Learning, LAnguage, Teacher

Pontificia Universidad Madre y Maestra Applied Linguistics Department TESOL Teacher Training Course

Language, Learning, and Teaching

Santiago, January 24, 2012

Prof. Manuel Peralta

Learning • Learning a L2 is a long, complex undertaking.

Complex: Total commitment, involvement, physical/intellectual and emotional responses are necessary. • Teaching a L2 is facilitating learning. By understanding the issues that affect how and why one learns, the facilitation could be more successful.

Issues as questions:

Issues:

Language • “systematic communication by vocal symbols”, Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (1994, p. 479) •

“Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently”, Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, (1994, p. 18)

• “Language is a system of arbitrary conventionalized vocal, written, gestural symbols that enable members of a given community to communicate intelligibly with one another”, Douglas Brown, Language, Learning, and Teaching, (2000, p.

So language is, in simple terms:

• • • •

systematic, a set of arbitrary symbols. used for communication (vocal or visual). functions in a community, hence culture is. essentially human beings, but not limited to them.

So language involves, in not so simple terms: *linguistic and paralinguistic features, *semantics, *cognition *psycholinguistics *speaker-hearer interaction *sentence processing *sociolinguistics *bilingualism *multilingualism.

What determines the way of teaching a language?

The way the components of language are perceived: a) nonverbal communication b) the forms of language (grammar) c) cultural and interactive

Learning.

• Learning is “acquiring or getting knowledge of a subject or skill by study, experience, or instruction.”

• “Learning is a relatively permanent change in a behavioral tendency and is the result of reinforced practice”, Kimble & Garmenzy, (1963), p. 133.

Teaching: • “showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study, providing with the knowledge, causing to know or understand”, Douglas Brown, Language, Learning, and Teaching, (2,000), p. 7.

• ...”teaching is...facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning.”

The philosophy of education determines:  the teaching style  the approach  the methods  the classroom techniques.

What’s teaching for the teacher?

-A process of operant conditioning through a careful paced program of reinforcement), -A deductive group set of rules and paradigms.

-An inductive experience which could let students

• “You teach who you are”, Parker J. Palmer.

• “ Teaching is the reflection in the mirror of oneself”. Annonymous