Current TESL issues (Teaching English as a Second Language) in an interactive fashion enriched with distinctive keywords and tags and comment forms to discuss the issues
Activity Theory Activity Theory was developed by a group of Russian psychologists called the Kharkovites, of which the best known is A. N. Leont’ev. This theory was a development of Vygotskian theory. Lantolf (2000) described it as “a unified account of Vygotsky’s original proposals on the nature and development of human behavior” (p. 8). Leontiev…
Construct Validity Construct Validity In this type of validity, it is attempted to test psychologically real constructs that have an independent existence in the test taker, and that the test scores represent the degree of presence or absence of this very real property. In this response, Cronbach and Meehl (1955) state: This type of validity…
Language Faculty Language Faculty We may assume that the linguistic theory of the language faculty is a theory of the cognitive architecture for language knowledge and acquisition. Chomsky (1980) postulated that there is a language organ, which is part of a human’s biological endowment and which houses the universal principles and parameters without which a…
Universal Grammar Universal grammar may be thought of as some system of principles common to the species and available to each individual prior to experience” (Chomsky, 1981, p. 7). “Universal Grammar might be defined as the study of the conditions that must be met by the grammars of all human languages” (Chomsky, 1968, p. 126,…
Reliability Reliability The key feature of this important trait requires the standardization of administration and tasks as well as scoring. Reliability is the consistency of test scores across facets of the test. Independent items or tasks in a single test should correlate with each other and the test-total score. That is, there is an assumption…
Validity Validity The two scholars who proposed the concept of validity were Cronbach and Meehl (1950s). Messick changed the way in which we understand validity. He described validity as: An integrated evaluative judgement of the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of inferences and actions based on test…
Information Processing Theory Information processing theory models typically propose three types of memory stores: Sensory Memory: It is capable of holding information only very briefly. Short-term Memory: A short-term memory includes working memory, where information is held for a short but sufficient period of time to enable processing to take place. Working Memory: Working memory…
Constructivism Constructivism The main underlying assumption of constructivism is that individuals are actively involved right from birth in constructing personal meaning, that is, their own personal understanding from their experience (Williams & Burden, 1997). In other words, everyone makes their own sense of the world and the experiences that surround them. In this way, the…
Cognitive Psychology Cognitive Psychology The subject matter of cognitive psychology consists of the main internal psychological processes that are involved in making sense of the environment and deciding what action might be appropriate. These processes include attention, perception, learning and memory, language, problem solving, reasoning and thinking (Eysenck, 2001, p. 1). Contemporary cognitive psychology has…
Socio-Educational Model of L2 Learning Socio-Educational Model by Gardner reflects the results of work begun at McGill University in Montreal in the 1950s and still carried on today. Gardner’s model was developed to explain L2 learning in classroom settings, in particular the foreign language classroom. It exists in several versions (Gardner, 1979, 1983, 1985). The…