Part 1: Introduction, first and second language acquisition ...

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Transcríbhinn: Podchraoladh – Sealbhú teanga Part 2: Language teaching: insights, theories, approaches and factors. 13:52 So Muiris I might move on a bit now to start thinking more about teaching Marie languages, and I suppose one of the first questions that teachers might be asking: What kind of factors affect how a child acquires a second language? Things like the child’s first language, or the language in the community, or intellectual ability 46 , what kind of factors 47 would be affecting it? 14:13 That’s a very good question and research at the moment is focusing very Muiris much on those factors, like the child’s background, their first language, things you just mentioned, the language the child hears in the environment, the intellectual ability, the amount of time spent learning is one – they definitely affect the acquisition of second language. Research, I think, is coming more and more to the conclusion that what they call individual factors 48 play a very important role in language learning; quite a lot of books now on what’s called the individual factor in language learning. Even we know that learners within the same family, they often differ greatly in the degree of success they achieve when learning the second language. So they [researchers] have categorised all these individual factors into two big categories. One—cognitive factors. They talk there about intelligence, language aptitude 49 and language learning strategies 50 . And then importantly as well, and sometimes overlooked in research up to now, the affective factors 51 , like the language attitudes, the attitudes they’d have to the speakers of the language, motivation, the language anxiety 52 (sometimes when learners are called upon to produce language they can become anxious, is the language correct) and then at the other end of the scale a thing called the willingness to communicate 53 : that in certain groups – if you take a group of 20 learners – some of those are more willing to communicate than others, and they’re investigating those what’s called WTC – willingness to communicate factor in second language acquisition. In the past 20 years though only, Marie, are researchers turning to these and seeing them as extremely important in developing theories of second language acquisition. 15:50 So another question then that would spring to mind is that at the very Marie start of the podcast you mentioned how language learning and language acquisition are at two ends of a spectrum of development 54 . What’s the role of formal language teaching on that spectrum? 16:06 That’s a very very good question. Because when Chomsky and Krashen Muiris and all these theorists came out in the seventies and said Well, look, language acquisition is a very natural thing, then it called into question Well, what can a teacher do, really, in a classroom if language acquisition occurs naturally, occurs subconsciously? Now I think that communicative language teaching 55 plays an enormous role here and the syllabi in Irish language is the cur chuige cumarsáide, the communicative language teaching. The theory here is very interesting: that if learners engage meaningfully in communication, then language acquisition occurs almost subconsciously – they’re not aware they’re learning. 46 cumas intleachtúil 47 tosca (toisc) 48 tosca an duine aonair 49 inniúlacht/mianach teanga 50 straitéisí foghlama teanga 51 tosca mothachtálacha 52 buairt/imní 53 fonn cumarsáide 54 speictream/ contanam na forbartha 55 cur chuige na cumarsáide i múineadh teangacha
Transcríbhinn: Podchraoladh – Sealbhú teanga Also sometimes when learners are learning subjects through the medium of the target language – it’s called CLIL, Content and Language Integrated Learning 56 – this occurs too. They’re not actually focusing on learning the language, but they’re focusing on doing something through the language, then that actually fuels and drives language acquisition as well. 17:10 And we actually have another podcast, all about the communicative Marie approach, with Dr. Kènia Puig i Planella, which is also available on the website www.action.ncca.ie. Now Muiris, earlier you were talking about the developmental stages, and you were just mentioning there how the teacher is a facilitator 57 in facilitating this acquisition, so how does the teacher go about sequencing 58 the tasks and sequencing the language that the children are learning? 17:39 Remember what I was saying earlier that we’re not fully fully convinced of Muiris the research yet, because it’s still … experimental, but if there is a developmental stage then how we actually prepare our language learning materials to fit in with that would be crucial. However, research also is showing that language learning isn’t linear 59 – it doesn’t [necessarily] happen in that developmental sequence I was just talking about. And we all know that too, in our classroom one day a learner might produce a form which is absolutely correct, and then, maybe a couple of weeks later or a month later, they can produce that form again totally incorrectly. So when this happens then, what’s happening is that maybe the interlanguage system is being incorporated. 18:24 And what about mistakes? I mean – should I be correcting the children to Marie try and move them on to the next stage, or should I never correct them? Should I correct them some of the time? Muiris That’s another good question. These are the questions that constantly we want to know as teachers Am I doing the right thing, should I correct? Well, the thinking is that there are two types of correction. There’s explicit correction 60 : that if a learner makes an error that you correct the error immediately and you bring the learner’s attention to the error. So if somebody says, for example, An dtaitníonn sé leat? and they say Sea, that you would correct that as No, you say Ní thaitníonn, ní deir tú ‘sea’, ní thaitníonn nó taitníonn. That’s what’s called explicit [correction]. The other is implicit 61 [correction]. Now a lot of teachers use that: implicit, or recasts 62 . So again if you say An dtaitníonn sé leat and a learner replies Sea that the teacher would say Ó, taitníonn sé leat? and then from that the learner might infer Look, I’ve made a mistake, and this is the right for’. So you’re not drawing attention to the error but you are giving the right form. Now again the jury is out in research on that – on both types. Actually, both might be of very little value unless the learners notice that they’ve made an error. To give you an example, if I said Tá an carr ar an mbóthar, learners at a stage of developing will hear the words carr and bóthar, and they understand from that, particularly in meaningful communication; they get the idea: carr … bóthar. But at inputprocessing stage 63 they may not even notice m before the b – mbóthar – or they may not even notice Tá at all. So it can take a long time for learners sometimes to actually notice correct forms. I think time is crucial. 56 Foghlaim Chomhtháite Ábhar agus Teangacha 57 éascaitheoir 58 seicheamhú 59 líneach 60 léircheartú /ceartú follasach 61 ceartú intuigthe 62 ateilgean 63 céim próiseála ionhuir
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Part 1: Introduction, first and second language acquisition ...

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