Acquisition and learning

Unless some physical or mental condition gets in d1e way, all of us speak and understand
at least one language well. We got d1at language from our parents and from od1er people
around us. As far as any of us can remember, we didn't have to think about the process of
How people learn getting that language; it just happene d . All we had was a lot of EXPOSURE to the language
(we heard it all the time, especially when people talked to us) and opportunities to use it
languages 1 as much and as often as possible. In od1er words, this kind of LANGUAGE ACQUISITION is a
subconscious process.

• Many children acquire more d1an one language in childhood. Indeed, in many
countries and societies it is unusual for people to be MONOLINGUAL (able to speak only
one language).

• Age seems to be an important factor in l anguage acquisition -+38. Children often

acquire (and forget) l anguages easily, partly because they get such a l ot of exposure
to d1em, and partly because of their DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES -+91 and the lives tl1ey are
leading. TEENAGERS and ADULTS don't seem to acquire l anguages so automatically.
However, they may, in fact, be more efficient learners, in part because tl1eir
circumstances and developmental stages are different.

• If acquisition is a subconscious process, LEARNING, by contrast, is sometlung we do

consciously - for example, when we study how to use the PRESENT PERFECT -+6, d1ink
carefull y about what order ADJECTIVES go in -+15, or concentrate on which part of a
word we should STRESS -+26.

Why does the difference between acquisition

and learning matter?
In classrooms all over the world, students leam langiiages. They are taught GRAMMAR,
FUNCTIONS and VOCABULARY. But perhaps that's the wrong way to do it. Perhaps we should
only give students a lot of exposure to the l anguage, toged1er wid1 opporttmities to use
it - just as we do witl1 cluldren.

• In a theory that he called tl1e INPUT HYPOTHESIS, the linguist Stephen Krashen
suggested that people acquire language if they get COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT. This means
that they are exposed to langiiage that is just above their own LEVEL-+41 but wluch
they more or less understand. He suggested that this is all they need.
• Krashen also suggested tl1at d1e langiiage d1at we learn consciously is different from
the language we acquire through comprehensible input. We can use 'learnt'
l anguage to check (or MONITOR) our conversation (or writing), but these checks may
stop us being fluent because we are worrying about whether we are speaking
correctly. In the 1980s, Krashen said that learnt language could not become
acquired l anguage.
• Many researchers questioned K.rashen's Input Hypotl1esis. They said it was difficult to
test because people cannot usually say if their language was acquired or learnt, and if
you can't say which it was, then the tl1eory cannot be proved or disproved.

• Many people suggest that exposure to comprehensible input is not, in itself, enough
for people to know and be able to speak a l anguage. There has to be an element of
conscious attention to the actual l anguage that is being used in the input. Trus is
especially important for learners who have reached (or gone through) puberty
-+38-39 - i.e. teenagers and adults.

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Which way is best?
Perhaps the best way to get a n ew l a n guage would be to go and live in a country where
the language is spoken. There would be both exposure to the l anguage and opportunities
to use i t. But wou l d that be enough for children or adults?

• Most people learn languages in classrooms. They don't have the opportunity to live in
a foreign country, and they don't get the same amount of exposure to the l anguage
that children do when they learn their first language.

• Most educationalists believe that children are not ready to learn language - to STUDY
grammar, etc. - because of their age -+38. For them, acquisition-like activiti es may
be the best.

• Some students seem to acquire a new language without too much effort. Many
others, however, like, need and want to examine and understand what they are being
exposed to.

• Most language-learning lessons today include a mixture of activities, some more

focused on acquisition and some more focused on learning.

• Many teaching methods have focused more on learning than acquisition. Teachers
following these methods have offered their students individual grammar and
vocabulary items one by one. \i\Te look at these methods in more deta i l i n -+44-48.
• Some teaching m ethods have concentrated more on acquisition than l earni ng.
Teachers have involved their students in communication and encouraged them to
think more about the CONTENT of what they say or do than the FORM of the language
they are using.

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. .
. .

How Fernando learnt

English
Fernando Torres, a footballer from
Spain who has played in the U K,
says that he learnt English there
by listening to the radio a lot and
(while he was doing it) trying to
concentrate on what he was
hearing. He also looked at big
advertisements at the side of the
road and tried to see - to NOTICE -
what they said and what the
meaning was. When he had noticed
the words in the advertisements
(= concentrated on the words
so that he could recognise them
again), then he could learn them.
In other words, he had exposure to
the language, but then he thought
consciously about what he was
seeing and hearing .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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 Four methods
Although there have been many attempts to find the perfect language-learning method,
no one has yet come up with the 'best' one. This is partly because different students
learn differently (we discuss DIFFERENTIATION in �42), and partly because teaching
How P.eople learn metl1ods often change as society itself changes. However, some methods are worth
discussing because they are either a) widely used, b) talked about a lot or c) still h ave
languages 2 influence in modern teaching practice. Methods 1 and 2 below are more LEARNING-based,
whereas methods 3 and 4 are sig1lificantly more ACQUISITION-like �35.

