Week 5

I wanted to compare Brown and Scovel:

Tom Scovel's Learning New Languages: A Guide to Second Language Acquisition
(2000)Boston: Heinle & HeinlePp. 158.ISBN: 0-8384-67-7 (paper)US $21.56
People
Language
Attention
Cognition
Emotions
People the role social factors play in the learning of a second language and the various psychological models of human behavior that have been developed to explain language learning
Models of first language acquisition:
Behavioral
Innatist,
Social interactionist
Schumann's acculturation
Acton's perceived social distance
Giles's speech accommodation.
Language planning and
Kachru's trinary categorization of 'World Englishes
bilingual education,

Language analysis of how one's mother language influences the learning of a second language
Interference
Intraference
Interlanguage
Mistakes
Errors
Avoidance is "the tendency for L2 learners not to use grammatical structures that would normally be used by native speakers in that context because those L2 structures contrast significantly with the grammar of their mother tongue" (p. 57)


Attention centerpiece of the entire learning process because it "frames our entire experience . . . it represents the gateway between the outside world of people and linguistic input, and the internal realm of thoughts and feelings, it is a construct that affects and is affected by almost every aspect of language learning" (pp. 71, 89).
Attention and neuropsychology
Memory
Perception
Linguistic input and form
Tomlin and Villa's attention model.
McLaughlin's attention model.
Cognition defines, refines, and confines every aspect of our social, linguistic, attentional and emotional behavior" (p. 91).
Content discourse schemata
Processes
Strategies
Styles
Memory
Cognitive styles
Language learning strategies
Critical period hypothesis
Relationship between age and SLA.
Emotions
Motivation
Anxiety
Empathy
Extroversion and introversion
Risk-taking,
Self-esteem.

Source:
Ronald Gray Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China
TESL EJ
Vol. 5. No. 2
R-12
September 2001
http://tesl-ej.org/ej18/r12.html

L&S 4 brought up a very interesting question

Is intelligibility or native like ability the goal to strive for in pronunciation?

When I study an L2 my personal goal is intelligibility.

I think speaking like a native is more easily picked up by young children and pre teens. I believe the evidence bears this out. I am curious to know more about why this is.

At 55 If I am understood I am happy.

As a teacher I think knowing students goals will help us decide what activities deserve most attention.

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I have been thinking a lot about how to grade writing in a way that uses constructive criticism to promote improvement. I spoke with a friend of mine that teaches high school writing. I will attemp to scan in the rubric she shared with me, and would be very interested to see others.

When thinking about writing mistakes, I found that the Korean high school ( summer program 2005) students' mistakes were in some ways similar to the type of mistakes that native English speakers their own age made as well as some unique mistakes with verb forms.

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