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
Attention Attention is viewed as a mainly conscious process involving working memory (Ellis, 2008). Attention is defined as a process in which biological mechanisms interact when goal-directed behaviours and stimulus-driven responses converge in action. Schmidt (1990) has argued that attention is essential to learning; that is, there is no learning without attention. While this strong …
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. Contemporary cognitive psychology has built on the very …
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 …
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 …
Language Learning Strategies Language Learning Strategies They are mental and communicative procedures learners use in order to learn and use language. Strategies can help the students to increase their level of consciousness and awareness over their learning process. Learning strategies are perhaps best defined in terms of a set of characteristics that figure in most …
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 …
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 …
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. Universal Grammar might be defined as the study of the conditions that must be met by the grammars of all human languages. In a highly idealized picture of language acquisition, …
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 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 child …
Action Research Action research was begun in the United States by Lewin (1946) in the 1940s as a means of addressing social problems. This type of research is often conducted by teachers in language classrooms. In addition, it focuses on particular features of classroom interaction. The term ‘action research’ is an approach to collecting and …