2: General theories about the learning and acquisition

of a foreign language. The treatment of errors.

The evolution of language learning theories and language teaching methods.
 Behaviourism.
o The audio-lingual method.

 Cognitivism.
 Acquisition and learning.
o Input

o The natural approach

o Task-based learning.

 Humanistic approaches.
 The communicative approach.

The treatment of errors.

 The Audio-Lingual method.
 The cognitivist theory.
o Slips, mistakes and errors.

 The natural approach.

 Task-based approaches.
 The communicative approach.
o Errors in oral production

o Errors in written production.

Remedial work
 Behaviourism.

 The natural approach and task-based learning.

Language learning theories mustn’t be confused with language teaching methods. Indeed, only on a very limited number of
occasions have specific methods been derived from a particular theory of language learning.
For much of its history language teaching has been obsessed with the search of the “right method”, a method that would work for all
learners in all contexts. However more recently it’s been realised that there never was and probably never will be such a method.
In this topic we are going to develop a description of the most important theories and the methods they have developed.

The evolution of language learning theories and language teaching methods.

Behaviourism.
This theory is based on the concept of conditioning, i.e., the idea that you can train an animal to do anything. In order to do this you
need to follow the three-stage process in Pavlov’s psychology: stimulus, response and reinforcement (positive or negative). F
ex, a rat is in its cage. A signal light is operated (stimulus) and the rat goes up to a bar and presses it (response). Then a tasty food
pellet drops at its feet (positive reinforcement) or an electric shock is given (negative reinforcement).
If the rat’s behaviour is reinforced a sufficient number of times it will always press (or not) the bar when the light comes on.

Later on, the psychologist Skinner applied this theory of conditioning to the way humans acquire their first language. For him
language was a form of behaviour very similar to the way in which the rat pressed the bar, and the same model of stimulus-
response-reinforcement accounts for how a human baby learns its language.

Behaviourism was then adopted by some language teaching methodologists, specially in America, and the result was the Audio-
lingual method, still used in many parts of the world. This method consisted on a constant drilling of the students followed by
positive or negative reinforcement as the most important part of the classroom activity. The stimulus-response-reinforcement
model formed the basis of the methodology. Thus, the language “habit” was formed by a constant repetition and the teacher’s
reinforcement, who immediately criticises mistakes and praises correct utterances.

Cognitivism.
Behaviourism was soon attacked, mainly by a new theory, Cognitivism. Noah Chomsky was its maker and began his theory by
attacking the previous theory on the basis of his model of competence and performance: how is possible originality in human
beings if everything is learnt behaviour? How do babies produce original sentences? Why do they produce “incorrect
sentences? How is it possible to learn through imitation all the possible sentences in a language?

Chomsky’s assumption was that language was not a form of behaviour, but a rule-based system with a finite number of
grammatical rules which are capable of creating an infinite number of sentences. Thus, language is a competence that the baby
gradually acquires which allows it to be creative as a language user. According to Chomsky we are thinking beings, and our relation
with the environment is of interaction, not only of reaction, as behaviourism suggested. We are problem-solvers and we can see and
discover rules and create patterns which allow us to create later on original sentences never heard before. According to Chomsky, we
all possess from birth a LAD, i.e. a language acquisition device.

No methodology was ever directly based on Chomsky’s theory, but the idea that language is a set of rules has influenced most of
the following language theories and methodologies. Many teachers now firmly accept the need for students to discover or learn the
rules and then go on to create their own original sentences.

Acquisition and learning.

Later on investigators centred on the distinction between acquisition and learning. Among them we may highlight Stephen
Krashen, who defined both concepts as “knowing a language” and “knowing about a language”. Acquiring a language is more
successful and lasting than learning a language, so he suggested that foreign language learning should be more like the child’s
acquisition of its native language. So he asked himself: how do children learn if imitation is not enough and besides they are not
actively taught?
He finally found the solutions to this enigma in the following considerarions:

1. Children always use language for a purpose.

2. When they use a language they think of the purpose, not the language they are using.
3. They receive lots of simplified language models.
To account for this he coined the term “input”, to refer to the language that the students hear or read; and he distinguished two types
of input: on the one hand he talked about roughly-tuned input, language at a slightly higher level than the students are capable of
using but at a level they are capable of understanding. On the other hand he talked of finely-tuned input, which is the way adults
talk to children, i.e. a language simplified so that children can more or less understand it.

