DESCRIBING LEARNING AND TEACHING.

Children and language.

Language acquisition is almost guaranteed for children up to age 6 since they
learn with incredible facility but also forget as easily. At first, they will begin with
one word and two words utterances and will then begin to make complete
sentences.
In order to obtain language acquisition, some conditions must be met. Children
must be exposed to the language a lot; it is the most vital element. Secondly, it
is important to keep the language as simple as possible and avoid technical
vocabulary or complex structure of sentences; this is called rough-tuning. With
this exposure, children are motivated to communicate in order to be
understood and fed.
Acquisition and learning.
In the teaching of a second language, teacher must be able to give the learner
comprehensible input, this means, language students can more or less
understand but are not able to reproduce. The principal function of learnt
language is to monitor what is coming from our acquired store to check that it
is OK.
Learning in the classroom will not only expose students to the language but also
activate their language knowledge. It will also offer them chances to study the
language and learn the way it works and is used.
Different times, different methods.
There are different methods of teaching a second language.
 The Lexical Approach suggested we should structure the
curriculum around language chunks.
 Silent Way: the teachers spoke very little and all the responsibility
fell in the student.
 Community Language Learning, in which the teacher helps
students to translate what they want to say from their native
language to the one they are learning.

 The Grammar translation method was introduced in Germany, it

presented short grammar rules and word lists and then translation
exercises in which they had to make use of the same rules and words.
This method has advantages and disadvantages since we can learn a lot
from comparing parts of the second language with our mother tongue.

 The audio-lingualism method, emphasises on grammatical patterns

w/behaviourist theories of learning. There is a response to the
stimulus of the teacher which means that a reward is given. This
procedure is referred as conditioning. Some of the exercises in this
 method consist in giving cue-response drills and obviously doing any
type of drill.

 PPP. (Presentation- Practice- Production). The teacher presents the

context of the situation for the language, explains and demonstrates the
meaning and form of a new language. The students then practice using
the same structure in the controlled practice.

 The Communicative Language Teaching method. (CLT). States that

language is not just patterns but also involves language functions
which students should learn using a variety of language exponents.
There is a lot of use and exposure of the language. Communicative
activities are the principal ones from this method.

 Task-based Learning. (TBL). It starts with a pre-task where students

are introduced to the topic. Followed by a task cycle, where students
plan the task, gather language information and produce a piece of
written/oral performance. And ends up with a language focus phase,
where the students analyse the language they used for the task, making
improvements and practising any language that needs repair or
development.

Elements for successful language learning (ESA).

The three main ingredients are:
 ENGAGE: students are really interested in what you have to say
in class, ask them to make predictions, relate the topics with real
life situations.
 STUDY: give them cues, discover activities, ask students to do all
intellectual work instead of doing it the teacher his/herself.
 ACTIVATE: personalization of the activities, what do your
student’s like to do, how it can be helpful in the future (debate, role
play, etc.)