master functional morphemes in a similar order in all languages
Undervalues culture and social interaction

Question 6

Cognitive Constructivism vs. Social Constructivism

Answer 6

cognitive believes learners create representations of their world on activities, not social interaction.

Question 7

Social Constructivism Theory

Answer 7

Vygotsky: importance of social interaction in language acquisition. Children learn and are corrected by adults who are more experienced in language.

Question 8

Zone of Proximal Development

Answer 8

Vygotsky: children learn best when they have a task they can accomplish with others/scaffolding/assistance, but not alone. Then you take that away to demonstrate the learning

Question 9

discourse

Answer 9

actual language use….language is developed in a specific context, not necessarily via a universal structure

Question 10

Discovery Learning Theory

Answer 10

Bruner: students earn best when they construct their own knowledge through inquiry, investigation, and problem solving, not when lectured. Influenced our current teaching ideals of inquiry based learning and activities.

Bruner believes that students learn in different ways as they develop, but that the stateges are continuous, not built upon one another, and students can speed up learning, and theat language causes cognitive develoment rather that vice versa.

Question 11

Constructivist: Piaget/Bruner

Answer 11

Believing that the active role of the learning through successively more complex engagements with the world is best learning. Seek to engage students in reality based scenarios.

Question 12

Critical Period

Answer 12

there is an optimal age for learning a language and the older you get, the more difficult it gets

Adults rarely achieve full fluency in a second language bc of native accents and complex grammatical structures

Question 13

Emergent Theory

Answer 13

children learn language by using a simple set of neural networks to process the language immersed in. Children are born with a pattern extraction abilities. social interaction is crucial for this. brain narrows the field of possible meaning by using context, phonological and morphological cues

Question 14

Pre-speech stage: (0-6 months)

Answer 14

babies make comfort sounds and hear language while distinguishing phonemes

Question 15

Babbling Stage (6-8 months)

Answer 15

babies babble, with repeated patterns….allows practice of motor skills to learn how to produce basic sounds

Question 16

one- word stage (10-18 months)

Answer 16

first words produced, overextension and underextension are common (using words too broadly or narrowly)

Question 17

two word or telegraphic stage (18-24 months)

Answer 17

2 word phrases using lexical not functional or grammatical morphemes

Question 18

multi word stage (30 months)

Answer 18

complete sentences adding functional and grammatical elements though making errors

Question 19

Pivot Grammar

Answer 19

A child uses one word as a base to pivot other words around, such as “all” for all gone, all done, and “more” for more milk, more dinner, more kisses

Question 20

holophrase

Answer 20

using one word as an expression of a complex thought, such as “up” signals “I want up”

Question 21

comprehension based learning

Answer 21

focuses on building student’s receptive skills, (listening and reading) before producing the language (writing and speaking). They believe that listening comprehension is the most fundamental linguistic skill

Question 22

communicative approach to second language learning

Answer 22

providing students with genuine, meaningful, experience-based interactions in the target language. Little time talking about grammar and foci on facilitating target language.

Question 23

grammar translation

Answer 23

explanations of the grammatical structures of the target language. Read texts in target language to translate sentences from L2 to L1

Question 24

audio lingual

Answer 24

repetition and drills with language skills built from simple to complex structures… focus is on minimal errors and correct pronunciation.

Question 25

TPR: Total physical response

Answer 25

Using the body to “answer” … aka telling the students to stand up in L2, and having students stand. Can also mean using the body to create physical movements to help remember a term or vocabulary.

Question 26

Krashen’s monitor hypothesis

Answer 26

that it is natural for students to monitor and correct language intrinsically, but that it is easier to do so when writing rather than speaking, because there is more time to mentally give conscious attention.

Question 27

Krashen’s Acquisition/Learning theory

Answer 27

that acquisition is an unconscious natural process of using a language; learning is a conscious process. Only acquisition leads to fluency; learning cannot be transformed into acquisition. adults can acquire fluency ina new language but through immersion.

Question 28

Krashen’s Natural Order

Answer 28

People acquire aspects of language in a natural order, regardless of which language they are acquiring or which language in their primary language. I.e. in English, we learn -ing before -s on verbs.

Question 29

Krashen’s Input hypothesis

Answer 29

language acquisition takes place most efficiently when presented input that is slightly beyond mastery…where they can use context clues to determine comprehension/meaning
Swain’s output hypothesis: Krashen does not address the output, or speech. That this does not make students want to speak; that only comes when they are unable to express themselves .

Question 30

Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis

Answer 30

A student best learns L2 when there are few affective factors, such as anxiety, hunger, poverty, etc. Therefore, a natural approach that does not force students to speak before ready is best, and lowering affective factors is best

Question 31

Michael Long’s Interaction Hypothesis

Answer 31

Comprehensible input should be just beyond an ELL’s mastery–however, places an added emphasis on conversational interactions and partners in order to negotiate meaning–asking questions, clarifying, restating, etc.

Question 32

Cognitive Strategies in second language acquisition

Answer 32

Students should use a variety of methods such as categorizing, inductive reasoning, deduction, summarizing, memorizing, etc to learn an L2. Using metacognitive strategies such as self monitoring, prioritizing and setting goals also is correlated with student success.

Question 33

Keyser’s Skill Acquisition Theory

Answer 33

students learn skills by transforming declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge