Learning Styles, Strategies, and Age in Second Language Acquisition
Learning Styles and Strategies in Second Language Acquisition
Personality Factors in Second Language (L2) Differences (how people perceive information):
- Process: Common among humans (association); aptitude (Gardner’s Theory) [the ability in the nine intelligences].
- Styles: Consistent individual preferences; characteristics of intellectual functioning; personality type (visual, tolerant of ambiguity, reflective).
- Strategy: Mode of operation for achieving goals; planned design for controlling certain operations.
Learning Styles
Cognitive Style: Link between personality and cognition.
Learning Style (educational context): Cognitive, affective, and physiological factors; indicators of how learners perceive and respond to learning; general predisposition to processing information.
- Left hemisphere: Linear, symbolic, sequential, logical, reality-based, and temporal.
- Right hemisphere: Holistic, concrete, random, intuitive, fantasy-based, and non-temporal.
Ehrman & Leaver (2003) Learning Styles
Field Dependence: Inability to distinguish detail from other information around it; better interpersonal relationships; better connectivity of different parts of a lesson; perceives globally; sees relationships among concepts; social orientation; needs organization provided.
Field Independence: Tendency to separate details; rely less on teacher, more on books and writing; perceives analytically; specific concept distractions; impersonal orientation; learns social material as a task; self-structure situations; less affected by criticism.
Teaching Styles
Field Dependence: Interaction with students; questions to check on students’ learning; student-centered activities; viewed by students as teaching facts; less feedback; avoids negative evaluation.
Field Independence: Impersonal teaching (lectures); questions to introduce topics; teacher-organized learning situation; corrective feedback; negative evaluation.
How to Motivate
Field Dependence: Verbal praise; helping the teacher; external rewards; showing task value.
Field Independence: Grades; competitions; choice of activities; showing how the task is valuable.
Left Brain vs. Right Brain Functions
Left Brain Functions: Uses logic; detail-oriented; facts rule; words and language; present and past; math and science; order perception; knows object name; reality-based; forms strategies; practical; safe.
Right Brain Functions: Uses feelings; “big picture” oriented; imagination rules; symbols and images; present and future; philosophy and religion; spatial perception; knows object function; fantasy-based; present possibilities; impetuous; risk-taking.
Skills Associated with Hemispheres
Left: Handwriting; symbols; language; reading; phonics; locating details and facts; talking and reciting; following directions; listening; auditory association.
Right: Haptic awareness; spatial relationships; shapes and patterns; mathematical computation; color sensitivity; singing and music; art expression; creativity; visualization; feelings and emotions.
Age Factor and Second Language Acquisition
A learner’s age and the potential for success are influenced by these aspects:
- Cognitive development
- Learner’s motivation
- Learner’s goal for L2
- The context in which learning L2 occurs
- Quantity and quality of language input
- Learning environment, time, and socio-cultural context
The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
Related to L1, extrapolated to L2. Two critical periods:
- [Birth to age 2]: Exposure to language to develop brain structures.
- [Until 16]: Children can be successful in learning L2.
Being Successful in L2
Neurological:
- [Left]: Logical, language, analytical, grammar, detail, formulates and understands meanings of words and sentences (grammar, vocabulary).
- [Right]: Creative, pictures, intuitive, tonality, illustrations, interprets emotions and connotations of words (prosody, accentuation, intonation).
Phonological: [To achieve fluency of a native speaker = speech muscle, (having control supports the CPH for accent). Neufeld (1977) suggests that older students have more sensitivity to subtle sounds].
Cognitive: How people think and understand, rapidly developed in the first 16 years.
Piaget (1969) Stages:
- Sensory-motor stage (birth-2)
- Pre-operational stage (2-7)
- Operational stage (7-16)
- Formal operational (11-16)
Metacognition: Thinking about one’s thinking and learning, and oneself as a thinker and learner. Piaget’s notion of equilibration: Cognition develops as a process of moving from a state of doubt and uncertainty to a stage of resolution and certainty.
Affective: Empathy, self-esteem, extroversion, inhibition, anxiety, attitudes. Identity: Affective inhibitions (second language learning = second identity).
Linguistics: Bilingualism: Two kinds:
- Coordinate bilingual: Two meaning systems learned from separate contexts.
- Compound bilinguals: One meaning system from which both languages operate.
Code-switching: The act of inserting words, phrases, or longer stretches from one language into the other. The benefit of early childhood bilingualism is that children are more highly prone to concept formation and have greater mental flexibility.
Theories on Lateralization
- Lenneberg (1987): Lateralization is a slow process that begins around age 2 and is completed at puberty.
- Scovel (1969): Plasticity of the brain enables children to acquire first and second languages. After age 9, the brain becomes stiff and rigid.
- Krashen (1973): Lateralization is completed around age 5.
- Scovel (1984): Lateralization occurs at birth, is evident at five, but completed at puberty.
Interference Between L1 and L2
Adults manifest errors, not unlike children, as a result of the perception of the second language (they operate from the first language).
Order of Acquisition: Focus on morphemes: Dulay & Burt (1973-74). The myth of “the younger, the better” (Scovel, 1997-99).
L2 Learning Order
- Perceptual salience (easy to see or hear a given structure)
- Semantic complexity (how many meanings are expressed by a particular form)
- Morpho-phonological regularity (the degree to which language forms are affected by their phonological environment)
- Syntactic category (grammatical characteristics of forms)
- Frequency in the input (number of times a given structure occurs in speech)
L1 Acquisition Issues Revisited in L2
- Competence and performance
- Comprehension and production
- Nature or nurture
- Universals
- Systematicity and variability
- Language and thought
- Imitation
- Practice and frequency
- Input
- Discourse