I Am How I Learn

Chapter four from Saville-Troike had some interesting points about what affects learners have on themselves as far as critical period hypothesis and information processing but what I found most pertinent to me was the section on learning strategies and the discussion on how a person personality can legitimately affect their ability to learn a language.
They talked about three specific strategies:

Metacognitive: which is previewing a concept or principle in anticipation of learning the activity.

Cognitive: which is a repetition of information, use of inference, and relation to the native tongue to learn.

Social/affective: getting involved in opportunities to speak the language with native speakers. Obtaining feedback, questioning to get clarification, etc.

Most interesting to me is finding myself in these definition. Considering I am a much more introverted person I find myself being meta cognitive about learning the Spanish language but, at the same time, I try, to the best of my ability, to reach out and practice with native speakers to keep up my Spanish. This more extroverted side may have been brought out after my study abroad experiences but I find it interesting that a learner can be a part of all three learning strategies which all have their differences based on the individual personality and cognitive style.

Wild Child

6. What are some of the social attitudes of the villagers who met/heard of Victor? Do you find them problematic? If so, why?

A lot of the villagers and city folk that met or heard of Victor made fun of him, hit him with rocks, would gawk and stare at him as he passed. They would crowd him like he was a zoo animal to stare at instead of treating him with dignity.
I think this was very problematic as far as treating some one as a human being and not just a freak of nature. It could have caused quite a few problems in getting Victor to open up and trust whomever he came in contact with. He was treated as a show instead of given a chance to grow into his lost childhood. It's unfortunate that he spent any time in the deaf and dumb institute with those mean children who hit him and ran him down. It only made his transition that much harder.

Universal Grammar

For all the information we are given in the chapters we read for the week in Saville-Troike and Lightbrown/Spada, I have found the most interesting topic is that of Universal Grammar.

Universal Grammar, as we have read, is part of Chomsky's theory on second language acquisition. It is one of three major theories that, in their turn, have each been replaced by the more recent. These three were, according to Saville-Troike:

Contrastive Analysis
Error Analysis
and
Monitor Model (which was based off Chomsky's metaphor for children's innate knowledge of language.)

Universal grammar plays a role in the Monitor Model of SLA theory but it is not entirely explained. According to Chomsky, universal grammar is the innate knowledge of children to acquire language. We all have the ability to acquire language, outside of the poverty of stimulus. The book by Saville-Troike discusses the idea that universal grammar is what all languages have in common but from what I've learned, and this is where my confusion comes in, universal grammar is an 'innate knowledge of language'. I suppose my idea of innate knowledge of language is that a child has the ability to learn any given language if they are exposed to said language, thus universal grammar is not necessarily what all languages have in common but it lays the framework for the child to focus in on a certain grammar of a certain language. When a child is born, it may be entirely possible that they have a grammar of all languages but as they grow older, those other grammars are faded out to make way for the native tongue. This being my own personal views on universal grammar, it then confused me quite a bit to read about how they believe universal grammar is what all languages have in common when it never seemed that way to me.

Do I have to relearn universal grammar now or am I on the right track?

peace & grace,
Kiersten

Second Language Acquisition

As a second language learner I never spent much time on the theories behind learning language. It was all about learning the language itself. I never really wanted to know how I was learning that particular language, I was just happy to learn it.
In the readings over the past week I have learned a lot about language and language acquisition and it turns out it's actually a fairly interesting topic. There is so much that goes into learning any given language that I never knew about. There are even critical learning periods that I was never aware of.
Language has always come naturally to me so finding out that there is a more complex process behind it is an odd discovery.
I really liked learning about Language Dominance because I find that happening in my own life. After all the time I spent learning spanish, I find myself mixing up Spanish words into my English vocabulary. There have been times where I can't think of the word in English, only in Spanish. I never really understood why this happen but it makes more sense now, after the readings and class work.
The second thing that really stood out to me was the different terms used for different ways we use a second language. There are terms such as Language for a Specific Purpose or Library Language. Sometimes a language, or pieces of a language, are learned for specific things whether that be to cook or to read a book or to study. I find it interesting that this was the case for quite some time in a lot of the European countries where they would study, write, and read in Latin but speak in their native tongue (e.g. Spanish, French, Italian, etc.)
Even after taking 341 Linguistics this is all coming as very new to me, at least, the terms are new.
It's definitely an interesting topic to get involved in. :)
Until next time.

Blogging about TESOL

This is a simple blog where I will be talking about topics in my TESOL class and learning to think critically about TESOL as the course progresses.

Come join the fun!