Affect in FL and SL Learning

1. Affect in FL and SL Learning A Practical Guide to Creating Low-Anxiety Classroom Atmosphere

2. Think about it… • Why is it important to understand research and theory as one prepares to teach a Foreign Language? • Think of how you learned a SL in Middle/High School. What methods do you recall your teacher using? Can you relate them to the research-based theories that underlie the acquisition of SL? • Learning a Foreign Language is like learning…..??..... Fill in the remainder of the sentence and explain your analogy.

3. Forward (page ix) • Stephen Krashen - Two conditions are necessary for acquisition to take place: • 1- Learner needs access to comprehensible input (I + 1). • 2- Learner needs a low or weak affective filter. • Variables exist with motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. • Most prior research focused on anxiety and oral language production. • Professor Young focuses on anxiety within the four skill areas: Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking.

4. Preface (pages xi-xiii) • Why does FL learning have such a great potential to evoke anxiety in otherwise well-functioning individuals? • First, some anxiety is not true anxiety from learning the FL but a response to learning difficulties one experiences in the native language. • True FL anxiety is based upon unrealistic reactions to one’s ability in the TL (target language). • Second, students vary. The same teaching/testing approaches may produce anxiety for some, not others.

5. Preface (pages xi-xiii) • Some students may judge an activity to be “comfortable” while others perceive it to be “stressful”. • While teachers must do what they can to reduce anxiety, it is important to realize that some anxiety is intrinsic to SL learning. • WHY can learning L2 be so uncomfortable? • Learners are put in the position of needing to communicate something meaningful without sufficient command of the language.

6. Preface (pages xi-xiii) • The genuineness of presenting the self to others may be threatened. • Learners are confronted with the probability that the world will perceive them differently. (Think of this in relation to ages of learners – elem., middle, high school, adult) • Similar to the discomfort felt when wearing unflattering clothing. • Book addresses the part of FL anxiety we, as teachers, can control – anxiety emanating from specific classroom practices.

7. Preface (pages xi-xiii) • Language learning is ultimately controlled BY THE LEARNER – it is important that curricula reflect this underlying reality. • Important to also include the learner in this dialog. What re his/her feelings about language learning? Make this a fundamental part of the classroom. (Look at Appendix item, page 247 on).

8. INTRODUCTION: Part I Chapter 1 - Affect in FL and SL Learning: A Practical Guide to Creating a Low-Anxiety Classroom Atmosphere

9. Chapter 1 (pages 3-5) • Purpose of the textbook – to offer “concrete examples of language teaching approaches, practices and materials to help reduce the frustration and discomfort of learners in the process of learning FL/SL.” (p.3) • WHY? Enrollment in courses decreases after basic requirements met. We need to be advocates for our trade and retain more language learners. • Page 4 shows survey results of students finding the learning of FL to be unnecessarily unpleasant. (YIKES!). • Learning a FL is different than other subjects. You are very vulnerable. It’s threatening. The classroom atmosphere must be one of acceptance and mutual respect. (p.5)

10. Chapter 1 (pages 5-9) • One’s speech is part of one’s self, especially pronunciation. • The instructor can GREATLY influence the class atmosphere. • It is important to view the activities during the class through the affective filter lens. • Organization of the book: • I: FL Learning Anxiety – Theory and Research • II: Heart of the volume – Anxiety in 4 skills • III: Individual differences – the learner’s native language skills and ways instructors can identify weak language learners. Also – gender-based differences, learning styles

11. LANGUAGE ANXIETY THEORY AND RESEARCH: Part II Chapter 2 – A Perspective on FL Learning: From Body to Mind to Emotions

12. Chapter 2 (page 13) “Collectively, we can be more insightful, more intelligent than we can possibly be individually.” –Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (1990) • The field of Second Language Acquisition (“how people learn FL or SL”) is in its infancy compared to other disciplines. • A variety of disciplines contribute to our knowledge of language learning. • Language learning is a symbiosis of the study of language and the study of all that constitutes humankind. (Great summary!) • “To study how we learn a new language is to study how the body, mind, and emotions fuse to create self-expression.” (p.13)

