Unleash Your Potential - Namagunga Girls Coding Club
Learning Strategies
1. EDUC70090 Psychology of Language learning
Ellen Wilkinson Building Room C2.17
Tuesday 10:00 – 12:00
First 6 (or so) sessions introduces a range of theoretical
perspectives
Last 5 sessions focuses on your EBL projects, and concludes
with your presentations
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. Popular ideas about language learning
Languages are learned primarily through imitation
Languages are learned primarily through interaction
Parents usually correct young children when they make grammatical errors
People with high IQ are good language learners
The most important factor in second language acquisition success is
motivation
The earlier a second language is introduced in school programmes, the
greater the likelihood of success
Most of the mistakes which second language learners make are due to
interference from their first language
7. Popular ideas about language teaching
Teachers should present grammatical rules one at a time
Teachers should teach simple structures before complex ones
Learners’ errors should be corrected as soon as they are made in order to
prevent bad habits
Teachers should use materials that expose students only to language
structures they have already been taught
When learners interact with each other in the classroom they pick up
each others’ mistakes
8. Short History of Psychology
Willhelm Wundt
Psychology as a distinct science
‘Father’ of experimental psychology
Franz Brentano
Psychology as the study of mental life
‘Father’ of introspective psychology
9. Wundt
Behaviourist Psychology
Early to Mid
20th Century
Brentano
Gestalt Psychology
Reductionist
Holistic
Experimental
Focus on Phenomena
Stimulus & Response
Perception
10. (A group of 12-year old learners of English as a foreign language)
T
Repeat after me. Is there any butter in the
refrigerator?
Class
Is there any butter in the refrigerator?
T
There’s very little, Mom.
Class
There’s very little, Mom.
T
Are there any tomatoes in the refrigerator?
Class
Are there any tomatoes in the refrigerator?
T
There are very few, Mom.
(etc.)
(from Spada & Lightbown 1999, pp. 118-119)
11. Two Problems with Behaviourism
The poverty of the
Rewards have a tendency to
stimulus argument
lose their effect over time
>> Chomsky
>> Social Psychology
Learning
Strategies
Input &
interaction
Computer
metaphor
Learning
Styles
Sociocultural
theory
Motivation
theories
12. Continuing search for new perspectives
Formulaic Language
(Attribution and
Self-efficacy)
Connectionism
Intentionality
Complexity theory
Ecological theory
13. EDUC70090 Psychology of Language learning
There is no best theory
There may be more useful and less useful
theory, depending on what language learning
puzzle you are trying to understand
You will outline a language learning puzzle
which you have experience of …
… and then select a theory (or part of a
theory) to understand this puzzle.
Editor's Notes
Distance students may of course ignore the timing and location of the onsite sessions.
A slide to make us think about what psychology is … is psychology located in the brain?
Does psychology include the body and senses?
Does psychology include social interaction?
Does psychology include tools?
Some popular notions about language learning that we may address in this course unit.
Note how psychology of language learning is present in any discussion of what teachers should/might be doing.
Two originators of the study of Psychology. Note the distinction between the focus the observable represented by Wundt, and Brentano’s instinct that psychology is about mental life which cannot easily be observed.
From Wundt follow behaviourism; from Brentano follow Gestalt psychology.
Exemplifying behaviourist teaching.
The challenge to behaviorist thought happening in the 1960s by Chomsky as well as the emerging field of social psychology. These challenges gave rise to the various perspectives that we will be looking at in this course unit (the end points of the arrows).
We may in addition look at some recently emerging perspectives. Keep an eye out for this in the Part 1: Topics section of Blackboard.
This is how we think about psychology and a summary of what you will be doing in your EBL project (second part of the course unit).
