How Languages are Learned Quotes

“Learners who are successful may indeed be highly motivated. But can we conclude that they became successful because of their motivation? It is also plausible that early success heightened their motivation, or that both success and motivation are due to their special aptitude for language learning or the favourable context in which they were learning.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“teachers typically gave students no more than a second or two before they directed the question to another student or answered the question themselves. They also tended to repeat or paraphrase the question several times rather than silently wait for the student to formulate a response. Although such rapid question/answer patterns are typical of audiolingual classes, they also occur in communicative instruction. Finding a balance between placing too much pressure on students to respond quickly and creating awkward silences seems to be a real challenge. Research has shown that when teachers are trained to give their students more time to respond to questions, not only do students produce more responses but their responses are also longer and more complex. Not surprisingly, this effect has been observed to be stronger with open/referential questions compared with closed/display questions (Long et al. 1985). In classrooms with students at different age levels and in different kinds of instruction, finding the right balance can lead to students providing fuller answers, expanding their ideas, and more successfully processing the material to be learned. Study 10: Time for learning languages in school”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“some linguists have also concluded that, while the innatist perspective provides a plausible explanation for first language acquisition, something else is required for second language acquisition, since it so often falls short of full success. From the cognitive psychology perspective, however, first and second language acquisition are seen as drawing on the same processes of perception, memory, categorization, and generalization. The difference lies in the circumstances of learning as well as in what the learners already know about language and how that prior knowledge shapes their perception of the new language.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Classroom research has confirmed that students can make a great deal of progress through exposure to comprehensible input without direct instruction. Studies have also shown, however, that students may reach a point from which they fail to make further progress on some features of the second language unless they also have access to guided instruction.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Research findings The ‘Teach what is teachable’ view suggests that while variational features of the language can be taught successfully at various points in the learners’ development, developmental features are best taught according to the learners’ internal schedule. Furthermore, although learners may be able to produce more advanced forms on tests or in very restricted pedagogical exercises, instruction cannot change the ‘natural’ developmental course. The recommendation is to assess the learners’ developmental level and teach what would naturally come next.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“The studies reviewed above provide evidence to support the intuitions of teachers and learners that instruction based on the ‘Get it right from the beginning’ proposal has important limitations. Learners receiving audiolingual or grammar-translation instruction are often unable to communicate their messages and intentions effectively in a second language. Experience has also shown that primarily or exclusively structure-based approaches to teaching do not guarantee that learners develop high levels of accuracy and linguistic knowledge. In fact, it is often very difficult to determine what students know about the target language. The classroom emphasis on accuracy often leads learners to feel inhibited and reluctant to take chances in using their knowledge for communication. The results from these studies provide evidence that learners benefit from opportunities for communicative practice in contexts where the emphasis is on understanding and expressing meaning.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“the concept of scaffolding to investigate teacher questions as ‘mediational tools within the dialogue between the teacher and students’ (p. 184). As we saw in Chapter 1 and Chapter 4, scaffolding refers to a process in which, for example, a more knowledgeable (or expert) speaker helps a less knowledgeable (or novice) learner by providing an interactional framework that the learner can build on.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Since Lyster and Ranta reported their findings, many more observation studies of corrective feedback in second or foreign language classrooms have been carried out. Some of them report similar results—that recasts are the most frequently occurring type of feedback and that they appear to go unnoticed by learners. However, others report that learners do notice recasts in the classroom. Below, two studies are described in which learners were observed to notice and to respond to recasts provided by their teachers.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“all teachers in the content-based French immersion classes they observed used recasts more than any other type of feedback. Indeed, recasts accounted for more than half of the total feedback provided in the four classes. Repetition of error was the least frequent feedback type provided. The other types of corrective feedback fell in between. Student uptake was least likely to occur after recasts and more likely to occur after clarification requests, metalinguistic feedback, and repetitions. Furthermore, elicitations and metalinguistic feedback not only resulted in more uptake, they were also more likely to lead to a corrected form of the original utterance. Lyster (1998) has argued that students receiving content-based language teaching (where the emphasis is on meaning not form) are less likely to notice recasts than other forms of corrective feedback, because they may assume that the teacher is responding to the content rather than the form of their speech. Indeed, the double challenge of making the subject-matter comprehensible and enhancing knowledge of the second language itself within content-based language teaching has led Merrill Swain (1988) and others to conclude that ‘not all content teaching is necessarily good language teaching’ (p. 68). The challenges of content-based language teaching will be discussed further in Chapter 6.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Modified interaction does not always involve linguistic simplification. It may also include elaboration, slower speech rate, gesture, or the provision of additional contextual cues. Some examples of conversational modifications are: 1   Comprehension checks—efforts by the native speaker to ensure that the learner has understood (for example, ‘The bus leaves at 6:30. Do you understand?’). 