Language as a Wall

Language can be a wall. Some people climb on it, and some demolish it. Learning a second language can represent a traumatic experience for the learners that come across a rigid, traditional program of language acquisition. Everyday, people buy materials to learn a second language, they hire tutors, they enroll in classes, and they watch tutorials online, all for the same purpose. Can they all be successful? Can different strategies, approaches, methodologies, and philosophies, all be efficient in the teaching of a second language?

Part of the “American Dream” is integrating into the culture of the country, learning the language. And many immigrants go through the process of choosing, deciding on the right class, course, teacher that will help them achieve that part of the dream. Traditional educators will offer traditional education and innovative educators will present some unorthodox options. Can they all be effective? If the system is a good match with the needs and personality of the student, the answer is yes.

Before Harvard’s Professor Dr. Howard Gardner presented his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences in 1983, the traditional notion of intelligence was focused on linguistic and logical-mathematical performance.  Intelligence was perceived as a single united element that could be quantitatively appraised.

The integration of multiple intelligences’ theory to the design and development of a learning environment empowers the student to explore and exercise those multiple skills that transcend a written evaluation. Every person possesses all eight branches of intelligence but each one has evolved in different extents, according to personal experience, education and social interaction. (Cristison) The refinement we achieve of each intelligence, often determines, the career we chose, the interests we nourish and our interaction with the world. It also affects the way we learn.

While  teaching a second language, every educator needs to consider how multiple intelligences play a very important role in the learning and acquisition of said language.

                  The acquisition of a language is one of the first cognitive processes every human being experiences.  A child is exposed to language since birth and as his mental connections start to develop, acquires the skills and perception to master the maternal language. Language is normally acquired by social interaction; therefore any acquisition of a second language will need social support (Richard-Amato).  

                  Fear of making mistakes is one of the biggest challenges the students have to overcome to acquire any foreign language. A dynamic learning experience exposes the students to their fears and helps them overcome it by allowing them to explore and experiment with the components of communicative competence in a comprehensive environment.

                  The main goal of any language teaching program should be to perfect the dominion the learner has of the elements of communicative competence taking under consideration the particular aims of particular learners.

                  Communicative Competence is the result of three different skills that develop while learning a new language: Grammatical Competence, Pragmatic Competence (vocabulary, cohesion), and Sociolinguistic Competence (Register, nativeness, nonliteral language).

These three aspects develop differently during the process of language acquisition accordingly to the exposure the learner experiences with the elements that determine each competence(Krashen).

                   A student who feels the desire to explore and inquire while learning any language, usually feels more confident using resources, asking questions, consulting dictionaries, and therefore has better results when it comes to communicative competence. Artistic expression, social interaction and knowledge application play an important role in the learning of English as a Second Language.

                  Constructivism is a theory that empowers the role of the student in his/her own learning process; it proposes that the process all human beings experience while learning new information depends on our previous structures of knowledge. Education was traditionally perceived as the process by which the teacher, the source of the knowledge, distributed information for the students to store. In this educational dynamic, the student was perceived as a passive element in the process of knowledge acquisition.

Constructivism revolutionized this conception, by stating that all human beings internalize newly acquire knowledge and applies it to previous forms of reasoning. Each individual takes an active participation in his/ her construction of knowledge. As thinking beings we observe and interact with our surrounding world an the experiences we gain adapt to the structures our minds have already established.  

                  Every person assimilates new information and incorporates it into antecedent ideas, constructing and altering the learner’s previous knowledge. This process works like a building in which each floor is constructed using the basis of the floor below. With each year of age and the constant sophistication the human brain experiences, the new experiences are evaluated and assimilated with more complexity allowing the understanding to become more complex as well.  

                  As each person is different, the process by which  we incorporate the newly acquired information to our preexisting structures, varies as well. Every day we learn new things and our knowledge and understanding of the world changes, therefore we continue learning outside the classroom, every experience provides us with new materials to build our cognitive structures.     

                  Within this theory the teacher is not the sole provider of knowledge, but a facilitator to the process and tools each student needs to develop. Critical thinking is a main factor of this process. The exchange of the teachers with the students in classroom dynamics must spark curiosity and the desire to search for answers, to investigate and allow the student to take the initiative when it comes to his/ her own education. The constructivist classroom is  the place where the teacher works with the students as a team to achieve intellectual development.