Krashen’s suggestion was that students can acquire language on their on if they can get a great deal of comprehensible input, i.e.
roughly-tuned input.

All these considerations made up Krashen’s methodology, known as The Natural Approach:
Input is the key word in this method. He argues for a great deal of roughly-tuned input coupled to using language for a clear
purpose. Thus, this method is an attempt to turn the idea of acquisition into a coherent method of language teaching.

Task-based learning.
This approach has a lot to do with the previous. In this case, the methodologists have concentrated not so much on the nature of the
language input but on learning tasks that the students are involved in. The assumption is that there is no need for a formal
instruction. Instead students are simply asked to perform communicative activities in which they have to use the target
language.

There were experiments in universities by people like Allwright (England) and Prahbu (India). They believed that if the emphasis
in the class was on meaning, the language would be learnt incidentally. So they proposed a series of tasks with a problem-solving
element. Thus, while solving the problem, students were forced to come into contact with language, but they were not centred on the
language, but in solving the tasks. These tasks consisted on finding your way on maps, interpreting timetables, answering questions
about dialogues…

The main interaction in class was between the teacher and the students, and the methodology consisted on the following: the teacher
ordered a pre-task which involved questions and vocabulary checking (with the teacher helping them through the difficulties).
Then the teacher handed out a similar task and left the students to do it individually.

This method is similar to Krashen’s in the fact that both believe in the importance of the development of comprehension
before production and in the fact that both see meaning as the focus, while language learning can take care of itself.

Humanistic approaches.
This is another perspective which gained prominence in the 60’s, and it is based on the consideration of the student as a whole
person. The assumption is that language teaching is not only about teaching language, but it is also about helping students to
develop themselves as people. This belief led to a number of methodologies which stressed the humanistic aspects of learning,
where the experience of the student is what counts and the development of their personalities is seen as important as their learning of
a language.
Among these approaches we may highlight the “community language learning”, “suggestopaedia”, “the silent way”, “the total
physical response”, “the self-directed learning”…

The Communicative Approach.

Taking into account the development of all these theories and methodologies, today we have created a new theory and methodology
known as the communicative approach, characterised for the fact that it has taken the best aspects of all these previous theories to
make a completely new one, more powerful than all the other ones.

Its aims are overtly communicative and great emphasis is placed on training students to use language for communication. The
final aim of this approach is to train students to acquire communicative efficiency. The teacher’s job is that of ensuring that students
get a variety of activities which foster both acquisition and learning (both are very important), and the program will be planned
trying to achieve a balance between them, while taking into account the motivation of the students for the tasks proposed.
The treatment of errors.
Our response to errors will depend on our personal beliefs as teachers and to the exact nature of the process of foreign language
learning, i.e., depending on the methodology used.

The audio-lingual methodology: a teacher applying this method in class, can only interpret errors as an indication of
incorrectly learned language, i.e. failure, including failure on the teacher’s part, since good teaching should have avoided the
deviant production, and also failure on the student’s behalf. Since learning occurs through the imitation of a correct model, obviously
the student has either not been given the right model or has not been required to repeat it enough as to generate its complete
and correct learning.
So the only course of action left is to offer the student further drills and similar repetition exercises or substitution tables till the
student can prove his/her ability to produce the target items correctly.

The cognitivist theory applied in the classroom will of course produce a totally different response to the same errors.
According to this theory, since learning occurs through problem-solving activities that are undertaken to help the learner to create
his/her own rules about the target language system, errors are a natural part of the learning experience and they indicate the
development of these rules. Errors do not indicate failure neither on the teacher’s nor on the student’s part. Rather they are the
prove that learning is taking place.
Therefore, when a student produces a deviant form it is necessary to clearly indicate this incorrectness, and if the situation
requires so, to give the student further examples of correct language. The aim of these strategies is to lead the student to modify
his/her imperfect understanding of the given language item in the hope that based on this feedback and the new evidence, they
will produce the correct version.

Cognitivism distinguishes between errors, mistakes and slips.

