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Applied Linguistics
1- First Language Acquisition
Main questions
What do children acquire?
How does this process take place?
When do children master the skills needed to use language successfully?
Main traditional theories
Behaviourism (Skinner) - Children imitate adults. Their correct utterances are reinforced when they get what they want or are praised Innateness (Chomsky) - A child's brain contains special language-learning mechanisms at birth Cognitivism (Piaget) - Language is just one aspect of a child's overall intellectual development Interaction (Bruner and Threvarthen) - This theory emphasises the interaction between children and their care-givers
Stages 1- 6-8 months: Preliminary stage 2- 9-18 months: One-word stage 3- 18-24 months: Two-word stage 4- 24-30 months: Telegraphic stage 5- 30+ months: Later multiword stage
2- Second language learning
Communicative competence for Language Learning
Linguistic competence Discourse competence Pragmatic competence Sociolinguistic competence Sociocultural competence
Theories of L2 Acquisition/ Learning
Behaviourism – (Skinner) Universal Grammar - Chomsky Monitor Theory - Krashen Output Hypothesis - Swain Interaction Hypothesis - Long Interlanguage Theory – Selinker
The language learner characteristics Age Gender Language aptitude
Factors Motivation Learning styles Learner strategies
Pedagogical Implications Teachers take steps to make their instruction style strategies-based so as to motivate learners in different ways.
3- Teaching the four skills
Introduction
Reading Writing Listening Speaking & Pronunciation Important: the four skills should always be included in the curriculum But: when teaching ESP more emphasis on some than others
Reading
Multiple purposes: „scanning‟, „skimming, „reading for general understanding‟, „reading to learn‟, „reading to integrate information‟ & „reading to evaluate critically‟ Key question: „how the underlying cognitive processes and resources systematically relate to the ability to achieve these purposes‟.
Writing
…does not happen in the vacuum. It is always embedded in a rhetorical situation: a complex web of relationships among the elements of writing constantly changing (between the reader & writer, the text & reality) …is a complex phenomenon. Writers have to negotiate all the elements of writer, reader, text & reality, and construct written discourse accordingly. When the topic has been identified, the writer has to explore, develop and sometimes redefine the topic (planning, drafting and revising) …requires typographical features (e.g. punctuation marks, capitalization, italics, bold face, font sizes and indentation) Morphological, lexical, syntactic & idiomatic knowledge does not guarantee the ability to write well because writing involves much more than construing grammatical sentences: Sentences need to be „cohesive‟ - they have to be connected
Listening
“Listening involves making sense of spoken language, normally accompanied by other sounds & visual input, with the help of our relevant prior knowledge & the context in which we are listening”
Listening involves: Recognition of the sounds uttered by the speaker Perception of intonation patterns showing information focus Interpretation of what is being said to the current topic
Usually unaware process in our own language: relatively effortless unless poor acoustics or an unfamiliar accents. However, in L2takes place a more conscious process. Some features of listening: It‟s usually ephemeral, one-shot nature. The presence of a rich prosody (stress, intonation, rhythm, loudness and more). The presence of characteristics of natural fast speech. The frequent need to process & respond almost immediately.
Speaking Spoken language is different from written language. Speakers & listeners get involved simultaneously in both producing & processing spoken interactions. Time constraints: speakers must process language as they go, with no opportunities to go back & make changes.
5 - Bilingualism
Introduction
The 21st century is multicultural. This implies a demand for Maintaining languages of non-dominant cultures. Acquiring languages of wide communication.
Consequence: experimental bilingual & multilingual education programs developed Bilingual education is „education in which two languages are used instructionally‟
Models Content-based learning Bilingual immersion Total immersion Two-way immersion Maintenance education Multilingual education Language submersion
6 - Pragmatics
Main areas
Deixis Conversational implicature Presupposition Speech acts Conversational structure
Pragmatics can be defined as “a study of the meaning that linguistic expressions receive in use”. Pragmatics‟ aim is to explain how participants in dialogue move from decontextualized meaning of words to meaning in context.
Developing L2 pragmatic competence
It is not clear if it learning a L2 is a natural development. Therefore, it is important to analyze if there is any influence of L1 in L2 pragmatics. And comparisons between L1 & L2 pragmatics can lead to distinguishing universals of acquisition of pragmatics from the particulars of SLA.
Discourse Analysis
There is a constant flow of discourse in life – „language functioning in one of many contexts that together make up a culture‟. Discourse analysts always look at real texts, study longer passages of texts. Discourse analysts focuses on the participants (their relationship, their goals, their differences in power & knowledge), and the meaning of pieces of language in particular contexts. Text analyzed by this discipline may be both written and spoken, and either formal or informal.
Implications for language teaching
Precisely design syllabi & materials. Help teachers to explain features of text types associated with those types of writing. Help teachers consider their own interaction practices in a more systematic manner. Teachers can evaluate better their own learners‟ performance in classroom. Systematic teaching of features. Provide descriptive information for grammarians & lexicographers to produce more true-to- life descriptions & guidelines for the use of language.
7- Corpus linguistics
Introduction
A corpus can be defined as a collection that is: Large Computer readable Designed for linguistic analysis
Aims To improve language description and theory. To assess the relevance of this work to practical applications.
Applications Direct application: advanced learners have access to a corpus & they can study for themselves how a word or grammatical construction is typically used in authentic data. Indirect application: corpora provide observable evidence about language use, which leads to new description, which in turn are embodied in dictionaries, grammars, & teaching materials.
Characteristics of corpus-based analyses
It is empirical. It utilizes a large collection of natural texts. It makes extensive use of computers for analysis. It depends on both quantitative & qualitative analytical techniques.
Types of corpora
Small first generation corpora in 1960s & much larger corpora in 1990s. Carefully designed reference corpora, small & large, specialized corpora, archives.