                  In order to have successful language learning, the educators need to make the student’s interests and needs are the basis for the teaching approach. For the student to be self motivated when learning a new language, the educator (teacher or instructor) needs to acknowledge and reinforce the students’ interests as motivation. One needs preexisting knowledge to learn new things: it nearly impossible to assimilate new knowledge without having some cognitive structure developed from previous information to build on. The more we know the more capable we are of learning.

The learning materials need to be relevant to the student’s reality. The learning process takes place within a context; we do not learn secluded facts and theories in a abstract unsubstantial region of our mind separate from our life. Our ability to learn depends of what we already know, what we believe, our prejudices and our fears (Cristison).

Learners need to be included in the decision learning process. Learning is not the passive reception of knowledge, which exists outside ourselves; it involves the learner interacting with the world and withdrawing a personal meaning from experiences.

Learning is a social exercise: the learning process is associated with our connection with other people, our teachers, our peers, and our family. Dialogues, interaction with others and collaborations are unnecessary aspect of language learning.  Social interaction strengthens learning of a new language. Many people learn a language by moving to another country, which demonstrates that language can be acquired by immersion, so every student has the ability to learn a new language.

                  The process by which each student relates to new information can vary depending on the role each student assumes as a learner. As people vary from personality and character traits, so do their individual learning process. Mainstream educational psychology has identified four different learning styles that can be observed in any given classroom: concrete learners, analytical learners, communicative learners, and authority oriented learners (Krashen).  

Concrete Learners relate better to concrete concepts and can benefit from games, illustrations and visual representations of the material with which they are working. Analytical Learners are self-reliant, like assessing their own work and relate better to reading the information they are expected to learn. They are very capable of finding their own mistakes. To them, knowledge comes from observing and drawing conclusions from analysis. Communicative Learners benefit from group interaction, they like discussing and sharing opinions. These learners are very good at drawing conclusions from contrasting views and concretize knowledge by verbalizing ideas. Authority Oriented learners relate very well to their teachers, like taking notes and repeatedly require the teacher’s validation and corroboration.

Most students show a combination of these roles. Although students will have different styles of learning, the process by which they internalize newly acquired information can be the same in all four learning styles.

 The conceptual basis and contributions of psychological research in didactic context emphasize on critical thinking and personal values as means of relating to new information.  Each individual's processing of stimuli from the environment and new information and the resulting cognitive structures that produce adaptive behavior can be achieved by exposing the learner to previous knowledge structures, preexisting concepts or general formerly acquired information as a form of introduction to the new concept. It is important for students to be an active part of their own learning process therefore the dynamics of exploration require the student to recall and readapt already internalized data (Richard-Amato). Within the exploration certain aspects have to be considered: Concern with the experiences and contexts that make the student willing and able to learn (readiness); structures that can be easily grasped by the student (spiral organization); facilitate extrapolation and or fill in the gaps (going beyond the information given).

Ensuring that the student has important materials that will bring valuable information for the building of the language program is the goal.  In order for students to find meaning in learning, familiar examples should be provided. 

                  To be part of the process of learning and not a mere passive agent will allow the student to raise his or her self-image. The hands-on material, not only gets students excited about the world around them, but also can establish a solid foundation for future learning.

                  When a student starts learning a second language, many emotions will play into his/her learning experience: anxiety, frustration, insecurity, among others. The philosophy and perspective of the program, instructor, and materials that he/she comes across can be the difference between a successful endeavor or a failure. The learning experience needs to be individual, contextual, social, and relevant for the learner to feel like what he/she is learning is pertinent to his/her reality.

                 

Bibliography

1. Richard-Amato, Patricia A. Making it happen: from interactive to participatory language teaching: theory and practice. White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1995.

2. Krashen, Stephen D. Principles and practice in second language acquisition. New Jersey : Prentice-Hall International, 1987.

3.  Christison, Mary Ann. Multiple Intelligences and Language learning: A guidebook of theory, activities, inventories, and resources. San Francisco: Alta Book Center Publishers, 2005.