1 Grammar-translation
GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION was the most common way of learning languages for hundreds of
years. S tudents studied the grammar of sentences in tl1e TARGET LANGUAGE (tl1e language they
wanted to learn). They translated them into their own language - or the other way round.

Adrian's story
At his English secondary school Adrian learnt French up to lower-intermediate level with
grammar translation. He had to translate sentences such as My uncle's garden is bigger than
my aunt's pen into French and he had to learn the rules of French grammar. When he went to
France at the age of 1 7, he could say very little for a few days, but then suddenly he started to
be able to communicate and he became more and more fluent over the next three weeks.

Many people learnt (and continue to learn) languages in ways that are similar to this.

Grammar-translation became unpopular because students translated written sentences

rather than spoken conversation, and because they didn't do enough speaking. However,
it is clear tl1at asking students to translate into and out of their language and English can
teach them a lot about the similarities and differences between the two languages.

2 Audio-lingual methodology
AUDIO-LINGUAL METHODOLOGY (A-L) gave students a lot of speaking practice by using
habit-formation DRILLS. Students repeated sentences again and again until they were
memorised. A-L metl1odology is connected to the theory of BEHAVIOURISM .

........ • ............ ......... . . . . . . .... . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. .
. .
·

· Pavlov's dogs
Perhaps the most famous example of early Behaviourist
theory is the story of Pavlov's experim ents with dogs.
The dogs responded to a stimulus (a ringing bell) by
salivating. This is because they had been conditioned to
expect a reward (food) when they heard the sound of
the bell. Every time they heard the bell, they salivated
and this response was reinforced, in their minds, when
food arrived.

• A-L methodology uses a STIMULUS-RESPONSE-REINFORCEMENT approach to language

learning. A stimulus (a teacher's prompt) provokes a student response (a sentence),
and this response is reinforced by the reward of, for example, teacher PRAISE and

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 student satisfaction. If you repeat this procedure often enough, some people
suggested, the language will be learnt.
• Eehavourist theories of language learning were heavily criticised. It was argued that if
all language was the result of stimulus-response-reinforcement, how come we can all
say new things that we have never said before? These new things can't be the result of
Eehavourist conditioning, surely! One of the results of this was that teachers stopped
using only A-L methodology.
• However, one the main ingredients of audio-lingualism (language drilling -+47) is
still used in many lessons because we believe that frequent repetition is a key to
successful learning. One of the most popular ways of teaching new language, PPP
(PRESENTATION, PRACTICE AND PRODUCTION -+44), mixes drilling with contextualised
explanation and opportunities for language use.
In -+73 we discuss a method called the SILENT WAY.

3 T he communicative approach/communicative language teaching

• THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH/COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT) focuses on the
idea that people get language if they have opportunities to use it, and that if students
have a desire to communicate and a purpose for communicating (rather than just
practising a grammar item), then language learning will 'take care of itself'.
• In CLT, students do many speaking and writing tasks, o.ying to use any and all of the
language that they can. CLT focuses more on CONTENT than on FORM ; it concentrates
on how successfully students can conznzunicate, rather than on whether they are
speaking or writing correctly. CORRECTION often takes place after the students have tried
to speak or write communicatively -+74.
We look at examples of communicative speaking activities in -+52-53 and
communicative writing activities in -+58-59 .

4 Task-based learning (T BL)

• TASK-BASED LEARNING (TEL) is an approach where teachers set their students larger
tasks, such as writing a newspaper article, giving an oral presentation, creating an
online film reviews page or arranging a meeting, rather than conceno.·ating only on
the language. The students may STUDY language, too, of course, but only if this will
help them do the task; it is the planning and the completion of the task that is most
important. A TEL approach would base its SYLLABUS -+80 on tasks rather than lists of
grammar items. In some versions of TEL, language study comes after the task - to
deal with any mistakes tl1at occurred during the task.
• In a task-based sequence we might get INTERMEDIATE or UPPER-INTERMEDIATE students to
plan a trip to a city in a foreign couno.y by looking for information on tl1e INTERNET
and then writing an itinerary; we might ask the students to design a questionnaire
which they can then use for video or audio interviews in tl1e so.·eet.

How people learn; how people teach

Most teachers don't follow any one method, but use elements of many different
approaches. This ECLECTICISM seems to be the best response to different claims about how
different students learn. Everything will d epend on the balance of exercises and activities
- how we get students ENGAGED, how we get them to study and the opportunities we
provide for them to ACTIVATE their knowledge -+80 .
A lot depends, too, on tl1e role of the teacher. Should we transmit knowledge as
lecturers do, SCAFFOLD learning (provide guidance and support) by helping students to do
what they want to achieve or facilitate learning by providing tl1e right kind of activities?
We look at the ROLES OF THE TEACHER in -+65 .

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