This document discusses key concepts relating to language learning and teaching including definitions of language, learning, and teaching. It also covers schools of thought in second language acquisition such as structuralism and constructivism. Theories of first language acquisition like behaviorism, nativism, and functional approaches are examined. The concepts of universal grammar, imitation, practice, input, and the critical period hypothesis are defined. Finally, it distinguishes between first and second language, bilingualism, types of learning, inductive and deductive reasoning.

1. “Principles of
language learning
and teaching”

2. What is language?
• “Language is a complex, specialized skill,
which develops in the child spontaneously,
without conscious effort or formal
instruction“
• "Language is a system of arbitrary
conventionalized vocal, written or gestual
symbols that enable members of a given
community to communicate with one
another"

3. What is learning?
• "Learning is acquiring or getting a
knowledge of a subject or a skill by
study, experience or instruction“
• "Learning is a relatively permanent
change in a behavioral tendency and
is the result reinforced practice"

4. What is teaching?
• "Teaching is showing or helping
someone to learn how to do
something giving instructions, guiding
in the study of something, providing
with knowledge"

5. Schools of thought in SLA
What is Structuralism?
• Structuralism proposed a form of analysis
based on consideration of language as a
system composed of elements that relate
to each other and form a structure.

6. Schools of thought in SLA
What is constructivism?
• Knowledge is actively constructed by the cognosc
ente subject, not passively received from the
environment.
• knowing is an adaptive process that organizes the
experiential world of one; an independent
and pre-existing world outside the mind of the
expert is not discovered.

7. Theories of first language acquisition
Behavioristic approaches
• The behavioristic approach focused on the
immediately perceptive aspects of
linguistic behavior.
• A behaviorist might consider effective
language behavior to be the production of
correct responses to stimuli.

8. Theories of first language acquisition
The nativist approach
• The term nativist is derived from the
fundamental assertion that language
acquisition is innately determined.
• We have an innate capacity to develop
languages.

9. Theories of first language acquisition
Functional approaches
• It is the consideration of the study of
a language as the investigation of the
duties performed by the elements,
classes and the mechanisms involved
in it; as a result, with this important
role.

10. What is universal grammar?
• Noam Chumsky “Universal grammar is the
set of principles, rules and conditions
shared by all languages”.
• All humans naturally acquire one language
either because they have a universal
grammar.

11. Imitation
• Several investigations have
demonstrated that imitation is a
strategy that children use to learn
how to speak.
• In his early years, the imitation is the
primary method of learning for your
child.

12. Practice
• Practice of the language is associated
with the acquisition of language in
children. they start practicing one or
two words at the same time.
• The behaviorist model use the
practice and repetition, the key is to
form a habit.

13. Input
• Input are all those sounds that a
baby is exposed; phrases, conversations,
words, and that the baby will be
recognized over time.

14. The Critical Period Hypethesis
• It is a hypothesis raised by Lenneberg
says the ability to acquire language
diminishes upon reaching puberty, because
the plasticity, circumstances involving a
sensitive decrease of the capacity to learn a
language.

15. First language
• It is the language or are the languages
a person has learned from birth or
within the critical period, or that a
person speaks the best and so is often
the basis for sociolinguistic identity

16. Second language
• It is a language that is not the native
language of the speaker, but that is used in
the locale of that person.

17. Bilingualism
• It is when a person has two languages mothers,
i.e. when to learn two languages since he is a
babe and dominates them perfectly.

18. Types of learning
• Singal learning
• Stimulus-response learning
• Chaining
• Verbal Asociation
• Multiple discrimination
• Concept learning
• Principal learning
• Problem solving

19. Inductive reasoning
• It is a type of reasoning that focuses on the
creation of statements generalized from
examples or specific events.
For example:
Jennifer leaves for school at 7:00 a.m. Jennifer is
always on time. Jennifer assumes, then, that she
will always be on time if she leaves at 7:00 a.m.

20. Deductive reasoning
• Deductive reasoning differs from the inductive, because it
uses generalized concepts to try to get more specific.
For this reason is also known as the approach
"from top to bottom".
Example:
Since all humans are mortal, and I am a human, then I am
mortal.