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
Functionalism Functionalism proposes that Universal Grammar can ultimately be explained without recourse to a special language organ that takes up where cognition leaves off. It attempts to rectify a lack of emphasis on learning in the rationalist perspective. The source of knowledge is proposed to lie in the input, not in the mind. Discoveries are …
Language Making Capacity Language Making Capacity Slobin proposes a ‘language making capacity’ (LMC). Like Chomsky’s Language Faculty, the LMC contains universal principles. Unlike the principles of Chomsky’s Language Faculty, these are ‘Operating Principles’ (OP), i.e., principles specifically for working inductively on the physical acoustic stimulus for a specific language to which children are exposed. The …
Innateness Hypothesis Innateness Hypothesis It must be that the mind/brain provides a way to identify and extract the relevant information by means of mechanism of some sort that are part of its biologically determined resources. In contrast to the behaviorist hypothesis, a second theory, called the ‘innateness hypothesis’ has developed out of generative transformational grammar. …
Empiricism Empiricism Locke, Berkeley and Hume were the founders of empiricism in the 17th century. Knowledge is derived from experience of the outside world. Information is copied by sensations and images, remembered, associated with other stored information. Complex ideas result from associating simple ideas. Infant is born as a ‘tabula rasa’, i.e. a blank or …
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Second Language Acquisition (SLA). An abbreviation for Second Language Acquisition. Second Language Acquisition is the common term used for the name of the discipline. In general, SLA refers to the process of learning another language after the native language has been learnt (Gass & Selinker, 2008). Sometimes the term refers to …
Generative Grammar Generative Grammar According to ‘generative grammar’ proposed by Chomsky, a language is not a system of rules, but a set of specifications for parameters in an invariant system of principles of Universal Grammar (UG). It is believed that humans are able to produce sequences which they have never encountered before. A generative grammar …
Connectionism Connectionism originated in the relativity well-established notion in psychology of ‘parallel processing. This was advanced by the work of the ‘parallel distributed processing’ (PDP) group held by Rumelhart and McClelland. The term “connectionism” refers in general to a form of cognitive modeling wherein cognitive processing is represented in terms that can be implemented by …
Content-based Instruction (CBI) Content-based Instruction (CBI), according to Brinton (2003), is the integration of content learning with language teaching aims. More specifically, it refers to the concurrent study of language and subject matter, with the form and sequence of language presentation dictated by content material. Such an approach contrasts sharply with many practices in which …
Recast Recast is another form of feedback, though they are less direct and more subtle than other forms of feedback. A recast is a reformulation of an incorrect utterance that maintains the original meaning of the utterance where the NS reformulates the NNS’s incorrect utterances. Recasts are complex, for instance, is it a partial recast? …
Behaviorism Behaviorism Empirical studies were primarily descriptive and totally objective in nature. In the late 1960s and 1970s, a growing consensus was reached that behaviourist theories of L2 learning were inadequate. L2 learners, like L1 learners, were credited with a ‘built-in-syllabus’, which guided their progress. According to the behaviourist hypothesis, the mind of the newborn …