Notes on Session 4 of Understanding Language Acquisition

Notes on Session 4 of Understanding Language Acquisition

Tools for Teaching Second Language Learners

"Spanish-speaking kids needed a class in school where they could be themselves adn exel and validate their culture." (Carol Lynn McConnell, 4-3)

Additive and Subtractive learning environments:
Bilingual education is considered an additive environment. It is suggested through sixth grade. (4-4)

4.1 Supports and Constraints

Knowledge of a language:
1. all the words of a language
2. what order to put those words in
3. how to manipulate words to show things like yesterday or tomorrow (past or future tense)
4. how to pronounce words
5. how to use them in the right context (if you’re saying something culturally inappropriate)
6. how to create and use idioms
7. when someone else is speaking correctly – the grammar of the language
8. how to produce new sentences
9. recognizing the things that make language interesting such as humor and ambiguity

When you know a language, you know a great deal about
• the structure
• implications of what you’re saying and hearing
• how to use that language in appropriate context (Melvin Luthy, 4-11)

To help someone else learn English, you need to have ways of talking to students about their language development. (Annela Teemant, 4-11)

Teachers need to understand
• pronunciation features
• grammar features
• semantic features
• meaning features
• the levels of language
(Donna Christian, 4-12)

We used to teach language by dividing it up into
 the sounds of language: phonology
 the grammar rules: syntax
 the vocabulary: lexicon

When teachers focus on meaning, language learners are encouraged to use language to
 express individual meaning
 apply it to real-life situations
 use it for authentic purposes

Linguistics -- Definitions
Communicative Competence describes what it means to know and communicate in a language.
Four components of communicative competence are
• Grammatical competence: knowing the rules of grammar and the vocabulary of the language
• Sociological competence: the social rules of language – how to be appropriate in many settings – with peers, with teachers, and with strangers
• Discourse competence: how to participate in conversations – how to compliment, make requests, and say thank you – and when you write, you are coherent, able to put sentences together into a meaningful whole
• Strategic competence: how to use a range of strategies to communicate – using a strategy to compensate when you don’t know how say a word.
(Annela Teemant, 4-15)