Professional Documents
Culture Documents
3 Theoretical Perspectives
Written by
Ramsay Lewis
This may be the single most important question to a serious language learner.
Learning a language already seems to take forever. But if we used the most
effective method, we could learn more quickly.
It turns out that there are several different research disciplines that examine
language acquisition and learning. Over time, we’ve seen a number of
different theoretical perspectives emerge with different ideas about how we
acquire language.
Here, I’ll attempt to give a brief description of several of the important theories
about how we learn language and discuss how you can apply these to
creating the most effective method for learning English.
It has at its core the idea that we learn particular behaviours based on the
consequences that occur after them. If we engage in a behaviour and there is
a result we like, we are more likely to do that behaviour again. For example, if
a child’s action results in affection from its parents, behaviourism predicts that
we would see more of that action.
Behaviourists make the observation that children often imitate the sounds and
patterns that they hear and that parents often change their behaviour in ways
that could be rewarding. For example, parents, upon hearing their child say
their first word, smile and pay attention to the child. When a child makes a
grammatical mistake, parents often correct them.
Criticisms of behaviourism
The major criticism of this theory is that children often use novel language that
they haven’t heard before. A theory based on imitation, practice, and rewards
cannot easily explain these novel instances of language.
It also can’t explain the kinds of errors children make when they speak.
They’ll say things like “we buyed a lolly” instead of “we bought a lolly” or they’ll
refer to several males as “mans” rather than “men”.
While there is no clear “organ” for language learning, this theory proposes that
there is a theoretical language acquisition device (LAD) that each of us has
and which is responsible for learning language. It is proposed to be similar to
how the hypothalamus is responsible for maintaining body temperature.
While each language has differences in grammar, there are similarities. For
example, virtually all languages have verbs and nouns and similar ways of
structuring thoughts.
But some critics of this view, including Jean Piaget, point out that language
isn’t just a result of a particular neurological set-up in the mind. They say that
this picture of language acquisition misses the importance of the social
environment.
At its core, the interactionist perspective suggests that, while humans may
have a cognitive predisposition to learn language, interaction with others—and
social interaction in particular—is essential.
What do these theories of how we learn language imply for the English
learner?
Each of these theories of language acquisition provides some insight into how
we might efficiently learn a second language.
Practice is important. The more you practise, the more you will learn.
This perspective highlights that an effective way to learn a language is
to continue to work at it.
Imitation is useful. Several effective language learning strategies,
like shadowing, use imitation and mimicry to help learn the physical
aspects of fluency, like pronunciation, prosody, and the rhythm of a
language.
Feedback is important. This perspective suggests that we learn to
some extent based on the feedback from others. It suggests that it is
useful to be told when we’re using language correctly—and when we’re
not.
In other words, these theorists suggest that there must be some kind of innate
ability to absorb and consolidate input into language learning. This is
where Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis comes in: the idea is that with
enough comprehensible input, our brain subconsciously develops an
understanding of how a language works.
Many interactionists agree with Krashen that input is important for learning.
But they point out that it is through conversation that comprehensible input is
most effective.
They argue that we modify our language in social interactions to ensure that
we’re understood by the other person. This includes comprehension checks,
clarification requests, and self-repetition or paraphrasing.
I’ve presented a very brief summary of the main theories about how we learn
language.
Each of them tries to explain how individual learners acquire language within
a particular social and instructional context. But the literature is complex; there
are many theories that I haven’t covered here at all.
Still, even just having a flavour of these main perspectives makes it clear that
there is some lack of agreement among language experts about how people
learn a language.
The idea of this guide is to give you some ideas about what people have said
about language learning so that you can fit those ideas to your situation.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure you do it consistently over a period of
time. Language learning is hard work, but by being persistent,
you can become fluent.
References
Cook, V. (Ed.). (2003). Effects of the second language on the first (Vol. 3).
Multilingual Matters.
Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2013). How languages are learned 4th edition-
Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers. Oxford University Press.