This document provides an overview of three perspectives on second language acquisition: structural linguistics and behavioral psychology, generative linguistics and cognitive psychology, and constructivism. It discusses key aspects of each perspective, including their views on language, learning, and teaching. While each perspective has merits, the document advocates for a balanced, multidisciplinary approach to understanding second language acquisition, as represented by constructivism.
2. Content
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▰ Questions about SLA: Learner Characteristics, Linguistic Factors, Learning Processes,
Age and Acquisition, Classroom Instruction, Context, Purpose
▰ Rejoicing in Our Defeats
▰ Language
▰ Learning and Teaching
▰ Three Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition
▻ Structural Linguistics and Behavioral Psychology
▻ Generative Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology
▻ Constructivism: A Multidisciplinary Approach
▰ Nineteen Centuries of Language Teaching
▰ Language Teaching in the Twentieth Century
3. Dr. Ghafarpour
▰ Language fluency doesn’t happen overnight
▰ learning a second language also involves learning a second culture
▰ It may mean a whole new way of thinking, feeling, and acting
▰ Commitment, motivation, and serious effort are involved
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4. Dr. Ghafarpour
Questions about SLA
▰ Learner Characteristics,
▰ Linguistic Factors: similarities and differences between L1 & L2, difficulties of L2
▰ Learning Processes: steps, strategies, intellectual processes
▰ Age and Acquisition,
▰ Classroom Instruction: vs. natural conditions
▰ Context: second lg learning, Foreign lg learning
▰ Purpose: the most encompassing of all questions
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Rejoicing in Our Defeats
▰ you may not find final answers to all the questions
▰ Our field of inquiry is no simple, unidimensional reality. It’s “slippery” in every way.
▰ understanding must be eclectic : no single theory or hypothesis will provide a magic
formula for all learners in all contexts.
▰ conclusions will need to be enlightened : you’ll be urged to be as critical as you can in
considering the merit of various models and theories and research findings.
▰ be a bit cautious: don’t accept every claim as truth just because someone fervently asserts
it to be factual
▰ cautious, enlightened, eclectic
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6. A definition is a statement that captures the key
features of a concept.
a theory could be thought of as an “extended”
definition 6
What is language?
Yourunderstandingofthe
componentsoflanguage
determinestoa large
extenthowyouteacha
language.
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Language
1. …is systematic
2. …uses arbitrary symbols
3. … uses symbols that are primarily vocal but may also be visual
4. … uses symbols that have conventionalized meanings
5. …is used for communication
6. …operates in a speech community
7. … is essentially human, but not limited to humans
8. …has universal characteristics
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Learning
▰ learning is “acquiring knowledge of a subject or a skill by study,
experience, or instruction.”
▰ learning is “a change in an individual caused by experience”
1. Acquisition or “adding”
2. The retention of information or skills
3. The involvement of storage systems, memory, and cognitive organization
4. The application of active, conscious focus, and subconscious attention
5. Relatively permanent but subject to forgetting
6. The result of practice, perhaps reinforced practice
7. A change in behavior 8
subfields
acquisition processes,
perception,
memory(storage)
systems, short- and
long-term memory,
recall, motivation,
conscious and
subconscious
attention,
learningstyles and
strategies,
theories of forgetting,
reinforcement,
role of practice
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Teaching
▰ … cannot be defined apart from learning.
▰ … is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling a person to learn, and setting the
conditions for learning.
▰ Your understanding of how people learn will determine your philosophy of education,
your teaching style, approach, lesson design, and classroom techniques.
▰ Your theory of teaching is your theory of learning “stood on its head.”
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Dr. Ghafarpour
Three Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition
▻ Structural Linguistics and Behavioral Psychology
▻ Generative Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology
▻ Constructivism: A Multidisciplinary Approach
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• each perspectiveshareshistoricalchronology,
• risksomeovergeneralization
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Structural Linguistics
▰ structural , or descriptive , school of linguistics: scientific observation of human lg
▰ Only “publicly observable responses” could be subject to investigation.
▰ The linguist’s task, according to the structuralist , was to describe human lg & to identify
their structural characteristics.
▰ An important axiom of structural linguistics: lgs can differ from each other without limit,
and that no preconceptions should apply across lgs.
▰ ignore any mentalistic theorizing that might entertain unobservable guesses about lg.
▰ Lg could be dismantled into small pieces or units & these units could be described
scientifically, contrasted, and added up again to form the whole
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Behavioral Psychology
▰ Skinner & Osgood
▰ Insists on using scientific method in studying human behavior.
▰ In their behavioral paradigm, any notion of “idea” or “meaning” was “explanatory
fiction,” and in both language and other behavior, the only legitimate “responses”
were those that could be objectively perceived, recorded, and measured.
▰ The unreliability of observation of states of consciousness, thinking, concept
formation, or the acquisition of knowledge made such topics impossible to examine
in a behavioral framework.