2   Clarification requests—efforts by the learner to get the native speaker to clarify something that has not been understood (for example, ‘Could you repeat please?’). These requests from the learner lead to further modifications by the native speaker. 3   Self-repetition or paraphrase—the more proficient speaker repeats his or her sentence either partially or in its entirety (for example, ‘She got lost on her way home from school. She was walking home from school. She got lost.’).”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Swain (2000) considers collaborative dialogues such as these as the context where ‘language use and language learning can co-occur. It is language use mediating language learning. It is cognitive activity and it is social activity’ (p. 97).”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Merrill Swain and Sharon Lapkin (2002), who have investigated sociocultural explanations for second language learning in Canadian French immersion programmes. Their work has its origins in Swain’s comprehensible output hypothesis and the notion that when learners have to produce language, they must pay more attention to how meaning is expressed through language than they ordinarily do for the comprehension of language. Swain (1985) first proposed the comprehensible output hypothesis based on the observation that French immersion students were considerably weaker in their spoken and written production than in their reading and listening comprehension. She advocated more opportunities for learners to engage in verbal production (i.e. output) in French immersion classrooms.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“sociocultural theory views speaking and thinking as tightly interwoven. Speaking (and writing) mediates thinking, which means that people can gain control over their mental processes as a consequence of internalizing what others say to them and what they say to others. This internalizing is thought to occur when an individual interacts with an interlocutor within his or her zone of proximal development (ZPD)—that is, in a situation in which the learner can perform at a higher level because of the support (scaffolding) offered by an interlocutor.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Pienemann (1999, 2003) developed processability theory on the basis of research with learners of different languages in a variety of settings, both instructional and informal. One important aspect of his theory is the integration of developmental sequences with first language influence. He argues that his theory explains why learners do not simply transfer features from their first language at early stages of acquisition. Instead, they have to develop a certain level of processing capacity in the second language before they can use their knowledge of the features that already exist in their first language.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“The information processing model suggests that there is a limit to the amount of focused mental activity we can engage in at one time.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Another aspect of automaticity in language processing is the retrieval of word meanings. When proficient listeners hear a familiar word, even for a split second, they cannot help but understand it. Such automatic responses do not use up the kind of resources needed for processing new information. Thus, proficient language users can give their full attention to the overall meaning of a text or conversation, whereas less proficient learners use more of their attention on processing the meaning of individual words and the relationships between them. The lack of automatic access to meaning helps to explain why second language readers need more time to understand a text, even if they eventually do fully comprehend it.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“For example, in Spain, the Barcelona Age Factor (BAF) project studied the effects of changing the age of beginning to teach English to Catalan/Spanish bilingual students. When the starting age for teaching English was lowered, Carmen Muñoz and her colleagues took advantage of the opportunity to compare the learning outcomes for students who had started learning at different ages. They were able to look at students’ progress after 100, 416, and 726 hours of instruction. Those who had begun to learn later (aged 11, 14, or 18+) performed better on nearly every measure than those who had begun earlier (aged 8). This was particularly true of measures based on metalinguistic awareness or analytic ability. On listening comprehension, younger starters showed some advantages. Muñoz suggests that this may be based on younger learners’ use of a more implicit approach to learning while older learners’ advantages may reflect their ability to use more explicit approaches, based on their greater cognitive maturity. She points out that, in foreign language instruction, where time is usually limited, ‘younger learners may not have enough time and exposure to benefit fully from the alleged advantages of implicit learning’ (Muñoz 2006: 33).”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“a study by Marie Guilloteaux and Zoltán Dörnyei (2008) who explored the links between teachers’ motivational practice and students’ motivation for L2 learning. It was a large-scale study with 27 teachers and over 1,300 learners in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Korea. The teachers’ motivational strategies were described using a classroom observation scheme—the Motivation Orientation of Language Teaching (MOLT). MOLT identified 25 motivational practices used by the teachers that were relatively easy to define and to observe.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Like first language learners, second language learners do not learn language simply through imitation and practice. They produce sentences that are not exactly like those they have heard. These new sentences appear to be based on internal cognitive processes and prior knowledge that interact with the language they hear around them. Both first and second language acquisition are best described as developing systems with their own evolving rules and patterns, not simply as imperfect versions of the target language.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“certain other aspects of language—for example, individual vocabulary items—can be taught at any time. Learners’ acquisition of these variational features appears to depend on factors such as motivation, the learners’ sense of identity, language aptitude, and the quality of instruction, including how learners’ identities and cultures are acknowledged in the classroom.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“even though many of the students were able to speak French informally outside class, their oral abilities were limited when they had to discuss more complex academic subject matter. As we saw in Chapter 1, teachers are sometimes misled by students’ ability to use the language in informal settings, concluding that their academic difficulties could not be due to language problems.