Skinner Skinner attempted to extend a classical behaviorist model of learning to language in his famous ‘Verbal Behavior’. His goal was to provide a way to predict and control verbal behavior by observing and manipulating the physical environment of the speaker. In his review of this work, Chomsky showed that the Skinnerian concepts for learning …
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 …
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 …
English Presentation Role Models English Presentation Role Models Watch this video on YouTube LELB Lecturer: Dr. Hariri Handout Provided by the Lecturer Who is a role model? Enumerate the most important types of role models. Why is it useful to set role models?
Functionalist Theories of SLA Functionalist theories of L2 acquisition share a number of concerns with variability theories. For example, both are concerned not just with how linguistic knowledge is represented in the mind of the learner, but also with how this knowledge is used in discourse. Also, both types assume that syntax cannot be considered …
Test Specifications Test specifications – usually called ‘specs’ – are generative explanatory documents for the creation of test tasks. Specs tell us the nuts and bolts of how to phrase the test items, how to structure the test layout, how to locate the passage, and how to make a host of difficult choices as we …
Evidence-Centered Design Evidence-centered Design was developed by Mislevy. It is important that we see the tasks or items that we design for tests as part of a larger picture, and one approach to doing this in a systematic way is ECD, a methodology for test design and construction developed at Educational Testing Service (ETS). ECD is …
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 …
Conversation 43: Fashion with questions for English students to have a discussion Relevant Idioms, Proverbs, Expressions, or Quotations on Fashion Go out of fashion: stop being fashionable Fashion industry Fashion sensitive brand loyalty: loyalty to special brands of goods Vogue: mode Questions on fashion and mode Is fashion the same as the exploitation of people …
Instrumental motivation in SLA or second language acquisition Instrumental Motivation Instrumental motivation is also a component of Gardner’s socio-educational model; it is important to recognize that it can work in conjunction with, rather than in opposition to, integrative motivation. It refers to the motivation that derives from a perception of the concrete benefits that learning …