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generative-transformational linguistics
▰ Emerged through the influence of Noam Chomsky
▰ human lg cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observable stimuli and responses
or the volumes of raw data gathered by field linguists.
▰ The generative linguist was interested not only in describing lg (achieving the level of
descriptive adequacy ) but also in arriving at an explanatory level of adequacy in the
study of lg, that is, a “principled basis, independent of any particular lg, for the
selection of the descriptively adequate grammar of each lg
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▰ Ferdinand de Saussure
▰ difference between
▻ parole (what Skinner “observes,” and what Chomsky called performance ),
▻ langue (akin to the concept of competence , or our underlying and
unobservable language ability).
▰ descriptive linguists chose largely to ignore langue and to study parole .
▰ Generative linguists focused on the importance of the underlying (and
nonobservable) levels of meaning and thought
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cognitive psychology
▰ like generative linguists, sought to discover underlying motivations and
deeper structures of human behavior
▰ using a rational approach
▰ free from the strictly empirical study typical of behaviorists and employed the
tools of logic, reason, extrapolation, and inference in order to derive
explanations for human behavior.
▰ going beyond merely descriptive adequacy to explanatory power
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What and why?
▰ Both the structural linguist & the behavioral psychologist were interested in
description, in answering what questions, in controlled circumstances.
▰ The generative linguist & cognitive psychologist were interested in the what
question.
▰ But more importantly in why
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constructivism
▰ integration of linguistic, psychological, and sociological paradigms, in
contrast to the professional chasms that often divided those disciplines in
the previous century
▰ 2 branches of constructivism:
▻ cognitive constructivism (Piaget)
▻ Structural constructivism (Vygotsky)
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Types of constructivism
cognitive constructivism
▰ Emphasizes the importance of
learners constructing their own
representation of reality.
▰ “Learners must individually discover
and transform complex information if
they are to make it their own,
[suggesting] a more active role for
students in their own learning than is
typical in many classrooms”
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Social constructivism
• emphasizes the importance of social
interaction & cooperative learning in
ultimate attainment.
• Zone of proximal development
(ZPD): the distance between
learners’ existing developmental
state and their potential
development.
• encompasses tasks that a learner
has not yet learned but is capable of
learning with appropriate stimuli.
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Paiget vs. Vygotsky
▰ ZPD saw a unity of learning and development while Piaget’s saw stages of development setting a
precondition or readiness for learning
▰ Piaget stressed the importance of individual cognitive development as a relatively solitary act.
Biological timetables and stages of development were basic;
social interaction was claimed only to trigger development at the right moment in time.
▰ Vygotsky: social interaction is foundational in cognitive development and rejected the notion of
predetermined stages.
▰ Now: increasing emphasis on sociocultural dimensions of SLA cognition originates in social interaction
and is shaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes 22
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Dr. Ghafarpour
All three of these historical perspectives
▻ structural/behavioral,
▻ generative/cognitive,
▻ Constructivist
must be seen as important in creating balanced
descriptions of second language acquisition
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No single paradigm is
right or wrong.
Some truth can be found
in virtually every critical
approach to the study of
reality
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Schools of Thought Typical Themes
Structural Linguistics/
Behavioral Psychology
Description, Observable performance, Empiricism,
Scientific method, Conditioning, Reinforcement
Generative Linguistics/
CognitivePsychology
Acquisition, Innateness, Language competence, Deep
structure, Interlanguage, Systematicity, Variability
Constructivism Interactive discourse, Sociocultural factors, Construction
of identity, ZPD, Cooperative learning, Discovery learning
3 perspectives on second language acquisition
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19 CENTURIES OF LANGUAGE TEACHING
▰ Latin
▰ “mental gymnastics”
▰ Classical Method : focus on grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary &
grammatical forms, translation of texts, and performance of written exercises
▰ came to be known as the Grammar Translation Method .
▰ remembered with distaste by thousands of school learners
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Why was Grammar Translation so popular/ long lasting?
▻ It requires few specialized skills on the part of teachers.
▻ Tests of grammar rules and of translations are easy to construct and can be
objectively scored.
▰ Many standardized tests of foreign languages still do not attempt to tap into
communicative abilities, so students have little motivation to go beyond grammar
analogies, translations, and rote exercises.
▻ It is sometimes successful in leading a student toward a reading knowledge of an L2.
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LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE 20th CENTURY
▰ As schools of thought have come and gone, so have language teaching trends
waxed and waned in popularity
▰ “changing winds and shifting sands”
▰ each new method breaking from the old, but at the same time taking with it
some of the positive aspects of the previous paradigm.
▰ swings in a pendulum:
▻ Focus on accuracy vs. focus on fluency,
▻ separation of skills vs. integration of skills, and
▻ teacher-centered vs. learner-centered approaches 27
