Lecture Series on English Learning 英语学习讲座系列

1. Lecture Series onEnglish Learning英语学习讲座系列 By Zhang Boxiang

2. Lecture 1 Language Acquisition and Learning

3. I. Some Definitions • 1. What is Language? • Language is made up of signs (symbols) and rules that enable us to communicate • Signs signify through their meanings. • Two "layers" in the structure: the sound level and the meaning level.

4. Book (书) • Tree (树)

5. Monkey (猴子) • Girl (女孩) • Rose (玫瑰) • Like (喜欢) • Climb (攀爬) • Pretty (漂亮) • Ugly (丑陋)

6. The girl (monkey) is pretty (ugly). • The girl (monkey) likes the book (rose). • The girl (monkey) likes to climb the tree (book). • The book (rose) likes the girl (monkey). • The book (rose) likes to climb the girl (monkey).

7. What are the basic language elements? • Pronunciation • Vocabulary • Grammar

8. What are the basic language skills? • Listening • Reading • Speaking • Writing

9. 2. What is language acquisition? • Language acquisition (语言习得) is similar to the way children learn their mother tongue, a process (过程) in which the children pick up the language through lots of listening practice.

10. Children acquire their first language through a subconscious (潜意识) process during which they are unaware of grammatical rules.

11. 3. What is language learning? • Language learning includes: • Receiving language information • Changing information into knowledge • Storing (储存) it through memorization.

12. In language learning, students have to master the rules of the new language: • Such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar rules • They can talk about the knowledge of the language.

13. They learn the rules of grammar about nouns, verbs and sentences. • They learn to make sentences according to the rules. • But they have difficulties in using the language.

14. Research shows, however, that knowing grammar rules does not necessarily result in good speaking or writing.

15. A student who has memorized the rules of the language may be able to succeed on a standardized (标准化的) test of English language but may not be able to speak or write correctly.

16. II. Stages of L1 Acquisition • Universal listener • Babbling (牙牙学语) stage (6 months): • Babies will experiment with sounds, usually high pitched

17. They will reduplicate sounds like: • ba-ba-ba, • da-da-da, • googoo, • and coocoo.

18. One-word stage (1-1.5 years) • Name people, objects, etc. • Mommy, Daddy, • doggie, kitty,ball, chair, • open, wash, tickle • more, gone, up, dirty • bye

19. Two-word stage (2 years) • Baby sleep. Daddy home. • Mummy shoe. All gone. • What that? No fall. • Sit chair? Where kitty? • Two cat. More wet.

20. Telegraphic stage (2.5 years) • Mummy call doggie. • Not teddy bear. • He no bite you. • No sit here.

21. Where horse go? • See my doggie? • Why you smiling? • Did I caught it? • He not taking it.

22. III. Stages of L2 learning • Preproduction Stage (Silent Period) • About six months from the beginning • Learners know about 500 words • They can understand comprehensible (能理解的) new words.

23. Early production stage • Students know about 1,000 words. • They can understand new materials. • They can give short answers to simple yes/no, either/or, or who/what/where questions.

24. Speech Emergence (出现) Stage • Students know about 3,000 words • Can use short phrases and simple sentences to communicate.

25. They begin to use dialogue and ask simple questions. • They can write longer sentences, but often make grammatical mistakes, thus affecting their communication.

26. Learner cannot correct mistakes, even when pointed out. • L: I go New York. • NS: You will go to New York? When? • L: 1972. • NS: Oh, you went to New York in 1972. • L: Yes, I go 1972.

27. Intermediate Proficiency (熟练) Stage • Students know about 6,000 words. • They begin to make complex statements, give ideas, ask for opinions, share their thoughts, and speak at greater length.

28. Learners can correct mistakes if pointed out. • L: Many fish are in the lake. These fish are serving in the restaurants near the lake. • NS: [laughing] The fish are serving? • L: [laughing] Oh, no, the fish are served in the restaurants!

