How Languages are Learned Quotes

“Robert DeKeyser (1998), Richard Schmidt (2001) and others have suggested that learners must pay attention at first to any aspect of the language that they are trying to learn or produce. ‘Pay attention’ in this context is accepted to mean ‘using cognitive resources to process information’ but there is a limit to how much information a learner can pay attention to. Thus, learners at the earliest stages will tend to use most of their resources to understand the main words in a message. In that situation, they may not notice the grammatical morphemes attached to some of the words, especially those that do not substantially affect meaning. Gradually, through experience and practice, information that was new becomes easier to process, and learners become able to access it quickly and even automatically. This frees up cognitive processing resources to notice other aspects of the language that, in turn, gradually become automatic.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Lydia White (1991) and others agree that acquisition of many grammatical features of the new language takes place naturally when learners are engaged in meaningful use of the language. However, they also suggest that, because the nature of UG is altered by the acquisition of the first language, second language learners may sometimes need explicit information about what is not grammatical in the second language. Otherwise, they may assume that some structures of the first language have equivalents in the second language when, in fact, they do not. In Chapter 2, we saw a good example of this in White’s study of the placement of English adverbs in sentences produced by French speakers.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Bonnie Schwartz (1993), for example, concludes that instruction and feedback change only superficial aspects of language performance and do not affect the underlying systematic knowledge of the new language. She argues that language acquisition is based on the availability of natural language in the learner’s environment. Interaction with speakers of that language is sufficient to trigger the acquisition of the underlying structure of the language.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Decisions about when to start second language instruction in schools should be based on realistic goals and on realistic estimates of how long it takes to achieve them. One or two hours a week will not produce advanced second language speakers, no matter how young they were when they began. Older learners may be able to make better use of the limited time they have for second language instruction.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“For example, in Quebec, responding to pressure from parents, the age at which instruction in English as a second language began was lowered in recent years from about age 9 or 10 to age 6, but the total number of hours of instruction was not increased. Rather, the number of minutes of instruction per week was spread over more years (Lightbown, 2012). Thus, after years of classes, learners who have had an early start may feel frustrated by the lack of progress, and their motivation to continue may be diminished. Clearly the age at which instruction begins is not the only variable that determines success in the second language classroom.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“research has shown that older children and adolescents progress more rapidly than younger children particularly in the early stages of learning. The knowledge and skills that older learners are able to acquire in a relatively short period of time will satisfy the needs of many learners whose goal is to use the language for everyday communication, to succeed on foreign language examinations, or to read texts for an academic course rather than to speak with native-like pronunciation.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“adults and adolescents can make considerable and rapid progress in their proficiency in a second language in contexts where they use the language in social, personal, professional, or academic interaction.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Robert DeKeyser (2000) carried out a replication of the Johnson and Newport study, working with Hungarian immigrants to the United States. He also found a strong relationship between age of immigration and performance on the judgement task. In addition, he asked participants to take language aptitude tests and found that, for participants who began learning English as adults, aptitude scores were correlated with success. However, there was no such correlation for those who learned English in childhood. These findings appear to confirm the hypothesis that adult learners may learn language in a way that is different from the way young children learn.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Mark Patkowski (1980) studied the relationship between age and the acquisition of features of a second language other than pronunciation. He hypothesized that, even if accent were ignored, only those who had begun learning their second language before the age of 15 could achieve full, native-like mastery of that language. Patkowski studied 67 highly educated immigrants to the United States. They had started to learn English at various ages, but all had lived in the United States for more than five years. He compared them to 15 native-born Americans with a similarly high level of education, whose variety of English could be considered the second language speakers’ target language. The main question in Patkowski’s research was: ‘Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning English later?’ However, he also compared learners on the basis of other characteristics and experiences that some people have suggested might be as good as age in predicting or explaining a person’s success in mastering a second language. For example, he looked at the total amount of time a speaker had been in the United States as well as the amount of formal ESL instruction each speaker had had. A lengthy interview with each person was tape-recorded. Because Patkowski wanted to remove the possibility that the results would be affected by accent, he transcribed five-minute samples from the interviews and asked trained native-speaker judges to place each transcript on a scale from 0 (no knowledge of English) to 5 (a level of English expected from an educated native speaker). The findings were quite dramatic. The transcripts of all native speakers and 32 out of 33 second language speakers who had begun learning English before the age of 15 were rated 4+ or 5. The homogeneity of the pre-puberty learners suggests that, for this group, success in learning a second language was almost inevitable. In contrast, 27 of the 32 post-puberty learners were rated between 3 and 4, but a few learners were rated higher (4+ or 5) and one was rated at 2+. The performance of this group looked like the sort of range one would expect if one were measuring success in learning almost any kind of skill or knowledge: some people did extremely well; some did poorly; most were in the middle.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“older learners are more efficient than younger learners. By using their metalinguistic knowledge, memory strategies, and problem-solving skills, they make the most of second or foreign language instruction. In educational settings, learners who begin learning a second language at primary school level do not always achieve greater proficiency in the long run than those who begin in adolescence. Furthermore, there are countless anecdotes about older learners (adolescents and adults) who achieve excellence in the second language.