To talk about leaning and those factors which affect it, we can remember our own struggle with it. Remembering all the years we have been studying, from very beginning in the kindergarten to the most recent level, here, for M.A. studies, the destination that we have been looking for is LEARNING, more and more.
What’s the use of studying without learning? Personally believe it worth nothing. Actually, the only goal of teaching and studying can be learning. So all the changes in the history of language teaching come out of this fact that some theories and methods could not lead to successful learning, some strategies are more profitable for learners, some materials are more effective, and so on. So, changes happened to compensate the deficiencies.
By the 19th century, the method which was the offspring of German scholarship was Grammar Translation, whose objective of foreign language study was to learn a language in order to read its literature or to benefit from mental discipline and intellectual development that result from foreign language study. Hence, it views language learning as consisting of little more than memorizing rules and facts in order to understand and manipulate the morphology and syntax of the foreign language. In the 19th century innovations happened as a consequence of those limitations of GTM. C. Marcel’s (1793-1896) emphasis was on the importance of meaning, so reading was taught before other skills. T. Prendergast (1806-1886) proposed the first “structural syllabus”, advocating that learners be taught the most basic structural patterns occurring in the language. F. Gouin (1831-1896) believed that language learning was facilitated through “Series method”. Towards the end of the 19th century Reform Movement was born and it was believed that spoken language is of primary importance and it was in favor of inductive learning. Then it was an interest in developing principles for language teaching out of naturalistic principles of language learning, such as are seen in the L1 acquisition. This led to what have been termed Natural Method and ultimately led to the development of what came to be known as the Direct Method. These changes continued by the Audio-lingual Method and the Situational Method, which were both superseded by the Communicative Approach. During all these years, specifically in the late nineteen century, it was believed that to improve the quality of language teaching, we should do it by referring to general principles and theories concerning how languages are learned, how knowledge of language is represented and organized in memory, or how language itself is structured. Anthony identified three levels of conceptualization and organization: approach, method, and techniques; Richards and Rodgers (2003) says that “an approach is the level at which assumptions and beliefs about language and language learning are specified; method is the level at which theory is put into practice and at which choices are made about the particular skills to be taught, the content to be taught, and the order in which the content will be presented; technique is the level at which classroom procedures are described.”
In fact, approach refers to theories of language, and learning. And in order for an approach to lead to a method, it is necessary to develop a design for an instructional system. Design is the level of method analysis in which, method’s objectives, syllabus, types of activities, learner’s and teacher’s roles and the role of instructional materials are determined.
For years the focus was on methods as a way for helping language learning but then syllabus design came into attentions. From then on, attempts have been made to prepare applicable language plans and syllabuses.
“Language planners should ask some questions in order to have a successful plan. They should ask which languages should be taught. Which version of which languages should be taught? In which order of importance should foreign languages be placed? Who learns? How well? And how much? And they should know a lot about the context in which the teaching takes place.” (Johnson,2001: 198). The process of needs analysis is the process that helps language planners to find the answers to the mentioned questions.
Syllabus can be of different types; structural syllabus which the main organizing principle is according to language structures. Notional/ functional syllabuses that come into existence because learners were tired of “ syntax syndrome”, and multi dimensional syllabuses are those that their basis is that it has more than one unit of organization. There are two ways these syllabuses can be produced; 1. We can shift the focus at different points 2. We can have more than one focus operating in each part of the course.
If we pay attention, all these changes happened because learners’ needs have changed, and the first and last focus is on learners and their related issues. So it is necessary to know some primary concepts which are related to learners and learning.
Two domains of language learning can be cognitive and affective domains. Cognitive domain has two facets; human learning processes and cognitive variations in learning- styles and strategies. Process is characteristics of every human being. Style refers to consistent and rather enduring tendencies or preferences within an individual. Strategies are specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation for achieving a particular end, planned designs for controlling and manipulating certain information. Styles include field independence/dependence, left- and right-brain functioning, ambiguity tolerance, reflectivity and impulsivity, visual and auditory styles. Strategies are of two types, learning & communication strategies; the former relates to input- to processing, storage, and retrieval, that is, to taking in messages from others. The latter pertain to output, how we productively express meaning, how we deliver messages to others.
