Understanding Language Learning: VYL, YL, and Communicative Approach

Posted on Feb 1, 2025 in Other civil servant exams

Very Young Learners (VYL)

  • Lack of awareness that they are learning (no metalanguage, no explanations related to grammar)
  • Still learning to read and write in their first language (L1)
  • Not able to organize their learning
  • Grammar will develop on its own; intuitive knowledge of grammar rules
  • Not able to distinguish between what is real and what is fiction

Young Learners (YL)

  • Start of awareness that they are learning and what they are learning
  • Can plan and organize how best to carry out an activity
  • Can read and write

Children in General

  • Short attention span
  • Good imitators of sounds
  • Recycle new words and expressions
  • *Routines and repetitions*
  • Try to make sense of situations by making use of non-verbal clues

Communicative Approach

Goal

Develop communicative competence:

  • Use language for different purposes and functions
  • Use language depending on setting and participants
  • Produce and understand different types of texts
  • Maintain communication despite limitations

Roles

Learner (it’s a student-centered approach):

  • Has to participate
  • Cooperative activities
  • Takes responsibility for their own learning

Teacher:

  • Facilitator and mentor

Characteristics of the Process

  • Real communication is proposed (learning by using)
  • Opportunities to experiment and try
  • Tolerance to errors
  • Opportunities for accuracy and fluency
  • Link for the different skills
  • Discovering of the grammar rules

Syllabus based on communicative units: notions, functions, and communicative situations.

Methodology: communicative activities in context.

All skills are developed simultaneously.

Use of authentic texts.

Interaction

Interaction is required because it’s necessary for communication and also because collaborative learning is considered to be the best way for learning.

Feelings

Students have to feel confidence to use the language, and diversity should be respected and considered as something enriching.

View of Language and Culture

Language: is a tool to communicate.

Culture: language is linked to culture and can’t be separated from it. Moreover, it offers the context for communication.

Emphasis

  • Emphasis on meaning and use, rather than on form
  • Emphasis on the communicative skills (reading, listening, writing, speaking, and interaction), divided into microskills
  • As communicative situations should be as real as possible, skills should be used in an integrated way, developing all of them at the same time

First Language

It can help, but the target language is the one that is mainly used. If using L1, it has to be purposeful and attending especially to emotional aspects.

Assessment

  • Accuracy and fluency are assessed
  • Assessment from correct to appropriate
  • Multiple forms of assessment (not only the traditional ones): observation, interviews, portfolios, journals, etc.
  • Self-assessment as a way of promoting learners’ autonomy
  • Feedback: point out what it’s done well, not only the wrong things. Try to make students think about their own errors

Error Correction

  • Tolerance to errors (unavoidable part of language learning)
  • Errors are seen as part of learning and need to be incorporated into the learning process, as well as how they are handled
  • They are seen as indicators of how the interlanguage is being built (what does the learner know and what doesn’t know yet)