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“To be sure, many adult second language learners achieve excellent language skills. One often sees reference to Joseph Conrad, a native speaker of Polish who became a major writer in the English language, and it is not uncommon to find adult second language learners with a rich vocabulary, sophisticated syntax, and effective pragmatic skills, even though there may be subtle differences between their language use and that of those who began learning the language while very young.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Second language learners are not always aware of their individual cognitive or perceptual learning styles, but virtually all learners, particularly older learners, have strong beliefs and opinions about how their instruction should be delivered. These beliefs are usually based on previous learning experiences and the assumption (right or wrong) that a particular type of instruction is the best way for them to learn.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“example, it has been observed that Japanese students are often reluctant to speak English in communicative lessons despite high levels of motivation to learn the language. Furthermore, when students with high levels of English language proficiency do communicate they often speak with a strong Japanese accent and intentionally produce grammatical errors for fear that they might be perceived as considering themselves to be superior (Greer 2000).”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“They were divided into four categories that are described below along with examples of the motivational behaviours included within each. 1     Teacher discourse: arousing curiosity or attention, promoting autonomy, stating communicative purpose/utility of activity 2     Participation structure: group work/pair work 3     Activity design: individual competition, team competition, intellectual challenge, tangible task product 4     Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation and activity design: effective praise, elicitation of self/peer correction session, class applause. In each lesson, the learners’ motivation was measured in terms of their level of engagement. The proportion of students who paid attention, who actively participated, and who eagerly volunteered during activities was calculated. A three-level scale was used to measure engagement in each observed lesson: very low (a few students), low (one third to two thirds of the students) and high (more than two thirds of the students). Learners also completed a questionnaire about their motivation levels specifically related to their EFL class. The researchers found significant positive correlations between the teachers’ motivational practices, the learners’ engagement behaviours, and the learners’ self-reports on the questionnaire. The researchers acknowledge that correlation results do not indicate cause–effect relationships. Nevertheless, the findings are important because this is the first study to provide ‘any empirical evidence concerning the concrete, classroom-specific impact of language teachers’ motivational strategies’ (Guilloteaux and Dörnyei 2008: 72).”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Alexander Guiora and his colleagues (1972) found support for the claim that inhibition is a negative force, at least for second language pronunciation performance. One study involved an analysis of the effects of small doses of alcohol, known for its ability to reduce inhibition, on pronunciation. Study participants who drank small amounts of alcohol did better on pronunciation tests than those who did not drink any. While results such as these are interesting, they may have more to do with performance than with learning. We may also note, in passing, that when larger doses of alcohol were administered, pronunciation rapidly deteriorated!”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Nevertheless, Michael Erard’s (2012) review of the cases of some of history’s most successful learners of multiple languages shows that their unusual talent was also associated with a willingness to work hard at tasks that many would consider too boring or difficult, such as using word cards to study vocabulary.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“many cases of young adults who find foreign language learning exceedingly difficult. They identified several ways in which these students differ from successful learners. Most perform poorly on at least some of the measures that make up aptitude tests. Some have problems with certain kinds of verbal skills, even in their own language. What is perhaps most important about this research is that, with great effort and instructional support, some of these students are able to succeed in spite of their difficulties. The challenge is to find instructional approaches that meet the needs of learners with a variety of aptitude profiles.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“all learners benefited from the deductive instruction regardless of differences in aptitude.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Over several decades, the most widely used aptitude measures have been the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) (Carroll and Sapon 1959) and the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery (PLAB) (Pimsleur 1966). All the tests are based on the view that aptitude has several components, for example, the ability to identify and memorize new sounds, understand the function of particular words in sentences, figure out grammatical rules from language samples, and remember new words.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“1a What language do you speak best? Do you speak more than one language equally well? 1b When did you begin to learn this language (these languages)? 2     Which second or foreign language(s) have you learned with the most success? 3     Which second or foreign language(s) have you learned with the least success? 4     For the languages you mentioned in response to questions 2 and 3, answer the following questions in the appropriate columns:   Languages learned successfully Languages not learned successfully How old were you when you first tried to learn the language?                                                             Did you have a choice about learning this language or were you required to learn it?                                                           Do you currently speak this language regularly?                                                           Do you regularly read this language for information or enjoyment?                                                           How much of your learning experience with this language was in a foreign language classroom?                                                           If you no longer use this language on a daily basis, can you estimate how many years you spent learning or using it?                                                           Estimate how many hours of classroom instruction you had for this language.                                                           