Affective domain, too, has two facets: intrinsic side of affectivity: personality factors, and extrinsic factors- sociocultural variables. Some of the personality factors are self-steem, inhibition, risk-taking, anxiety, empathy, extroversion, introversion, motivation. And some of the sociocultural variables are stereotypes, attitudes, acculturation, and social distance.
In order to have a successful teaching and learning programs, language planners and teachers should pay close attentions to the above mentioned domains. The major difficulty in investigating personality characteristics is that of identification and measurement.
Assistance
We came to a place where methods no longer satisfied people, just jumping from one method to another and the problems still remain, so we turned to the content and program, we turned to syllabus, a kind of pre-specification of everything a teacher should do to lead the students to a certain destination.
There are different approaches to syllabus designs. Some of them are synthetic and some are analytic. The former treat language as a collection of discrete items to be learned one by one, but the later believes language should be treated as a whole and it is not separable.
Motivation, aptitude, personality, intelligence, and learner’s preferences are some of the important factors which are of utmost importance in the process of knowing learners and learning process better which can be effective in syllabus designing.
What makes a person want to learn? Motivation in language learning. Different theories defined motivation differently. In general motivation is the inner drive that pushes us forward but the source of this inner drive can be different. Different schools of thoughts defined motivation in different ways. Behaviorists tend to consider motivation largely in terms of external forces. From cognitivists point of view motivation rooted in needs we have. Still another view is that of Push-pull theory(s), which say(s) that there is something which is completely out of the control of learners. It is not totally internal. There are internal and external; somehow something like constructivists’ views which believe that there are environment and mind which are important.
We have a theory given by Gardner
In cognitive theory of motivation which discusses that the cognitive view per se is not enough because it ignores affective and socio-cultural factors. Cognitive theory believes that learners are motivated because of their inner need.
And still another perspective is social- constructivist perspective. It says that each individual is motivated differently. The definition of motivation from social constructivist theory is:
· a state of cognitive and emotional arousal,
· which leads to a conscious decision to act, and
· which gives rise to a period of sustained intellectual and/or physical effort
· in order to attain a previously set goal(s)
Regarding aptitude and its difference with intelligence it should be mentioned that high aptitude learners are just faster learners. They have certain abilities in themselves, called knack, what can knack do for them in terms of language? They can hear the sounds and imitate the sounds better, they can discover the rules. They can keep things in their mind than those without aptitude.So there are people with aptitude who can easily imitate, who can easily retain words for longer time and who can easily distinguish things.But intelligence equals with understanding, knowing, perfecting something, going deep inside something. There are different types of intelligence. In the past there were just two types: logical mathematical, and linguistic, but today there are nine or ten types: interpersonal, intrapersonal, etc.
There was person called Goleman who believed of sort of intelligence would override all others, EQ, emotional quotient; if you can manage your emotion you can learn everything.
Actually, individual differences are important but the question is how can we touch these? How can we pay attention to these?
Some problems with the notion of individual differences are:
1. The psychometric tradition of psychology. That is one concerned with the scientific measurement of human traits and abilities such as intelligence, extroversion, risk-taking, and so on. Because of the nature of these traits which are not tangible there is no valid evaluation equipment to measure them.
2. The selection of individual characteristics. First of all arbitrarily we should select one and then we don’t have sound theoretical basis. This takes us to the point that whatever we have studied so far actually does not differentiate among individuals. What theories did was this; they had a root of characteristics. They studied people to put them on different characteristics. But they didn’t paid attention to individuals.
