Mothers/caregivers provide a lot of guidance in conversations that influence how the child communicates

Acknowledges the roles of the child and their social environment and how they play into each other

"Children are constantly constructing meaning as they interact with people and the world around them, and through these interactions, they gradually sort out the nuances and multiple meanings of words and phrases. (p.63)

Children developing Grammer usage

Hypothesis testing

"Thus, children create sentences by using rules rather than by merely repeating messages they have heard, as assumed by behaviorists." (p.61)

Emphasizing stimulus, response, and reinforcement

Knowledge relating to experience

"For example, to learn the word ball, the child would first associate the word ball with the familiar spherical object, the stimulus. Next, the child would produce the word by imitation, at which time an adult would praise the child for saying ball, there by reinforcing the child’s correct verbal response." (p.61)

Teaching methods)

• Audiolingual method: tape-recorded dialogues for students to memorize (p.65)

• Pattern drills for practicing verb forms and sentence structures (p.65)

Errors are corrected immediately to avoid bad habits (p.65)

Creative construction theory

• Children were presented a colorful cartoon then asked about what they saw (p.65)

• Review errors and compare them to young native English speakers make (p.65)

Communication is the focus, not the accuracy in their form

"... It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to detect which system- acquisition or learning- is at work in an instance on language use (McLaughlin, 1987)." (p.66)

The student creates sentences, and a "monitor" looks out for errors (p.66)

Three conditions: sufficient time, focus on grammatical form, and explicit knowledge of the rules (p.66)

The student's knowledge of language was acquired

"However, research from immersion programs utilizing the target language for instruction shows that despite impressive language gains, some grammatical forms may not develop without explicit instruction (Harley, Allen, Cummins, & Swain, 1990)." (p.67)

Some grammatical features are acquired early on while others are acquired later on (p.67)

Must be understandable

Must contain grammatical structures slightly beyond the child's knowledge

Must be part of naturally flowing language used for authentic communication

Most important affective variables

• Low-anxiety learning environment

• Student motivation to learn the language

• Self-confidence

• Self-esteem

Comprehension being key

Silent period

• Allows students to learn by listening and understanding rather than through drills

Teaching practices

• Focus on communication not grammatical form

• Allows students a silent period rather than forcing immediate speech production

• Create a low-anxiety environment

Give-and-take

How do native speakers adjust their speech to be better understood by English learning conversational partners

How do non-native speakers pick up on language patterns

Trial and error process

Interlanguage:

• A language system produced by somebody who is learning a language, which has features of the language that they are learning and also of their first language

Fossilization:

• Some learners hit a plateau in their second language development without achieving native-like fluency

• Plays a role in language evolution and change