13. Chapter 2: The Body (page 14) “We are as much as we see.” –Henry David Thoreau, Journal (April 10, 1841) • Mid 20th century – psychology and linguistics are great contributors to FL teaching pedagogy. • 1950s & 1960s – structural/descriptive linguists – focus on WHAT (what are the differences/similarities between native language and FL). Strong use of contrastive analysis and visual, surface-level language learning. • Same time period, work of behaviorists (Pavlov, Skinner) focused on the most effective approaches to learning. Skinner’s description of language learning – “the controlled practice of verbal operants under carefully designed schedules of reinforcement.” (p.14)

14. Chapter 2 (page 14-15) • Audiolingual Method (ATM) – 50s, 60s, 70s – combined behaviorist with descriptive/contrastive approach – emphasized oral drills based on habit formation. • ATM did not permit free expression for free of committing errors that would then create bad habits. • During these decades, visible human acts were the foci of SL learning studies.

15. Chapter 2: The Mind (page 15) “Think, think, think.” –Winnie the Pooh • Noam Chomsky (1959) – Language is more than a question of observable stimuli and responses and more than a description of language structures. • Chomsky saw gaps. Categorizing grammatical structures didn’t explain how language was acquired. Habit and mimicry didn’t explain novel utterances. • LAD (Language Acquisition Device): All humans possess this “organ of the mind”. Argued that the mind is not a “tabla rasa” but that language learning is a PROCESS. • For Chomsky, INTERACTION is critical – knowledge and belief interacting with the social and physical environment.

16. Chapter 2: The Mind (pages 15-16) • Chomsky’s work did not contribute substantively to language learning. It did, however, serve to redirect the course of linguistics’ research that ultimately contributed to SL acquisition research. • Cognitive psychologists (1960s) argued that meaning, understanding and knowing played roles in language learning. • The shift began from focus on exclusive use of descriptive knowledge (the body) to explanatory knowledge (the mind). • Domains of inquiry moved from WHAT to HOW (How do learners learn a second language?).

17. Chapter 2: The Mind (pages 16-17) • Schema Theory: a theory that attempts to explain how knowledge is organized in the mind. • Mind uses cognitive devices such as advanced organizers. These prepare the learner to acquire information that would be hard to acquire otherwise. • An advanced organizer bridges the gap between what is about to be acquired and what was previously learned. (i.e. titles) • Knowledge consists of basic units of memory (schemata/scripts/frames) that are related to one another. To understand what we hear/read/see, see make assumptions on prior schema.

18. Chapter 2: The Mind (pages 17-18) • Story (page 17) illustrates one way that we use preexisting knowledge to comprehend information. • Within a Schema Theory framework, language learning becomes an interactive process that emerges when the learner’s preexisting knowledge (such a linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cultural knowledge) and life experiences join with new knowledge (the FL and all that the study of that language encompasses). (p.17) • Current instructional models (task-oriented language instruction, cooperative learning, content-based language instruction) focus on how the mind works in the acquisition of FL.

19. Chapter 2: Emotions (page 18) “Ahab never thinks, he just feels, feels, feels.” –Herman Melville, Moby Dick • 1980s – Brain scientists realized that cognition research was only explaining a part of how the brain works. They had neglected emotion which had been virtually ignored. • Unconscious thought/emotion, not merely conscious, became part of brain research. Emotions can exist before cognition and be independent of cognition. • Example: A condition arises (i.e. life threatening) causing the brain to focus on one thing – a solution to the problem. Emotions can monopolize the brain’s circuitry. Emotions preceded the existence of language (Calvin, Goleman 1996).

20. Chapter 2: Emotions (pages 19-20) • Emotion, or affective variables, such as motivation, anxiety, and attitudes (examined to some extent before the 1980s) was scientifically validated as a legitimate domain of inquiry. • Moving from WHAT and HOW to WHY (Why are there differences in language learners?). • Schumann (1978) – acculturation model and social distance hypothesis. The greater the the degree of social distance, the less success of the learner. Affect can short-circuit learning. • Negative attitudes toward the learning situation short-circuit language learning. • Stephen Krashen(1982) SL Acquisition Theory takes Affect into account. Led the way for Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning and the Natural Approach (need for relaxed class).

21. Chapter 2: Language Learning (p.20-21)“Declare the past, diagnose the present, foretell the future.” –Hippocrates of Cos, 460-377 B.C. • Research in one theory/approach almost inevitably overlaps with another. • Minds comprise thoughts and emotions that do not function independently of the body. • Explaining how learners acquire SL is not easily simplified. • The body, emotional mind and cognitive mind work together to generate self-expression in the foreign language.