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 …
Emergentism Emergentism is the name that has recently been given to a general approach to cognition that stresses the interaction between organism and environment and that denies the existence of pre-determined, domain specific faculties or capacities. Emergentism thus offers itself as an alternative to modular, ‘special nativist’ theories of the mind, such as theories of …
Classroom Assessment Classroom Assessment According to Brookhart, in classroom assessment, assessment and learning are integrated within the classroom. She sees this in terms of Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of the zone of proximal development, or that space between what the individual can accomplish independently and what he/she can do with assistance. Personal knowledge of the learner …
Individual Differences Individual Differences Learners clearly differ enormously in their preferred approach to L2 learning, but it is impossible to say which learning style works best (Ellis, 2008). One of the major problems is that the concept of ‘learning style’ is ill-defined, apparently overlapping with other individual differences of both an affective and a cognitive …
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. The model seeks to interrelate …
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 …
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 …
Formative Assessment | An IELTS Essay Sample Formative Assessment | An IELTS Essay Sample Topic Nowadays, scholars in the field of education contend that formative assessment (as opposed to summative assessment), in which more consideration is given to the lengthy process of learning rather than final examinations, should be applied to academic education. What is …
Input Hypothesis Input Hypothesis Krashen’s Input Hypothesis explicitly rejects a role for consciousness, claiming that “acquisition” is a subconscious process. Krashen assumed a ‘language acquisition device’, that is, an innate mental structure capable of handling both first and second language acquisition. The input activates this innate structure. But only input of a very specific kind …