So we need a theory of learning, in this theory the uniqueness of individuals should be investigated. It should focus on individual uniqueness, to tell us how people are different and what they have in common. The second characteristic of this theory is that it should say how people change rather than how to stay the same. It should give rise to implication for actions and interventions. It should support individuals in take personal control of their own learning. It should be connected to individual views of themselves and learning.
One useful theory is social comparison theory or looking glass self; it says that part of our self-concept is meant due to the social relationships we have with others. What others think of us and what impacts we have on the others? This kind of theory should explain how this happen, and how we compare ourselves with others. This view is new. It looks at individuals but not alone, in relation to others.
The other theory is LoC theory or locus of control, it involves two views, internalizers and externalizers. Internalizers accept the responsibilities of everything but externalizers always believe others are responsible of events that happen for them. But the question is that, “is there a way to help people to adapt themselves to the situations?”, and the answer is yes. There is a model called ALEM (Adaptive Learning Environment Model) which train you to be more responsible for what you are doing. It provides you opportunities to practice self-management skills such as planning and carrying out routine classroom management tasks (e.g. obtaining and returning materials and equipment), rather than expecting the teacher to organize this. If by the end of this program students can gain new habits of learning then we can say ALEM worked well.
Attribution theory is another theory which says that it is not the event that makes differences or influences people in different way; it is the way people perceive the event. In attribution theory how people perceive events and how this perception of four attributes: ability, effort, luck, the perceived difficulty of the task with which they are faced are considered. And each of these attributes can be investigated from two perspectives. First from the view of the Locus of causality what is the cause, it can be either internal or external and the second is from point of view of stability. Is the factor stable or not? Of course Weiner added a third view and it is the controllability which made it possible to distinguish between elements that people feel are in their control or not. But do we have something to reattribute the perception or performance?
Another important point should be mentioned here is regarding learning strategies, learning to learn, metacognitive strategies, language learning strategies, practicing the meaning.
There is a method of teaching in which teachers’ main concern is different learning strategies.it isThe strategic teaching model.if we want our students to learn about different sources of strategies we should have a model for teaching. A normal model should have different elements. These elements are:
1. asses strategy use with:
· think-aloud(it’s better to ask them after finishing the task (retrospective) because asking while they are doing the task (introspective) cause interruption.)
· interview
· questionnaire(it is not complete because the learner may use a strategy but s/he does not know its name)
So it is suggested that to asses strategy use triangulation.
2. explain strategy by:
· naming it
· telling how to use it, step by step
3. model strategy by:
· demonstrating it
· verbalizing own thought processes while doing task
4. scaffold instruction by:
· providing support while students practice
· adjusting support to student needs
· phasing out support to encourage autonomous strategy use
5. develop motivation by:
· providing successful experiences
· relating strategy use to improved performance
Application
To make developments in our country in all sorts there should be constant relations between experts of different majors. For instance with the collaboration of TEFL specialists, practitioners, and software experts it is possible to devise equipment to evaluate individual differences, to help individuals to find their individualities, to guide them to choose appropriate activities, and even equip classes with computers. It is possible but the main point is that we should create the feeling of needs in the facilitators, in the quality developers, but whenever we feel satisfaction of what we have currently, of our current condition, nothing would change. We get what we always got. If we feel that these are good and take a step then other steps should be taken automatically. We can get a help from science. We can have technologies, soft wares that individuals could select activities that fit on their own individual needs and characteristics.
Of course it would take a long way. Even we can start individually, to diagnose our student’s needs, styles, personality. We can be an innovator, one who start and demonstrate a good and useful habit. It doesn’t need to be a mere follower of others, despite all the difficulties that we would face especially in a country like ours. But the success is in fight and resistance.
Read: How languages are learned chapters 3 & 7;Principles of Language Learning and Teaching chapters 3,5,6,7;An Introduction to Foreign Language Teaching pp. 159-314; Approaches and methods in language teaching pp.5-29; Psychology for language teachers chapters5,6,7; Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice section6
hi, all the sentences are right,but i wonder weather we wanted to learn more and more or we had to!!!!!!!!!!! (toky)
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