Language.

A language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds

and written symbols which are used by the people of a particular country
or region for talking or writing

Language is the use of a system of communication which consists of a set

of sounds or written symbols.

Learning.
Learning is the process of acquiring new, or modifying
existing, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences.[1] The ability
to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines,

Humans learn before birth and continue until death as a consequence of

ongoing interactions between people and their environment.

Teaching.
In education, teaching is the concerted sharing of knowledge and
experience, which is usually organized within a discipline and, more
generally, the provision of stimulus to the psychological and i
Preplanned behaviours informed by learning principles and child
development theory which directs and guides instruction to ensure
desired students outcomes. Ntellectual growth of a person by another
person or artifact. The job or profession of a teacher. Something that is
taught: the ideas and beliefs that are taught by a person, religion, etc.
 Structural linguistics and behavioral
psychology

Structural linguistics is an approach to linguistics originating from the work

of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and is part of the overall approach
of structuralism. Structural linguistics involves collecting a corpus of
utterances and then attempting to classify all of the elements of the
corpus at their different linguistic levels:
the phonemes, morphemes, lexical categories, noun phrases, verb
phrases, and sentence types.[1]

Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, published posthumously in 1916,

stressed examining language as a static system of interconnected units. He
is thus known as a father of modern linguistics for bringing about the shift
from diachronic (historical) to synchronic (non-historical) analysis, as well
as for introducing several basic dimensions of semiotic analysis that are
still important today. Two of these are his key methods
of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis (or 'associations' as Saussure
was still calling them),[2] which define units syntactically and lexically,
respectively, according to their contrast with the other units in the system.

Behaviorism, also known as behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning

based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through
conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction with the
environment. Behaviorists believe that our responses to environmental
stimuli shape our actions.

According to this school of thought, behavior can be studied in a

systematic and observable manner regardless of internal mental states.
Basically, only observable behavior should be considered—
cognitions, emotions, and moods are far too subjective.
Generative linguistics and cognitive psychology
Linguistics, the scientific study of the structure of language, is a close
companion of cognitive psychology. The linguist Noam Chomsky changed
the way psychologists view language. He sees language as a complex,
partly innate system of abstract rules. Linguists and psychologists
sometimes disagree about exactly how language is learned and used. They
use different kinds of evidence to support their theories of language.

Constructivism is a philosophical viewpoint about the nature

of knowledge. Therefore, it represents an epistemological stance.

There are many flavors of constructivism, but one prominent theorist

is Jean Piaget, who focused on how humans make meaning in relation to
the interaction between their experiences and their ideas. He considered
himself to be a genetic epistemologist, meaning he was interested in the
genesis of knowledge. His views tended to focus on human development
in relation to what is occurring with an individual as distinct from
development influenced by other persons.

Zone of proximal development

The zone of proximal development, often abbreviated as ZPD, is the
difference between what a learner can do without help, and what they
can't do without teacher's assistance.[1] The concept was introduced, but
not fully developed, by psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) during the
last ten years of his life.[2] Vygotsky stated that a child follows an adult's
example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without
help.[3] Vygotsky and some other educators believe that the role of
education is to give children experiences that are within their zones of
proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their
individual learning such as skills and strategies.[4]
Communicative language teaching
Communicative language teaching (CLT), or the communicative approach,
is an approach to language teaching that emphasizes interaction as both
the means and the ultimate goal of study.

Language learners in environments utilizing CLT techniques, learn and

practice the target language through the interaction with one another and
the instructor, the study of "authentic texts" (those written in the target
language for purposes other than language learning), and through the use
of the language both in class and outside of class.

Learners converse about personal experiences with partners, and

instructors teach topics outside of the realm of traditional grammar, in
order to promote language skills in all types of situations. This method
also claims to encourage learners to incorporate their personal
experiences into their language learning environment, and to focus on the
learning experience in addition to the learning of the target language.[1]

According to CLT, the goal of language education is the ability to

communicate in the target language.[2] This is in contrast to previous views
in which grammatical competence was commonly given top priority.[3] CLT
also focuses on the teacher being a facilitator, rather than an instructor.
Furthermore, the approach is a non-methodical system that does not use
a textbook series to teach English, but rather works on developing sound
oral/verbal skills prior to reading and writing.
Method
In object-oriented programming, a method is a programmed procedure
that is defined as part of a class and included in any object of that class. A
class (and thus an object) can have more than one method. A method in
an object can only have access to the data known to that object, which
ensures data integrity among the set of objects in an application. A
method can be re-used in multiple objects.

Approach
An approach is a way of looking at teaching and learning. Underlying any
language teaching approach is a theoretical view of what language is, and
of how it can be learnt. An approach gives rise to methods, the way of
teaching something, which use classroom activities or techniques to help
learners learn.

Example
The communicative approach is the best-known current approach to
language teaching. Task-based teaching is a methodology associated with
it. Other approaches include the cognitive-code approach, and the aural-
oral approach (audiolingual method).

Technique
A technique is a particular method of doing an activity, usually a method
that involves practical skills.

Technique is skill and ability in an artistic, sporting, or other practical

activity that you develop through training and practice.
Behavioral approach
Human behavior is learned, thus all behavior can be unlearned and
newbehaviors learned in its place. Behaviorism is concerned primarily with
theobservable and measurable aspects of human behavior. Therefore
when behaviorsbecome unacceptable, they can be unlearned.
Behaviorism views development as acontinuous process in which children
play a relatively passive role. It is alsoa general approach that is used in a
variety of settings including both clinicaland educational.

Behaviorists assume that the only things that are real (or at leastworth
studying) are the things we can see and observe. We cannot see the mind
,the id, or the unconscious, but we can see how people act, react and
behave. From behavior we may be able to make inferences about the
minds and the brain,but they are not the primary focus of the
investigation. What people do,not what they think or feel, is the object of
the study. Likewise the behaviorist does not look to the mind or the brain
to understandthe causes of abnormal behavior. He assumes that the
behavior representscertain learned habits, and he attempts to determine
how they are learned.

The nativist theory

Noam Chomsky is perhaps the best known and the most influential
linguist of the second half of the Twentieth Century. He has made a
number of strong claims about language : in particular, he suggests that
language is an innate faculty - that is to say that we are born with a set of
rules about language in our heads which he refers to as the 'Universal
Grammar'. The universal grammar is the basis upon which all human
languages build. If a Martian linguist were to visit Earth, he would deduce
from the evidence that there was only one language, with a number of
local variants. Chomsky gives a number of reasons why this should be so.
Among the most important of these reasons is the ease with which
children acquire their mother tongue. He claims that it would be little
short of a miracle if children learnt their language in the same way that
they learn mathematics or how to ride a bicycle. This, he says, is because :
Children are exposed to very little correctly formed language. When
people speak, they constantly interrupt themselves, change their minds,
make slips of the tongue and so on. Yet children manage to learn their
language all the same.

Children do not simply copy the language that they hear around them.
They deduce rules from it, which they can then use to produce sentences
that they have never heard before. They do not learn a repertoire of
phrases and sayings, as the behaviourists believe, but a grammar that
generates an infinity of new sentences.

Functional approach
The Functional Approach is considered to be the second paradigm of
psychology. This idea focuses on the function of the mental processes
which involves consciousnesses. (Gordon, 1995) This approach was
developed by William James in 1890. James was the first American
Psychologist and wrote the first general textbook regarding psychology. In
this approach he reasoned that the mental act of consciousness must be
an important biological function (Schacter et al., 2011) He also noted that
it was a psychologist's job to understand these functions so they can
discover how the mental process operates. This idea was an alternative
approach to the structuralism, which was the first paradigm(Gordon,
1995).

In second language acquisition (SLA) functional approaches are of

similarities with Chomsky's Universal Grammar (UG). Focus is on the use
of language in real situations (performance), as well as underlying
knowledge (competence).
Social interaction and language development
There is now considerable evidence that social interaction plays a critical
role in language acquisition: Typically developing infants’ learning of new
language material is excellent when language is experienced during social
interaction with a live person, but virtually nonexistent when that same
information is presented via a non-interactive machine; moreover, studies
of children with autism implicate dual impairments in social and linguistic
processing. These data have led to the theoretical hypothesis that social
interaction “gates” language learning (Kuhl, 2007; 2011). However, the
underlying brain mechanisms by which the social gating hypothesis might
work are not well understood. This chapter reviews the brain and
behavioral data on the effects of social interaction on language acquisition
in children, and relates these findings to work on the acquisition of
communicative repertoires in non-human animals. We then review
candidate brain systems that could explain the existing results. Finally, the
chapter discusses new neuroscience approaches to the question, including
studies that shed light on how the infant brain responds to speech, which
may provide breakthrough data regarding social factors influencing
language acquisition.

Competence and performance

Chomsky separates competence and performance; he describes
'competence' as an idealized capacity that is located as a psychological or
mental property or function and ‘performance’ as the production of actual
utterances. In short, competence involves “knowing” the language and
performance involves “doing” something with the language. The difficulty
with this construct is that it is very difficult to assess competence without
assessing performance.
Comprehension and production
Para producir y comprender palabras y oraciones, las personas utilizan su
conocimiento de la estructura del lenguaje, su conocimiento de la
situación en que se encuentran, incluido el discurso anterior y la situación
local, y sus capacidades cognitivas, incluida la memoria, la atención y el
control motor

Nature and nurture

El debate entre la naturaleza y la nutrición es uno de los temas filosóficos
más antiguos dentro de la psicología. Entonces, ¿de qué se trata
exactamente?

La naturaleza se refiere a todos los genes y factores hereditarios que

influyen en quienes somos, desde nuestra apariencia física hasta las
características de nuestra personalidad.

Nurture se refiere a todas las variables ambientales que afectan a quienes

somos, incluidas nuestras experiencias de la primera infancia, cómo nos
criamos, nuestras relaciones sociales y la cultura que nos rodea.

input
Input refers to the exposure learners have to authentic language in use.
This can be from various sources, including the teacher, other learners,
and the environment around the learners. Input can be compared to
intake, which is input then taken in and internalized by the learner so it
can be applied.

Example
Acquisition theories emphasise the importance of comprehensible input,
which is language just beyond the competence of the learner, and
provides the ideal conditions for acquisition to happen.
Hemispherie lateralization
La lateralización hemisférica es uno de los temas que nos da muchas
pistas para un mejor reconocimiento de las funciones cerebrales. Las
emociones negativas están más relacionadas con el hemisferio
derecho. Quedó claro que en ambos hemisferios no se producían
simulaciones de emociones. La historia de la investigación muestra tres
principios sobre la lateralización de las emociones: 1- Se reconocen mejor
por el hemisferio derecho, 2- la expresión de las emociones de control y su
comportamiento relacionado se realiza por el hemisferio derecho, 3-El
hemisferio derecho es responsable de los sentimientos negativos y de la
izquierda Hemisferio por los positivos. Otro grupo que estudió la
característica asimétrica de la cara concluyó que los sentimientos
negativos están relacionados con el hemisferio derecho y los sentimientos
positivos con ambos hemisferios. Otras emociones expresadas negativas
que se dirigen hacia el lado derecho del campo visual se comprenden
adecuadamente. En una encuesta fMRI, la imagen que muestra los
sentimientos negativos se acompaña con un aumento en las actividades
del hemisferio derecho y la excitación positiva viene con el aumento de la
actividad del hemisferio izquierdo. Los EEG que se registraron en los
recién nacidos mostraron que la actividad del hemisferio derecho en los
recién nacidos que lloraron cuando se separaron de sus madres fue mayor
que en los que no lo hicieron.

Sociobiological critical period

In developmental psychology and developmental biology, a critical
period is a maturational stage in the lifespan of an organism during which
the nervous system is especially sensitive to certain environmental stimuli.
If, for some reason, the organism does not receive the appropriate
stimulus during this "critical period" to learn a given skill or trait, it may be
difficult, ultimately less successful, or even impossible, to develop some
functions later in life. Functions that are indispensable to an organism's
survival, such as vision, are particularly likely to develop during critical
periods. "Critical period" also relates to the ability to acquire one's first
language. Researchers found that people who passed the "critical period"
would not acquire their first language fluently.[1]

The natural approach

The natural approach developed by Tracy Terrell and supported by
Stephen Krashen is a language teaching approach which claims that
language learning is a reproduction of the way humans naturally acquire
their native language. The approach adheres to a communicative
approach to language teaching and rejects earlier methods such as the
audiolingual method and the situational language teaching
approach which Krashen and Terrell (1983) believe are not based on
“actual theories of language acquisition but theories of the structure of
language ”

Meaningful learning and rote learning

Rote learning is the memorization of information based on
repetition. Examples of rote learning include memorizing the alphabet,
numbers, and multiplication tables. Some consider rote learning to be a
necessary step in learning certain subjects.

Memorization isn’t the most effective way to learn, but it’s a method
many students and teachers still use. A common rote learning technique is
preparing quickly for a test, also known as cramming.

Meaningful learning involves understanding how all the pieces of an

entire concept fit together. The knowledge gained through meaningful
learning applies to new learning situations. This type of learning stays with
students for life.

Meaningful learning is active, constructive, and long-lasting, but most

importantly, it allows students to be fully engaged in the learning process.

Two important goals of all types of learning include retention and transfer.
“Retention” is the ability to remember the material at a later time.
“Transfer” is the ability to use prior knowledge to solve new problems.
Students achieve meaningful learning when both of these goals are
fulfilled.

Overgeneralization
the process of extending the application of a rule to items that
are excluded from it in the language norm, as when a child uses
the regularpast tense verb ending -ed of forms like I walked to produce
forms like *I goed or *I rided

Language aptitude.
Language aptitude refers to the potential that a person has for learning
languages. This potential is often evaluated using formal aptitude tests,
which predict the degree of success the candidate will have with a new
language. Aptitude tests vary but many include evaluation of ability to
manage sounds, grammatical structures, infer rules, and memory.

Intelligence and language learning

Learners of second language possess different characteristics that make
them different from each other. Intelligence is one of these
characteristics, which is considered to affect the acquisition of formal
structure of a second language when taught in a formal setting. However,
it is thought to not affect the development of communicative competence
of the language. The research aims at finding out whether this claim is
true or not. In order to do so, 20 tertiary level students learning English as
a second language were tested in terms of their intelligence, grammatical
proficiency and communicative competence. The results then were
compared to find out the relationship among these variables to determine
the effectiveness of intelligence on second language acquisition in terms
of grammatical structures of the language and also in terms of
communicative in Bangladeshi context.