29. Advanced Proficiency Stage • It takes 5 to 7 years to reach advanced proficiency. • Students learned specialized content-area vocabulary

30. They can take part in communicative activities. • They can speak English using grammar and vocabulary like the native speakers.

31. Learners can self-correct. • Although … but … • Because … so … • He/She don’t (doesn’t)

32. Factors affecting learning L2 • Individual differences • Age of acquisition effects • Environment of learning • Style of instruction

33. IV. Differences between acquisition and learning • Although language acquisition and language learning share the same goal, that is, to acquire the skill of meaningful communication, they are quite different in the following ways:

34. Manner (方式): • subconsciously /consciously • Focus(关注重点): • meaning /structure • Environment (环境): • natural /artificial

35. Exposure (接触) time: • Unlimited /limited • Degree of difficulty: • easy /difficult • First language interferes (干扰) the acquisition of second language

36. Language learning is a conscious process of study. • We pay attention to knowledge of forms (形式),structures and rulesof the language. • No difference between studying history and English: the key is to understand. • We mainly make conscious learning of knowledge.

37. Language acquisitionis a subconscious process. • We are learning a skill, by usingthe language in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. • With a lot of practice, our conscious learning will gradually turn into subconscious acquisition.

38. The best way to know whether we have good command (掌握) of English or not is whether we have changed our conscious learning into a subconscious acquisition. In other words, if we can make dreams in English, it means that we have good command of English .

39. Examples: • 酒店(wine shop); • 小说(novel); • “这是区区薄礼，不成敬意”。 • This is a very small gift, and it cannot express our sincere respect to you. (This is a gift for your memory. Hope you like it.)

40. Storage (储存) V. Input, Storage, and Output • Input (输入) • reading • listening Output (输出) speaking writing The more input, the more output.

41. 1. Input • Human mind is just like a computer. If we want to take something out of it, we have first put something into it. The action of putting things (information and knowledge) into our minds is called “input”.

42. Reading and listening • We get input only by reading and listening, that is, to put information and knowledge into our minds through reading and listening. • If we read more and listen more, then our storage of those English sentences will be large.

43. The brain produces sentences based on the sentences it has seen or heard (input). • So the way to improve is to feed your brain with a lot of input — correct and understandable sentences (written or spoken).

44. 2. Storage • Storage is not a static (静止的) state like a computer, but a dynamic (动态的) one. Here storage means memory (记忆), that is, the learner has to memorize what he received from listening and reading. • It requires a long process of repetition and memorization

45. 3. Output • In language learning, output means speaking and writing. • If we want to speak and write, we should first have some English in our mind. If we don’t have much English, we can’t speak or write well.

46. Example: • In class we learned: • “Close the window, please.” • But in our daily life, we have lots of different ways to express the same idea according to different situations. Look the following sentences:

47. Shut the window before you leave the room. • The storm is coming and I’m afraid the rain water will flood into the room through the window. • I feel a bit chilly when the sun is down. • The wind is so strong that the papers on the desk are blown away. • There is so much noise outside. • The sunlight is too strong and I cannot see anything on my computer screen.

48. We should have a lot of English in our mind before we start talking. Otherwise we cannot express ourselves in the right way. Here is another example. • A student of English saw a foreigner fishing by a lake. Thinking a good chance of practicing his English, he went up to him and started asking questions:

49. What are you doing here? • What is your name? • Where are you from? • How long have you been here? • Can you follow me? • Finally the foreigner answered: “Could you tell me where I was against the law?”

50. We’ve learned the word “walk”, but there are different kinds of walk, such as: • amble (慢慢地走),go, march, lumber(笨重地移动),pace (踱步),plod(沉重地走),prance(神气十足地走),roam (游荡),rove (徘徊),saunter (闲逛),shamble (蹒跚), shuffle (拖着脚步走),slog(吃力地走),stride (大踏步地走),stroll (悠闲地走),strut (趾高气扬地走),trudge (艰苦疲累地走),wander(无目的地漫步), etc. Only by knowing them all, can we use the right word in the right way.