A slip is a deviant form the student corrects without the intervention of a teacher or a fellow student. Slips show a full
knowledge of the language system, the deviation being caused by performance pressure.
A mistake is a deviant form the student fails to detect but is able to correct when the teacher or a fellow student point it out.
Mistakes show that the language system has been understood, but is not yet freely available for fluent use.
An error is a deviant form that the student fails to detect and is incapable of correcting even when it is pointed out. Errors
show a lack of knowledge of the corresponding language items.

The natural approach considers also errors as normal and believes that they provide evidence that language learning is
taking place. But in this case, unlike cognitivists, supporters of the natural approach do not require any action from the teacher.
They suggest that the majority of L2 errors are “developmental”, that is to say, that they are the same type of errors made by L1
learners, and will disappear in time, in just the same way as errors disappear from the production of an L1 user.
The supporters of the natural approach would also argue that there is a “natural order” for learning language structures , so it’s
useless to correct deviant forms produced when students are forced to use structures at any time earlier than this “natural” order
would consider appropriate.

Task based approach disciples would have a similar reaction, since they see the performance of meaningful tasks as the
road to language acquisition, rather than any explicit concentration on language rules. Thus, errors would also be considered as a
normal part of the development of the learning process, but no attempt would be made to indicate their existence or to correct
them.

But most teachers operating today would not follow any of these approaches to language teaching, and they would have an eclectic
approach to errors, which would lead them to correct some errors at certain times, but to leave other uncorrected on the basis
that they are a natural part of the learning process or are unimportant, because the language user is concentrating on carrying out
some communicative task at the moment of producing the error. This is part of the Communicative Approach. This
eclecticism is better viewed by looking separately at oral and written production:

Errors in oral production.

In a classroom the teacher’s response to the student’s errors will vary as the lesson develops.
Thus, in the controlled practice stage, in which accuracy is sought, errors will be corrected immediately. These activities are
mostly done between the teacher and the student or in student-student pairs. Here, the deviation is immediately shown, either by
giving the right form, by repeating the utterance up to the error and stopping there or by using facial gestures or /and
intonation to highlight the error. In student pairs peer-correction must also be encouraged. Errors common to several pairs or to the
whole group must be treated by the whole group at the end of the activity.
In the further and free practice stages of the same lesson communication output and fluency gain prominence over correctness,
and the immediate teacher correction by the teacher is substituted by techniques that do not interrupt the student’s attempts to
communicate. Among these techniques we may highlight leaving personalised notes to provide an individualised record of the
error. Errors common to the whole group again could be recorded for treatment at the end of the activity or during some later,
remedial lesson.

Errors in written production.

Written work requires special care since it is permanent. However, most of the principles applied to correcting spoken language
are applicable to written production as well. Thus, if the work is seeking accuracy, immediate or early correction is necessary.
However, when the written work constitutes an attempt at communication, as it is often the case with extended creative writing
(letters, narration…), we can be much more selective in our error correction. This might be limited to global errors, with errors in
syntax and conjunction being given preference over local errors. On some occasions, attention could be drawn to a specific
group of errors (tense, articles, concord…), ignoring all other errors so as to focus attention on one or two chosen errors of language
and not to confuse students with errors of diverse origin.
Again as in oral production, the option of treating errors common to the whole group in a later session is open (remedial
teaching):

Remedial work.
Behaviourism would not require remedial lessons, because progress to new language is only contemplated when the target
language item has been demonstrated to be fully learned.

The natural approach and the task-based approaches would also not require it, since the first considers errors as
developmental and the latter specifically avoids drawing the student’s attention to their errors and therefore taking their
attention away from the meaningful task they are performing. However, most of these teachers faced with errors common to a
number of students, would feel the need for remedial work.
This could involve letting students see or hear their own deviant forms and asking then to give the right form; another activity of
remedial work is sentence auction (students receive 8-10 correct and incorrect sentences, and working in groups of 3-4 they have a
limited time to try and trade those forms which they consider incorrect for forms the fellow-students possess and which they consider
correct). A final remedial activity is the 4-pen dictation: the teacher dictates a text and the students write in pencil. After the final
reading, the students check their own work, indicating mistakes they find in another colour. Their partners then make a further check
(in a third colour) and then the teacher makes a final check in a fourth colour.

The basis behind these activities is that of generating awareness of the errors being made and at the same time providing the
necessary feedback to allow learners to modify, and hopefully perfect, their understanding of the particular area of language being
studied.