In general the two articles we read were very reactionary. One lead to the other. The idea in the articles was interesting but nothing superbly new to us, though it may have been new to readers who are not in TESOL classes. The idea was that SLA doesn't necessarily have to be a individualistic learning process.
The articles talk about the idea of multilingualism and how that can be accomplished by working in groups, by practicing the target language, and by supporting learners by teaching them in a dialogic manner.
I think this is an extremely important point to make because teaching SLA on individual terms and using methods such as memorization and grammar practice, thought useful, is not the only way an individual can learn a language effectively. We need to practice and become more comfortable with the language or not matter how much grammar we understand, we will be stuck stumbling over our words in embarrassment of messing up something as we speak. Believe me, I know how that works. Learning Spanish has gone about the same way for me. I was taught Spanish from the time I was in elementary school and I attended the Spanish club there but through all those years I was still extremely uncomfortable speaking the language, even though I loved it so much.
What got me out of that fear was traveling and being forced to finally practice the language with some one who couldn't, or refused to, speak English with me. It changed everything. This practice I received made me okay with the mistakes I made, even learning from them as I went along. I see this as an extremely important part of SLA and should be treated as such. Practice and working with others, as these articles point out, makes for a stronger language learner.
I think this is also a very important consideration; working in gropus, practicing the target language, etc. Even though a learner may be interested and have a positive attitude towards the language they are learning, they might not feel comfortable enough to speak it or practice it. This isn't to downgrade a positive attitude or interest/willingness to learn. Each aspect is vital in second language acquisition. But after the learning process has started, and the positive attitude and other aspects are there, the practice and encouragement and comfort is what makes a learner actually get to becoming fluent and able to communicate in the culture.
ReplyDeleteI think that multilingualism is important as well. As a future teacher I plan to advocate for this to get rid of the growing monolingualism that there is in the United States. By creating and environment in the classroom that allows students to feel comfortable and speaking in the target language, students can benefit from class room activities that involve group work. I also believe that group work is very important to learn a second language. I was very lucky in that all my Spanish classrooms in high school were very close. Therefore no one was every shy to speak in the target language, nor did they care when they made mistakes because we all understood that we can learn from each others mistakes and grow from it. I plan to recreate this environment in my classroom because it really helped me to learn so much and really be comfortable while speaking.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if the articles were as reactionary as they were calling for research that needs to be done. Yes, Firth and Wagner's article may seem somewhat outdated to us now, but in 1997, that research was not being done. Considering the context that it was written in, the article represents a huge turning point for SLA studies. I agree in the importance of using the dialogic method--a social aspect that we may take for granted now but was clearly lacking just a litte over a decade ago.
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