1. What do we know when we know a language? TESOL Teacher Professional Development in Namibia May 2013

2. Perspectives • Linguistic • Social • Psychological

3. Linguistic Perspective • Phonetics and Phonology • Morphology • Syntax • Semantics • Pragmatics

4. Linguistic Perspective • Important concepts • Universal grammar • Linguistic competence • Linguistic performance

5. Linguistic Perspective • Universal Grammar (UG) • The innate ability people are born with to learn a language. • All languages have similar properties with limited parameters: Word order, parts of speech, displacement • All languages are rule-governed and are generally learned in the same way

6. Linguistic Perspective • Linguistic competence: what speakers of a language know about the language • Linguistic performance: how speakers of a language use what they know

7. Linguistic Perspective • The Monitor Model (Krashen) • Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis • Monitor Hypothesis • Natural Order Hypothesis • Input Hypothesis • Affective Filter Hypothesis

8. The Monitor Model • i+ 1 Language Acquisition Device

9. Linguistic Perspective Interlanguage (IL) L1 L2 Restructuring/Backsliding Fossilization

10. Social Perspective • Communicative competence • Microsocial factors • Macrosocial factors • Language community • Interaction hypothesis • Interpersonal • intrapersonal • Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) • Scaffolding • Acculturation Model

11. Social Perspective • Communicative Competence: “what a speaker needs to know to communicate appropriately within a particular language community” (Saville-Troike, 2003) Vocabulary + phonology + grammar + any other linguistic structure + rules re: what to say to whom and when and how…and if.

12. Social Perspective • Microsocial factors • Variability among a language community or within a learner that is systematic and predictable • I ate dinner v. I ate supper. • Hi v. hello v. good morning • Macrosocial factors • Features of the larger political setting, social position, societal attitudes, values, ethnicity, gender, age

13. Social Perspective • Language Community • A group of people who share knowledge of a common language at least to some extent • How many language communities do you belong to? How are they different? How are they similar?

14. Social Perspective • Interaction Hypothesis • The claim that modifications and collaborative efforts which take place in social interaction facilitate SLA because they contribute to the accessibility of input for mental processing (Saville-Troike 2012, p. 190) • Modifications: • Oral: high frequency phrases, pauses grammatical junctures, slower speed, repetition, paraphrase, expansion, sentence completion • Written: academic texts include frequent organization markers, clear topic sentences, highlighting of key terms (synonyms + paraphrases), lists of main points, elaboration of specific points, visual aids, explicit summations at regular intervals, questions

15. Social Perspective • Accommodation Theory: • Speakers change their pronunciation and even grammatical complexity to sound more like whomever they are talking to. • …so if teachers use the language they want their students to use…. • Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky) • The distance between current ability and potential growth. In order to learn, the learner needs guidance. It is where learning happens.

16. Social Perspective Teacher ZPD Learner

17. Social Perspective • Scaffolding • Verbal guidance which an expert provides to help a learner perform any specific task, or the verbal collaboration of peers to perform a task which would be too difficult for any one of them in individual performance S: Taki T: What did Taki do? S: Pencil T: What did Taki do with the pencil? S: Throw (makes a throwing motion) T: Taki, don’t throw pencils.

18. Social Perspective • Acculturation Model • Identifies group factors such as identity and status which determine social and psychological distance between learner and target language populations.

19. Psychological Perspective • Information Processing • Controlled/Automatic • Connectionism • Critical Period Hypothesis and Age • Gender • Cognitive Style • Learning Style, Learning Strategies

20. Information Processing

21. Critical Period Hypothesis

22. Gender

23. Cognitive Style • Tolerance for Ambiguity • Risk-taking • Reflective • Field dependence • Visual • Auditory • Kinesthetic

24. Learning Strategies • Metacognitive: attempt to regulate learning by planning and monitoring. Ex: pre-viewing, deciding in advance to attend to specific input… • Cognitive: make use of direct analysis or synthesis of linguistic material. Ex: repeating after a language model, translating, guessing meaning through inferencing • Social/affective: involve interaction with others. Ex: asking questions for clarification, asking for repetition, explanation or examples