intro to el

• Language


  A system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves
• Only humans use language, though other animals communicate through other means
• Human language


  • Has syntax, a set of rules for connecting words together to make statements and questions
  • Can be changed, by adding new words, for example, to describe new things
• Grammar


  The rules for every level of language—word formation, phrase formation, and sentence formation
• Speakers of a language have internalized the rules and exceptions for that language's grammar
• Lexicon


  The sum total of all of the words in a language
• Phonetics


  The study of individual speech sounds

  
• Phonology


  The study of phonemes, which are the speech sounds of an individual language
• Morphology


  The study of words and other meaningful units of language like suffixes and prefixes
• Syntax


  The study of sentences and phrases, or how people put words into the right order so that they can communicate meaningfully
• Semantics


  About the meaning of sentences
• Pragmatics


  Studies how the context of a sentence contributes to meaning
• Affective Filter Hypothesis


  Hypothesis for measuring how affective variables will affect how receptive a learner is to comprehensible input
• Comprehensible input will not be processed in the Language Acquisition Device if a learner has a high affective filter
• Most researchers consider the concept of the affective filter vague and a theoretical
• Attrition


  The loss of all or part of an L1 by an individual or community
• Backsliding/U-shaped curve


  In the early stages of language learning a learner coincidentally uses native like forms, then the learner appears to undergo a process of attrition, due over generalization and other factors, NOT attrition, finally the learner produces more native-like forms consciously with attention to function and meaning
• Comprehensible Input


  Input data that is slightly above a learner's current level, i + 1
• Connectionism


  A cognitivist approach that likens the brain to a computer, based on the idea that learning occurs through repeated activations of neural networks
• Contrastive Analysis


  A school of thought that a structure-by-structure comparative analysis of the L1-L2 will predict when negative transfer occur
• Critical Period Hypothesis


  The hypothesis that there is a biologically specified period of time early in life when the brain is pre-programmed to learn language
• Error Analysis (Performance Analysis)

  The systematic investigation of L2 learner's errors and compares learner production data to L2
• Corrective Feedback


  Corrective feedback is a pedagogical form of negative feedback because it has the intention of correcting errors in a learner's utterance
• Language Acquisition Device


  Posited by Chomsky and described as a component or wiring of the brain responsible for process language input and acquiring knowledge about the language

  
• Language Transfer


  The psychological process whereby prior learning is carried over into a new learning situation
• Markedness


  The relative rarity of a language feature across the world's languages
• Motivation


  The desire to initiate L2 learning and the effort employed to sustain it, and quantitatively deemed high or low
• Universal Grammar (UG)


  Principles apply to all human language and parameters are language specific
• Language Acquisition


  The manner of learning a language by immersion, provides the student with the practical knowledge of the language
• Language Learning


  Focuses on providing theoretical knowledge of a language
• Students who are taught in a formal, structured way will "learn" the language but never fully acquire it
• Human language is more complex, more sophisticated and more powerful than any other animal communication system
• Skills and abilities a child needs to acquire a language


  • Distinguish speech sounds from other noises
  • Distinguish between human speech and other sounds
• Skills and abilities required for a child to acquire a language


  • Learn to distinguish speech sounds from other noises
  • Learn to produce speech sounds by manipulating the passage of air through their vocal tract and mouth
  • Learn to combine speech sounds into meaningful words
  • Learn how words fit together into sentences
  • Learn to string their thoughts together in a coherent way to hold a conversation and respond appropriately
• Matching words to referents

  Not an easy matter and takes children quite a while
• Characteristics of language defined by Charles Hockett in 1960

  • Vocal-auditory channel
  • Broadcast transmission; directional reception
  • Rapid fading
  • Interchangeability
  • Total feedback
  • Specialization
  • Semanticity
  • Arbitrariness
  • Discreteness
  • Duality of patterning
  • Displacement
  • Prevarication
  • Productivity
  • Traditional transmission
  • Learnability
  • Reflexiveness
• Attempts to teach language to apes have been successful in some respects but apes' abilities never mirror those of human children, even after years of exposure

  
• Animals' own communication systems show surprising sophistication, but none of them have the complexity and sophistication of human languages
• Animals also share some of our language learning abilities, such as categorical perception, but these abilities rarely manifest themselves in exactly the same way in animals and humans
• Nature-nurture debate


  Both nature and nurture contribute to language acquisition