How much time have you spent living in a place where the language is spoken?                                                           Have you used the language to learn other subjects at school? At what level (elementary, secondary, university)?                                                           Do you have personal or emotional attachments to this language? For example, do you have peers or family members who speak this language?                                                           Do/did you enjoy studying the grammar of this language?                                                           Do/did you enjoy studying vocabulary in this language?                                                           Are/were you a successful student in other school subjects? Do you think of yourself as a person who likes to socialize? Do you think of yourself as a person who learns a new language easily? Photocopiable © Oxford University Press Table 3.1 Individual differences in language learning experience”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“learners who were given pronunciation lessons emphasizing stress and rhythm were judged to be easier to understand than learners who received lessons focused on individual sounds.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“learners sometimes fail to notice certain language forms—grammatical morphemes, vocabulary words, syntactic patterns, pragmatic features—when their focus is on understanding meaning.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“when learners focus primarily on meaning, they may not be able to also pay attention to the sounds that make up the words.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Even with instruction and good strategies, the task of acquiring an adequate vocabulary is daunting. What does it mean to ‘know’ a word: •  Grasp the general meaning in a familiar context? •  Provide a definition or a translation equivalent? •  Provide appropriate word associations? •  Identify its component parts or etymology? •  Use the word to complete a sentence or to create a new sentence? •  Use it metaphorically? •  Understand a joke that uses homonyms (words that sound alike but mean different things, such as ‘cents’, ‘sense’, ‘scents’)? Second language learners whose goal is to use the language for both social and academic purposes must learn to do all these things.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Research on vocabulary learning through reading without focused instruction confirms that some vocabulary can be learned without explicit instruction (see Chapter 6, Study 17). On the other hand, Jan Hulstijn and Batia Laufer (2001) and others provide evidence that vocabulary development is more successful when learners are fully engaged in activities that require them to attend carefully to the new words and even to use them in productive tasks. Izabella Kojic-Sabo and Patsy Lightbown (1999) found that effort and the use of good learning strategies, such as keeping a notebook, looking words up in a dictionary, and reviewing what has been learned were associated with better vocabulary development. Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman (2009) provides many practical suggestions for teaching vocabulary and also for helping learners to continue learning outside the classroom.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Some theorists have argued that second language learners, like children learning their first language, can learn a great deal of vocabulary with little intentional effort. Stephen Krashen (1989) has asserted that the best source of vocabulary growth is reading for pleasure. There is no doubt that reading is an important potential source of vocabulary development for second language learners as it is for first language learners. However, there are some problems with the notion that vocabulary growth through reading requires little effort. As noted above, it is difficult to infer the meaning of a new word from reading unless one already knows 95 per cent or more of the other words, and learners usually need to have many meaningful encounters with a word before they recognize it in new contexts or produce it in their own speaking and writing. As we saw in Chapter 1, Dee Gardner’s (2004) research demonstrates that certain types of words are rare in narratives. Thus, students who read mainly fiction may have little chance of learning words that are essential for their academic pursuits. Conversely, reading mainly science texts will not provide many opportunities to learn the vocabulary of social interaction.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Among the factors that make new vocabulary more easily learnable by second language learners is the frequency with which the word is seen, heard, and understood. Paul Nation (2001) reviews a number of studies suggesting that a learner needs to have many meaningful encounters with a new word before it becomes firmly established in memory. The estimates range as high as 16 times in some studies. Even more encounters may be needed before a learner can retrieve the word in fluent speech or automatically understand the meaning of the word when it occurs in a new context. The ability to understand the meaning of most words without focused attention is essential for fluent reading as well as for fluent speaking.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“The first step in knowing a word is simply to recognize that it is a word. Paul Meara and his colleagues (2005) have developed tests that take advantage of this fact. Some of these tests take the form of word lists, and learners are instructed to check ‘yes’ or ‘no’ according to whether or not they know the word. Each list also includes some items that look like English words but are not. The number of real words that the learner identifies is adjusted for guessing by a factor that takes account of the number of non-words that are also chosen. Such a procedure is more effective than it might sound. A carefully constructed list can be used to estimate the vocabulary size of even advanced learners. For example, if shown the following list: ‘frolip, laggy, scrule, and albeit’, a proficient speaker of English would know that only one of these words is a real English word, albeit a rare and somewhat odd one. On the other hand, even proficient speakers might recognize none of the following items: ‘goniometer, micelle, laminitis, throstle’. Even our computer’s spell-checker rejected two out of four, but all are real English words, according to the New Oxford Dictionary of American English.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“Marcella Hu and Paul Nation (2000) showed that, in order to understand a text without frequent stops to consult a dictionary, one needs to know more than 95 per cent of the words—a rare case for second language learners at most stages of acquisition. Although the two or three thousand most frequent words in English make up as much as 80–90 per cent of most non-technical texts, less frequent words are crucial to the meaning of many things we hear and read. For example, the meaning of a newspaper article about a court case may be lost without the knowledge of words such as ‘testimony’, ‘alleged’, or ‘accomplice’.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

“As Nick Ellis (2009: 153) put it, ‘The language calculator has no “clear” button.’ In learning something new, we build on what we already know.”
― Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned