The document discusses theories of language acquisition, including behaviorism and nativism. It provides details on behaviorist theory, which believes that language is learned through reinforcement and conditioning, and that children are "blank slates" learning from their environment. The document also discusses nativist theory and debates around nature vs nurture in language learning. Additionally, it covers topics like bilingualism, second language acquisition, and debates around bilingual education programs.
English Learners in 21st-Century Classrooms and Language Acquisition TheoriesMika Ella Perez
This is the PowerPoint presentation of my aforementioned topics in the subject LED 204: Teaching reading, Literary Appreciation, and Writing in Bilingual Context. The reference will be provided on the next update.
English Learners in 21st-Century Classrooms and Language Acquisition TheoriesMika Ella Perez
This is the PowerPoint presentation of my aforementioned topics in the subject LED 204: Teaching reading, Literary Appreciation, and Writing in Bilingual Context. The reference will be provided on the next update.
Psycholinguistics and foreign language teaching.Tony Viethao
PG20- topics presented by group 4 with contents:
1, Definitions of linguistics2, Key concepts of psycholinguistics3, First language acquisition (FLA)4, Second language learning ( SLL)5, The similarities & differences between FLA & SLL
Psycholinguistics and foreign language teaching.Tony Viethao
PG20- topics presented by group 4 with contents:
1, Definitions of linguistics2, Key concepts of psycholinguistics3, First language acquisition (FLA)4, Second language learning ( SLL)5, The similarities & differences between FLA & SLL
9300AWEEK 1 What is language Our relationship with language. T.docxblondellchancy
9300A
WEEK 1: What is language? Our relationship with language. The Study of L2 Acquisition.
Readings:
Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Chapter 1.
· As never before, people have had to learn a second language, not just as a pleasing pastime, but often as a means of obtaining an education or securing employment. At such a time, there is an obvious need to discover more about how second languages are learned. (学习二语的原因:why do you need to learn English? Is there have some special reason to learn [academic, daily life])
· ‘L2 acquisition’, then, can be defined as the way in which people learn a language other than their mother tongue, inside or out side of a classroom, and ‘Second Language Acquisition’ (SLA) as the study of this. [do you think you are a successful second language learner? Why? How you did it?]
· What are the goals of sla: learner language [how learners’ accents change over time. Another might be the words learners use; how learners build up their vocabulary.]
· What type of input facilitates learning? [do learners benefit more from input that has been simplified for them or from the authentic language of native-speaker communication?
· The goals of SLA, then, are to describe how L2 acquisition proceeds and to explain this process and why some learners seem to be better at it than others.
·
WEEK 2: First Language Acquisition
Readings:
Yule, G. (2016). The study of language. Cambridge university press. P.170-181 Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned. Oxford
University Press. Chapter 1
Yule: By the age of two-and-a-half, the child’s vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child is initiating more talk while increased physical activity includes running and jumping. By three, the vocabulary has grown to hundreds of words and pronunciation has become closer to the form of adult language. At this point, it is worth considering what kind of influence the adults have in the development of the child’s speech.
Morphology; syntax
Lightbown: How do children accomplish this? What enables a child not only to learn words, but to put them together in meaningful sentences? What pushes children to go on developing complex grammatical language even though their early simple communication is successful for most purposes? Does child language develop similarly around the world? How do bilingual children acquire more than one language?
【Which stage do you think is the fastest progress in your second language?】
【How the interviewee’s knowledge of English grammar developed during the time? (if you cannot remember the learning processes, you can think what did you do, how does you try to learn an L2)】p.008
[学习者有没有背单词,是long-term memory 还是working memory?(cognition)]
Negation对立面p.9
WEEK 3: Behaviourism and Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis
Readings:
Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching. P.69-71
Ellis, R. (2015). Understanding second ...
National Language Policy on Primary Education and the Challenges of Language ...inventionjournals
The challenges of language teaching and learning in our schools today constitute the foremost issues in language Education. The tremendous role that language, especially English language plays in the development of every individual and the nation educationally cannot be relegated to the background. Language Education is very important in the educational system of the Nigerian nation due to the multilingual nature of the society. English language is the medium of instruction across all educational levels and hence the bedrock of the teaching and learning process in our schools. The English language teacher therefore, is faced with the task of achieving this laudable educational objective. The paper set out to x-ray and take cursory look at the National language policy on primary education, the prevailing situation on implementation process of the policy. It examines the challenges and the way forward emanating from the National language policy on primary Education.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition
Social interaction and language acquisition: Motherese help you
Kevin Durkin, D.R. Rutter, and Hilarie Tucker
University of Kent
One of the distinctive features of speech addressed to young children is the
deviant use of proper names. In a cross-sectional observational study of mother-
infant interactions (with children aged 12, 18 and 24 months), this paper
investigates the frequency and functions of this aspect of language input. No
differences due to age of child were found, indicating that the phenomenon is not
sensitive to the linguistic development of the addressee. The most common
functions of name usage are identified as Attention-Orienting and Instruction to
Act. We argue that this familiar modification reflects communicative rather than
pedagogical (linguistic- instruction) purposes on the part of the parent. We
present examples which suggest that the modification, which is present before
the addressee reaches the two-word stage, influences the early grammatical
constructions of the child. We conclude that the relationship between the
contingencies of early social interaction and language acquisition is multi
dimensional, and not ubiquitously designed to facilitate language learn ing perse.
First Language, Vol. 3, No. 8, 107-120 (1982)
DOI: 10.1177/014272378200300803
2. Bilingualism in language learning
The term bilingual refers to individuals who can function in more than one
language. The category of bilinguals is very broad - encompassing individuals
who are sophisticated speakers, readers, and writers of two or more languages,
as well as those who use a limited knowledge of a second language (L2) for
purposes such as work or schooling, and who may be literate in only one
language (or even completely illiterate). Because of the consequences of
colonization, migration, nation-formation, traditions of exogamy, and
modernization, some degree of bilingualism is typical of most people in the world.
Bilingualism is a feature not just of individuals, but also of societies. Societies in
which two languages are used regularly, or in which more than one language has
official status or a recurrent function, can be called bilingual. For example,
Canada is a bilingual country because French and English are both official
languages, even though many citizens of Canada are monolingual English
speakers. Saudi Arabia is also a bilingual society, as most Saudis speak both
Arabic and English, though English has no official status. The nature of individual
bilingualism is quite different in different communities - there are those where
bilingualism is the norm for all educated citizens (as it is, for example, in relatively
small language communities like Scandinavia and The Netherlands); those
3. where bilingualism is the norm for the minority language speakers but not those
with the greatest political or economic power in the society (e.g., for Quechua
speakers in Peru, for Turkish speakers in the Netherlands, for Spanish speakers
in the United States); and those where bilingualism is the norm for the upper
classes and better educated but not the relatively powerless (e.g., Colombia). It
must be noted that the United States and other traditionally English-speaking
countries observe a norm of monolingualism (low expectations for second/foreign
language proficiency, low value placed on immigrant languages, universal
emphasis on the need to speak English) that is possible only for speakers of a
'language of wider communication' living in an economy that is globally highly
influential.
Bilingualism is often the product of second language (L2) learning after the first
language (L1) has been acquired - either through nontutored exposure or
through instruction. Individuals can become bilingual at any age, depending on
when the need to learn the L2 emerges or when instruction becomes available.
In some cases, though, bilingualism is a characteristic of a child's earliest
language system. For example, children growing up in bilingual households -
where both parents speak two languages regularly, or where each parent speaks
a different language - are typically bilingual from the very beginning of language
acquisition. Children growing up with parents who speak a minority language
(within the larger societal context) may also be natively bilingual, if visitors,
neighbors, television, regular caretakers, and other sources make the majority
language available.
English as a second language (ESL) refers to the process of producing bilinguals
by teaching English as an L2 to learners in an English-speaking context. ESL is
distinguished from English as a foreign language (EFL), which is instruction
delivered in a context where English is not used regularly outside the classroom,
using the instructional techniques and the intensity of instruction required to
achieve success. The term ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) is
meant to encompass both ESL and EFL. Given the importance of English in the
modern, globalized economy, ESOL is a large field of practice buttressed by
considerable bodies of research and many curricular resources.
ESL instruction also needs to be distinguished, in the American schooling
context, from instruction referred to as bilingual education, in which some
instructional content is delivered in the learner's L1 while English is being
acquired. Bilingual programs range from those that use the native language
briefly (and primarily for emotional support), to programs that seek to develop L1
literacy as a source of transfer to English literacy, to those that continue to teach
L1 oral and literacy skills at least through the elementary grades. Some districts
also offer two-way bilingual, or double immersion programs, in which half the
students are L1 speakers of English and half are L1 speakers of another
language, and instruction is given to all children in both languages, with the goal
of producing high-level bilinguals from both English-and other-language
4. backgrounds.
Bilingual education programs, which were first supported by federal funding as a
result of the Federal Bilingual Education Act of 1968, are offered in districts
where sufficient numbers of students from a single L1 background exist; such
programs came under attack as ineffective in 1998 in California, where they were
severely curtailed as a result of ballot proposition 227. Since then, political action
to eliminate the bilingual schooling option has spread to other states. The
difficulty of carrying out well-designed evaluations of bilingual education has
frustrated its supporters because there is, as a result, no unambiguous
demonstration that bilingual education generates achievement advantages.
Nonetheless, both theory and meta-analyses suggest that bilingual education is
the best approach to ensuring educational achievement and reducing the risk of
reading failure for many language-minority children.
The major challenge of education for language minority children in the U.S. is to
ensure adequate literacy development; scores from the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) continue to show serious deficits in literacy for
non-native speakers of English, even after several years of U.S. schooling. Thus,
focusing on educational treatments that promote literacy is a high priority in
research and practice innovations.
Early Literacy Development of English Language Learners (ELLS)
The central role of language in the emergence of key literacy-related skills raises
important questions about the nature of literacy development among bilingual
children, and, about the impact of bilingual or second language instructional
settings on children's emerging literacy-related abilities. There is surprisingly little
systematic research on these issues. It is known, however, that Spanish-
speaking children (the most widely studied group) just beginning kindergarten in
the United States show wide variation in both their Spanish literacy skills and in
their level of oral English proficiency. Since children's abilities in both of these
areas have been shown to independently predict English reading performance in
middle school, both must be considered critical to children's future academic
success.
There is also considerable evidence that many key literacy-related skills,
including phonological awareness, print concepts, decoding skills, and extended
discourse, are transferable from an L1 to an L2. Low-income ELLs, like other
children of low socioeconomic status, tend to begin school with relatively few
literacy-related skills in general, and they may have vocabularies in each of their
two languages that are more restricted even than those of their low-income,
monolingual peers - possibly because they have had fewer resources and
opportunities to acquire at home the language and literacy skills that have been
linked to school success.
5. Language-Of-Instruction Studies
One critical question is how effective literacy instruction is linguistically organized
in bilingual or second language (ESL) classroom settings - and with what effect.
Non-English-speaking or bilingual preschool children in the United States
typically find themselves in one of three types of classroom language settings:
first-language classrooms in which all interaction occurs in the children's primary
language; bilingual classrooms in which interaction is split between the primary
language and English; and English-language classrooms in which English is the
exclusive language of communication. Studies of the education offered to L2
learners tend to focus on language use, rather than on the quality of children's
learning opportunities. These studies, nevertheless, converge on two important
sets of findings.
First, studies that have compared preschool program types by language have
found certain academic and linguistic advantages for children in bilingual, as
opposed to English-only, classrooms at both the pre-school and the K - 6 level.
One longitudinal evaluation of the Carpinteria Preschool Program in California
found Spanish-language classrooms to be associated with higher levels of
language and early literacy attainment in both Spanish and English through
grade five. Unfortunately, these studies have not examined what, specifically,
goes on in pre-school classrooms to produce such results.
Second, studies that have explored the language proficiencies of Spanish-
speaking children who attended preschool versus those who stayed home have
found that the main effect of preschool attendance, even in bilingual programs, is
improved English proficiency. There is contradictory evidence, however, as to
whether acquiring English in pre-school necessarily endangers children's home
language development.
Systematic studies focused on investigating the predictors of English literacy
development for ELLs were launched in 2000, when the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the Office of Educational
Research and Improvement (OERI) initiated collaborative funding focused on
bilingual reading. Questions about both the design and quality of schooling for
ELLs are of practical as well as theoretical importance, especially since the
majority of ELL preschoolers and school-age children in the United States find
themselves in predominantly English-language classroom settings. Expressing
concern for the additional risk that such settings may pose, the National
Research Council report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children
recommended the need for additional research to examine "whether high-quality
preschool experiences are equally beneficial to Spanish-speaking children when
offered in English as when offered in Spanish" (Snow, Burns, and Griffin, p. 157).
Consequences of Bilingualism
6. There has been much discussion of the consequences of early bilingualism.
Historically, early bilingualism was seen as dangerous, leading to confusion and
exacerbating language disorders and language delay. Research has made clear
that early bilingualism may well bring cognitive advantages, particularly in
domains such as helping children understand the arbitrary nature of language
systems and literacy systems. Nonetheless, such advantages are also small -
few months' precocity on tasks that monolingual children also typically come to
accomplish without difficulty.
Obviously, the major positive consequence of bilingualism is knowing two
languages - and thus being able to converse with a larger array of individuals, as
well as having access to two cultures, two bodies of literature, and two
worldviews. For children in language-minority communities, maintaining their
ancestral language preserves ties to their grandparents and keeps open the
option of experiences that build ethnic identification and pride, as well as cultural
continuity. Speaking other languages also has economic advantages, as
bilinguals are in demand in the new global economy.
Despite these advantages, the most typical trajectory for immigrant families in the
United States is that only first-generation children (or the one-and-a-half
generation - those born in the U.S. shortly after their parents' arrival) are
bilingual, and that the second and later generations are likely to be absorbed into
the norms of the larger monolingual society. Given the relatively poor outcomes
of foreign language teaching in the United States, this trajectory reflects the
forfeiture of linguistic resources that might well be conserved with educational
policies more focused on maintaining and developing immigrants' language skills
in L1 as well as L2.
Factors Influencing Second Language Learning
Forces that impinge on the likelihood of successful L2 learning include cognitive
influences (e.g., knowledge of L1, linguistic analysis capacity, memory),
motivational influences (e.g., interest in the L2, value of the L2 to the learner,
positive affect toward speakers of the L2), social influences (e.g., opportunities to
interact with L2 speakers, access to useful feedback from L2 speakers), and
instruction (e.g., quantity, quality, design). These influences all tend to covary
with age, with the social status of the learner, and with other factors, such as
reasons for learning the L2.
Although the myth of a critical period for L2 acquisition dominates public
understanding, there are, in fact, no biological data supporting the existence of a
critical period for second language learning. Older learners can achieve high,
even native-like levels of proficiency in an L2 under the right conditions, and
younger learners sometimes do not achieve this level of proficiency. Very young
learners in an immigrant situation are also much more likely to lose their first
language in the process of acquiring the second, thus ending up monolingual
8. nding out if students can read and understand programs. A second motivation for
my interest in teaching
students to read code before writing code also comes from professional industry.
In casual conversations
with software developers I have asked what skills are they looking for in
computer science graduates. I often
get the standard responses, such as they can think" and they can actually
write code". Another response
is that they can understand existing code since most developers maintain and
extend existing systems. My
overall research question is not something that I cannot investigate immediately.
First, I would like to do
preliminary studies focusing on more direct questions. My overall research
question is the following: does
teaching students how to program by
9. rst reading programs lead to more ecient learning of language syntax
and semantics? First, I will focus on the question of can students currently read
and understand existing
code and documentation.
2 Related Work
This study draws on the reading/writing literature and the code comprehension
literature. Musthafa documents
the history of research practices in reading and writing from the 1960's through
the 1990's in [5].
Reading and writing were
10. rst viewed as simply behavioral responses and that reading and writing were
separate acts. Later, reading and writing theories about causal relationships were
studied. Does reading
lead to writing or does writing lead to reading? Most recently, the trend is that
reading and writing are
related activities and each may help the other. It is my sense that when teaching
students how to program,
there could be a great synergy between writing programs and reading programs
to aid in becoming better
at both reading and writing. A popular approach to teaching reading is to have
kids read and write about
the reading [1]. Cobine argues that encouraging kids to write about their reading
will satisfy a larger set
of learning styles. In the same way, teaching programming through reading and
writing may reach a more
diverse set of learning styles. The second body of literature related to my
interests is the program comprehension,
program understanding, debugging, and expert/novice literature. Shaft uses a
think-aloud protocol
to collect data about how people comprehend a program unfamiliar to them [7].
She chose participants
who had several years of industry experience with COBOL, so her sample
population is di
erent than my
target population. She focused on programmers' use of metacognition while
reading programs. She found
that when they were working in unfamiliar application domains, the use of
metacognition interfered with
their comprehension skills. Mayer addresses e
ective techniques for teaching students how to program, such
as providing models and having students describe a concept in their own words,
in [4]. Missing from this
1
paper is the technique of having students read programs before or while learning
how to write them. Several
researchers have investigated expert/novice di
erences in program comprehension, theories about program
comprehension, and tools to assist in comprehension [6, 3, 2]. One day, there
might be tools to assist novices
in learning how to read code, but we need to
11. rst understand how they read and understand code without
assistance and the challenges they face when reading code.
3 Research Questions
My research question is: Can students read and understand existing code and
documentation? Embedded
in this question is: How do students read and understand existing code and
documentation? Can students
evaluate if existing code meets the functional requirements? Can students predict
the output of a program
given an input or event? Can students follow the execution path of a program
given an input or event?
(Okay, so maybe I have not quite focused the question enough to be able to
develop a study to investigate
it.)
4 Evidence
Evidence to the main question of students being able to read and understand
existing code and documentation
can take on the following forms:
A student asks a question about the code. This shows that the student knows at
least something about
the code to ask about it.
A student can tell me if the code does or does need meet a functional
requirement.
A student can tell me that the code documentation is inconsistent with the code.
A student can predict the outcome of the program given a certain input.
A student can trace the execution path given a certain input.
A student can
12. nd an unhandled case in the code.
A student looks up a language feature in the reference manual. This shows that
the student knows
that they are not familiar with a language feature, instead of blindly skipping
over that part of the
code.
A student draws pictures showing connections between
13. les/classes/code fragments or abstracts the
code into a diagram.
5 Methods
Looking at my questions again, I think I would split the investigation into two
phases. Phase one will
look at can students read and understand code and phase two will center around
how do students read
and understand code. It might be feasible to study both questions at the same
time or with two separate
phases in a single experiment. Since I do not know if students can read and
understand code, I would
probably recruit participants from across all levels in an undergraduate CS
program. The most novice set
of participants would be students who have just completed CS 1.
I would take a more experimental approach when studying this question, instead
of incorporating it into
an actual class. I would design the experiment so participants were asked to do
the following tasks:
1. After introducing the study, I would let the participants know that they can
ask me questions at any
time. Participants would
14. rst be given the code (not sure if this will be done on paper or on the
computer), access to a language reference, some description/documentation about
what the code does,
and a set of functional requirements for the code. The participant would be given
sucient time to
read through the material and I would ask him/her to read it and I would be
asking questions about
the program during the next phase.
2
2. After the participant is comfortable with the materials, I would ask him/her to
describe the program
as if he/she is introducing the system to a peer.
3. The participant would then be asked a set of questions about the program. I
would ask what would
happen given a certain input. I would ask the participant to trace the execution
path given a certain
input. I would also ask the participant to con
16. es a certain functional
requirement.
4. The second phase is for the investigation of the question as to how students
read and understand code.
(the process in which they do this) I would give the participant a second program
and documentation
and ask them to think aloud - tell me what they are looking at and what they are
thinking as they
try to understand the code. This could be tricky, since having them think aloud
may alter the process
through which they go through. (Having two passes at this gives me some
evidence about the thinking
aloud altering their process. While they read through the
17. rst program, I would be taking notes as
to what they are looking at, when they look at the manual, when they ask me
questions, etc.). An
alternative to using a second program would be to videotape the participant
while he/she was trying
to understand program 1. They I could ask him/her what he/she was
doing/thinking while watching
the tape.
5. I would then ask the participant to describe how they try to understand the
code for a system that is
unfamiliar to them. I would ask them to describe any di
erences in the process they went through for
the two programs.
6 Analysis Procedures
I expect to analyze the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. The data I
expect to get from the
experiment include the following:
Descriptions of process when reading/understanding program 1 (from my
observations)
Descriptions of process when reading/understanding program 1 from participant's
answer about their
process
Questions that the participant asks during the experiment
The answers to the input/output questions
Participant's description of program 1
The answers to the questions about tracing execution
The answers to the questions about the program meeting functional requirements
The verbatim transcript from the think aloud protocol for program 2
Descriptions of di
erences for the participant in reading program 1 and program 2
Descriptions of how the participant usually goes about understanding the code
for an unfamiliar system
With the descriptions of process, I would try to build timelines of what the
students were doing and
the order in which they did them. I would compare their descriptions to the one I
observed. I would see
how many questions they got right about the input/output, tracing, and meeting
functional requirements. I
would also look at their verbal description of the program, annotating correct and
incorrect interpretations
of the program.
3
19. nd out if teaching students to read before writing programs is more ecient for
their learning. In the future I could try to incorporate code reading exercises at
the beginning of the term
and see how quickly students can get through the syntax and semantics of the
language. If students can
learn about the language more quickly, then class time could be spent on issues
such as eciency, design
decisions, and readability of softwar