Pontificia Universidad Madre y MaestraApplied Linguistics DepartmentTESOL 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.

5).

• 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 is, in simple terms:

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 communicationb) 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 stylethe approachthe methodsthe 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 discover

those rules.

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

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