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“In McDonough’s classroom study, recasts (and other forms of corrective feedback) were more likely to have been noticed because the Thai learners were accustomed to traditional grammar instruction and a focus on accuracy. This is not always the case, however. As we learned in Chapter 5, when the instructional focus is on expressing meaning through subject-matter instruction, the teachers’ recasts may not be perceived by the learners as an attempt to correct their language form but rather as just another way of saying the same thing. Later in this chapter we will look at classroom studies related to the ‘Get it right in the end’ position that have investigated the effects of more explicit corrective feedback on second language learning.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Several studies have shown that implicit corrective feedback (for example, recasts) in pair-work situations is beneficial. A recent review of this research confirms that the positive effects for recasts are strongest in the laboratory setting (Mackey and Goo 2007). This may be because recasts are more salient in pair work, particularly if only one form is recast consistently (Nicholas, Lightbown, and Spada 2001).”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“when pair work functions collaboratively and learners are in an expert–novice relationship, they can successfully engage in the co-construction of knowledge.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Study 22: Learner language and proficiency level George Yule and Doris Macdonald (1990) investigated whether the role that different proficiency-level learners play in a two-way communication task led to differences in their interactive behaviour. They set up a task that required two learners to communicate information about the location of different buildings on a map and the route to get there. One learner, referred to as the ‘sender’, had a map with a delivery route on it, and this speaker’s job was to describe the delivery route to the ‘receiver’ so that he or she could draw the delivery route on a similar map. The task was made more challenging by the fact that there were minor differences between the two maps. To determine whether there would be any difference in the interactions according to the relative proficiency of the 40 adult participants, different types of learners were paired together. One group had high-proficiency learners in the ‘sender’ role and low-proficiency learners in the ‘receiver’ role; the other group had low-proficiency ‘senders’ paired with high-proficiency ‘receivers’. When low-proficiency learners were senders, interactions were considerably longer and more varied than when high-proficiency learners were the senders. The explanation for this was that high-proficiency senders tended to act as if the lower-level receiver had little contribution to make in the completion of the task. As a result, the lower-level receivers were almost forced to play a passive role and said very little. When lower-level learners were the senders however, much more negotiation for meaning and a greater variety of interactions between the two speakers took place. Based on these findings, Yule and Macdonald suggest that teachers should sometimes place more advanced students in less dominant roles in paired activities with lower-level learners.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Long and Porter examined the number of grammatical and vocabulary errors and false starts and found that learner speech showed no differences across contexts. That is, intermediate-level learners did not make any more errors with another intermediate-level speaker than they did with an advanced or native speaker. This was an interesting result because it called into question the argument that learners need to be exposed to a native-speaking model (i.e. teacher) at all times to ensure that they produce fewer errors. Overall, Long and Porter concluded that although learners cannot always provide each other with the accurate grammatical input, they can offer each other genuine communicative practice that includes negotiation for meaning. Supporters of the ‘Let’s talk’ proposal argue that it is precisely this negotiation for meaning that is essential for language acquisition.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“In one of the early descriptive studies on learner interaction, Michael Long and Patricia Porter (1985) examined the language produced by adult learners performing a task in pairs. There were 18 participants: 12 non-native speakers of English whose first language was Spanish, and six native English speakers. The non-native speakers were intermediate or advanced learners of English. Each individual learner participated in separate discussions with a speaker from each of the three levels. For example, an intermediate-level speaker had a conversation with another intermediate-level speaker, another with an advanced-level speaker, and another with a native speaker of English. Long and Porter compared the speech of native and non-native speakers in conversations, analysing the differences across proficiency levels in conversation pairs. They found that learners talked more with other learners than they did with native speakers. Also, learners produced more talk with advanced-level learners than with intermediate-level partners, partly because the conversations with advanced learners lasted longer.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Research on comprehension-based approaches to second language acquisition shows that learners can make considerable progress if they have sustained exposure to language they understand. The evidence also suggests, however, that comprehension-based activities may best be seen as an excellent way to begin learning and as a supplement to other kinds of learning for more advanced learners. Comprehension of meaningful language is the foundation of language acquisition. Active listening and reading for meaning are valuable components of classroom teachers’ pedagogical practices. Nevertheless, considerable research and experience challenge the hypothesis that comprehensible input is enough. VanPatten’s research showed that forcing students to rely on specific linguistic features in order to interpret meaning increased the chances that they would be able to use these features in their own second language production. Another response to comprehension-based approaches is Merrill Swain’s (1985) comprehensible output hypothesis. She argues that it is when students have to produce language that they begin to see the limitations of their interlanguage (see Chapter 4). However, as we will see in the discussion of the ‘Let’s talk’ proposal, if learners are in situations where their teachers and classmates understand them without difficulty, they may need additional help in overcoming those limitations.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Enhancing the input”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“learners made more progress when they were given a simple rule and then worked together to find the correct possessive determiners (Spada, Lightbown, and White 2005).”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned