Part 6: What Everyone Should Know about Second Language Acquisition.

Part 6 of 6 of Professor Bill VanPatten's MiWLA 2013 presentation: What Everyone Should Know about Second Language Acquisition.

[@ganqqwerty]

How about using some grammar rules to make the input more comprehensible? Like you show english learner that there's "ed" at the end of the sentence and it usually means that stuff happens in the past. So the student will start noticing those ed's more in his input and the acquisition will be faster?

[@backpackingwithlidia3559]

I would say that someone that picks up skills quicker does demonstrate aptitude. People are known to make the most language progression in the first five years of acquisition. Therefore, speed of learning is a factor. If you practice something but it takes you 3 years longer than others, it wasn't something that came naturally to you.

[@4sername]

you completely missed his point

[@eenstah]

Damn! The purpose of grammar is to describe what we speak and make sense of how we speak. It cannot be as a tool that helps you speak L2

[@ernestoberger7589]

It is ok to keep doing what you do, but do know that students are not acquiring the language. Ok, how could we teach a language? Oh, it is complicated. It takes time and it has to do with real communication, you know? Could we teach some vocabulary and grammar rules in context? No, it doesn't work. So we could do some acting or engage in some role-playing. Nope, it doesn't work either. Ok, what does work then? Oh, the language acquisition is far too complicated. Just keep doing what you are doing. Keep pouring water in those leaky buckets and charging for it. Ignore any of those thoughts about you being a fraud that surfaces right before sleep.

[@uchuuseijin]

"The subject you're teaching is best taught outside of a classroom and without you, good luck!"

[@NeP516]

​@@uchuuseijinI know these are old comments, but TPRS is a classroom method that applies these findings and is proven to work

[@uchuuseijin]

@@NeP516 TPRS is a really good classroom paradigm, and if by "it works", you mean it's an effective method of giving students comprehensible input, that's true. I use TPRS-based techniques in my classes to the extent that my bosses and the parents allow. But it needs to be complemented with thousands of hours of extensive and intensive input and eventually conversation. And my bosses and parents don't allow as much as you would think.

[@RogerWazup007]

Given that teachers shouldn't teach rules, practice isn't really beneficial, and things like role-plays aren't communicative, how should teachers determine what to teach, how to teach it, what output if any to expect students to do, and how to assess students? If I make a TPRS story based on student interests and what's practical in their daily life, what else should be done with that? Should the class be teacher-centered and input-focused with little student language use? Should students keep track of vocab and structures at all?

[@uchuuseijin]

The best advice I ever got is that the classroom is a horrible place to learn language

[@terryrozmus]

This is interesting content, but the editing is so bad that it is easy to get lost in what the lecturer is saying. If you don't know how to edit, then DON'T edit. Leave the video in its raw form and let the viewer decide when they want to jump forward to skip sections they think they won't need to understand the concept.

[@MFM230]

I have tried to learn Spanish but have a big deficit in understanding most native speakers. I looked at this off and on for about a month and still do not see practical strategies in improving my acquisition.

[@RogerWazup007]

These videos are more about teaching, I think. I recommend listening to a variety of Spanish: different genres and formats from different countries. Listen to podcasts, watch KZbin videos, listen to the news, watch movies and series, play videogames with Spanish audio, etc. with Spanish from as many regions as possible. For podcasts, I think that Ciencia nuestra de cada día is from Spain, Estúpido Nerd is from Colombia, and La Banana Rancia is from Argentina.

[@ganqqwerty]

4-5 hours per day of listening to content you love, even if you understand 30%

[@spiritsplice]

Listen and read as much as you can everyday. Force yourself to use it and understand it as much as possible.

[@wilaustu]

this editing is unnecessary and makes the viewer fear they missed a part of the talk, which was very enlightening.

[@slmUSA]

If there are no errors, please talk about grades. Thanks.

[@stankinwooty04]

I believe language learning has to be strictly conversational audio based with practical conversations.

[@marconatrix]

Diddorol iawn, very interesting, but ... If we believe the speaker then we should simply sack all our language teachers and courses since they're clearly misguided and a waste of everyone's time and money. Just let people who need other languages to pick them up (acquire) willy-nilly sink-or-swim. That requires input, but anyone who actually needs another language will have the necessary input, since if you never hear or read, e.g. Swahili, then you clearly have no need to know anything about it, in a practical sense at least. But then ... We've all met foreigners, immigrants etc., who've just picked up English (or some other language we know well) and the result of such random 'acquisition' is often terrible English, often barely comprehensible. Even in some cases after literally years and years of exposure to native speech. When teaching skills in general, a beginner will often be unaware of his/her mistakes, or at least how to correct them so as to 'get it right'. That is the main rôle of the teacher/trainer, to point out how and why they've gone wrong. Why should language be so different? (Well of course it *could* be if language really is *very* different from all other learned skills). But the habitual errors of the "I just picked it up brigade" of L2 speakers, after sometimes decades of exposure, must surely point to the fact that without any formal teaching, without anyone gently making them aware of their errors, these mistakes will persist indefinitely leading to poor English skills and very imperfect communication. I rest my case --- Gu dé ur beachd fhéin? ;-)

[@slmUSA]

If we believe the speaker then we change the way we teach/study second language. We still need someone who leads the language learning but is centered around the learner. I wish more teachers would be required to learn how language is acquired. Clearly just picking language up willy-nilly by being immersed in it without comprehension or purpose does not work. That is evidenced by people who live and work immersed L2 and never become proficient at it.

[@jonknight4755]

I'm late to this party, but I think you're creating a false dichotomy when you suggest that the alternative to explicit grammar instruction is to pick up language "will-nilly sink-or-swim", and that it is essentially "random". I don't think that that's supported by the research and I don't think Van Patten would suggest that. If you imagine someone who lives in a new country and is exposed to a second language at work, while exhausted from doing a job, and then goes home and speaks to friends or family in their native tongue, there probably isn't going to be much acquisition going on because that person isn't really being exposed to (particularly) comprehensible input, and they're also not particularly engaged. Compare that with someone who is motivated and purposefully seeks out second language materials that are at their proper level, and engages with them deeply every day. They watch shows that they can understand, they read things that they can understand, and when it feels too easy they seek out something more difficult. They pay attention to conversations at work, make note of what people are trying to say and engage with people in their second language, trying new phrases and words and negotiating meaning. That second person is going to acquire the language much more quickly, and deeply, than the first. And, they are still not receiving any explicit grammar instruction. Language instructors are not obsoleted by this approach, in my opinion; it just means that their value lies in acting as curators of content for learners (content that is interesting, comprehensible, and, ideally, that includes form IE grammar and vocabulary that the learner's "internal syllabus" is prepared to integrate), offering occasional negative feedback (correction), encouraging good learning behaviours, and giving students opportunities for skill practice. Also I should add that the question of whether or not (or how much) explicit instruction is able to translate into implicit language acquisition is not settled science either. So it's definitely still up for debate to what degree an instructor is able to find ways to help students.