Psycholinguistic perspectives on English language teaching

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Odesa I.I. Mechnikov National University (Odesa, Ukraine)

Department of English Grammar

Psycholinguistic perspectives on English language teaching

Olena Khromchenko

Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences

Senior Lecturer

Valentyna Zhuk

Senior Lecturer

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of designing a learning process in the English language classroom taking into consideration psycholinguistic perspectives of the English language teaching. To solve this problem the teachers need a clear idea of how people think when learn language. The main purpose of the article is to dwell on psycholinguistic peculiarities of the English language teaching and systematize the requirements to the printed language materials exploited in the language classroom. Educators propose the following phases ofpupils ' development in terms of language knowledge and skills: ignorance, exposure, noticing, understanding, practice, active use. According to Stephen Krashen's input hypothesis the process of learning is impossible without comprehensible input. It is defined as the spoken or written language learners are exposed to. The scientists (J. Scrivener, S. Thornbury) differentiate between restricted and authentic exposure to language. The examples of authentic exposure may be observed when the learners read articles, product labels, notices, posters, menus; listen to small talks; watch films in the original. When the learning texts are especially devised to be applicable to learners and tend to draw pupils attention to particular bits of information we deal with restricted exposure. To sum it up, among the described principles applicable to developing printed materials exploited by the teachers in the English language classroom the most essential ones are as follows: materials should have a noticeable effect on learners, stimulate their curiosity, interest and attention; materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles; materials should take into account that learners have different motives, emotions and attitudes to the process of learning. The prospects for further research in this field are to develop new means and techniques aimed at activating learners' language competence considering the psychological basis of this process.

Key words: input, output, exposure, material, acquisition.

Олена Хромченко, кандидат педагогічних наук, старший викладач кафедри граматики англійської мови Одеського національного університету імені І.І. Мечникова (Одеса, Україна)

Валентина Жук, старший викладач кафедри граматики англійської мови Одеського національного університету імені І.І. Мечникова (Одеса, Україна)

Психолого-педагогічні особливості викладання англійської мови

Анотація

educational school teaching english

Стаття присвячена проблемі проєктування навчального процесу в умовах викладання англійської мови в школі з урахуванням психолінгвістичних особливостей цього процесу. Для вирішення цієї проблеми вчителі потребують чіткого уявлення про те, як думають люди під час вивчення мови. Основна мета статті полягає у висвітленні психолінгвістичних особливостей викладання англійської мови та визначенні основних вимог щодо друкованих мовних матеріалів, які вчителя використовують у процесі викладання англійської мови. Науковці пропонують такі етапи розвитку мовних знань та вмінь учнів: незнання, відкриття, помічання, розуміння, практика, активне застосування. Згідно з науковою позицією С. Крашена процес вивчення іноземної мови неможливий без зрозумілого вхідного навчального матеріалу. Вхідний матеріал є єдиною умовою формування лінгвістичної компетенції учнів. Вчені (Дж. Скрівенер, С. Торнбері) розрізняють обмежене та справжнє представлення до мови. Приклади справжньої експозиції або представлення можна спостерігати, коли учні читають статті, етикетки виробів, повідомлення, плакати, меню; слухають автентичні тексти; дивляться фільми в оригіналі. Коли навчальні тексти спеціально розроблені з навчальною метою та спрямовані на те, щоб привертати увагу учнів до певної інформації, ми маємо справу з обмеженим представленням до мови. Підсумовуючи, хочемо підкреслити, що серед описаних принципів стосовно розробки друкованих матеріалів, які вчителя використовують в процесі викладання англійської мови, найбільш важливими є такі: матеріали повинні мати помітний вплив на учнів, стимулювати їх цікавість, інтерес та увагу; матеріали повинні враховувати, що учні відрізняються за стилями навчання; матеріали повинні враховувати, що учні мають різні мотиви, емоції та ставлення до процесу навчання. Перспективою подальших досліджень у цій галузі є розробка нових засобів та прийомів, спрямованих на активізацію мовної компетенції учнів, враховуючи психологічні основи цього процесу.

Ключові слова: вхідний матеріал, вихідний матеріал, засвоєння.

Statement of the problem

In this challenging and hard time all the educators face the problem of designing and implementing into practice new up-to-date means and techniques of teaching a foreign language. The problem of creating and planning a lesson which aim is not only to delight and please the learners but also teach them new language material or a grammar item has always been the most crucial one. To solve this problem the teachers need a clear idea of how people think when learn language.

Analysis of recent research and publications

This issue still remains important among modern scholars and educators: principles of second language learning (S.D. Krashen, W. Littlewood, S. McDonough), course designing in ELT (J. Harmer, D. Laurillard), the importance of interaction in the English language classroom (R. Allwright, M. Breen, C. Brumfit).

The ultimate objective of the article is to dwell on psycholinguistic peculiarities of the English language teaching and systematize the requirements to the printed language materials exploited in the language classroom.

Outline of the main material of the article

In his book “Learning Teaching” Jim Scrivener proposes the following phases of pupils' development in terms of language knowledge and skills: ignorance, exposure, noticing, understanding, practice, active use (Scrivener, 2005: 111). The mentioned stages reflect the process of learning that is unattainable without comprehensible input according to Stephen Krashen's input hypothesis. The scientist defines input as the spoken or written language learners are exposed to. He underlines the importance of comprehensible input which means that the teachers need mark the zone of proximal development of the pupils as the perfect one in which tasks offered are challenging learners. This kind of tasks can be fulfilled by the pupils with a bit of help from the part of the teacher. Stephen Krashen lays great emphasis on the belief that specific way the teacher can help those who study is to control or modify the input to ensure that it is intelligible. The examples of it may be observed when people talk to young children (using caretaker speech) and when talking to learners (foreigner speech). In both situations, the input is simplified and delivered at a lower pace. The scientists (J. Scrivener, S. Thornbury) differentiate between restricted (simplified) and authentic exposure to language taking into consideration the fact whether the texts are specially arranged for pupils or are unadapted and taken from non-specialist sources. The distinction is essential from a teaching perspective as it helps achieve special teaching objectives. The samples of authentic exposure may be observed when the learners read articles, product labels, notices, posters, menus; listen to small talks; watch films in the original. When talking about restricted exposure, we should keep in mind that the learning texts are especially devised to be applicable to learners and tend to draw pupils attention to particular bits of information.

According to Michael Long's interaction hypothesis input is most efficient when it has been made comprehensible by means of negotiation of meaning. It occurs if learners ask questions so as to clear up a misunderstanding or a gap in their knowledge). The proponents of cognitive learning theory (G. Asmundson, M. Davis, S. Hoffman) assert the intentional process of noticing features ofthe input emanate intake. Intake is defined as the part of the input taken into short-term memory, the first stage of accommodating it into learner's developing interlanguage system (Thornbury, 2010: 105-106). Means of facilitating learners noticing features of the input are known as consciousness-raising techniques. They comprise input enhancement and input flood. The first one takes place when some language item is highlighted by being printed or underlined. The second one occurs when one piece of information is repeated many times in the text. It is clear that the described techniques may be applied if the texts used in the classroom that are artificially elaborated.

In contrast to Krashen's ideas, the key point of output hypothesis lies in the statement that learners acquire language when they produce output in either spoken or written form, output is a crucial condition for language acquisition (P. Brown, M. Swain). The proponents of this theory state that learners need to be pushed not simply exposed to produce comprehensible output. Otherwise, they may understand the message but neglect the way the message is codified. Being pushed to produce language puts learners in a better position to understand their mistakes, notice gaps in their language knowledge. Transmission teaching style does not pique learners' interest, does not engage them in the process of learning new language items. Materials used by the teachers to facilitate the process of the learning provide sources of language input. Nowadays an ample scope of published of ELT material is at teachers' disposal. J. Edge, S. Garton, B. Tomlinson highlight that materials could be videos, DVDs, emails, YouTube, dictionaries, grammar books, workbooks, photocopied exercises, newspapers, live talks by invited native speakers. In these challenging times the language teachers must not forget that the Internet is also a source of materials with great potential. We should keep in mind that unlike published materials, what the teacher finds on the Internet may not have been written by professionals. As educators we need consider it critically and use with alertness. B. Tomlinson points out that materials development is both a field of study and a practical undertaking. As a field it studies the principles and procedures of the design, implementation and evaluation of language teaching materials. As a practical undertaking it alludes to anything created by teachers. Having analyzed the viewpoints of scientists (J. Edge, S. Garton, B. Tomlinson) we consider it necessary to generate and systematize main principles applicable to the development and designing of printed and supplementary materials employed for the teaching of the English language.

Materials should have a noticeable effect on learners, stimulate their curiosity, interest and attention (Hutchison, 2010: 107). It can be obtained by means of: novelty (offering unusual topics and activities to the pupils); variety (ending the monotony of a unit routine with an unpredictable surprising activity); attractive presentation in terms of topics, layout and illustrations (use of attractive colours, lots of white space, use of photographs). J. Edge underlines that attractiveness of materials has to be checked together with the learners; appealing content (topics of interest to the target learners).

Materials should help learners to feel secure. The task of a teacher is to build a sense of trust; to create environment in the classroom where pupils feel mental and emotional safety; to build confidence in them when they are functioning members of the society. Researchers (M. Burt, H. Dulay, S. Krashen) have found proofs that the less anxious the learner, the better language acquisition proceeds. Relaxed and comfortable students are able to learn more on shorter period of time. Most learners feel more comfortable with written materials with lots of white space than they deal with materials in which lots of different activities are crammed together on the same page; are more at ease with tests and illustrations that they can relate to their own culture than they are with those which appear to them to be culturally alien; are more relaxed with materials which are obviously trying to help them to learn than they are with materials which are always testing them.

Materials should help learners to develop confidence and promote learners' self-investment, encourage their intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement which stimulates both right and left- brain activities. It is the key principle of Lozanov's Suggestopedia which aim is to optimize the process of learning by means of redirecting unreasonable influences. Mechanical drills, rule learning, simple transformation activities usually lead to shallow learning.

The pupils should understand the importance and relevance of the things they are being taught. To build certainty a teacher may offer tasks which challenge learners to think and activities which try to “push” them slightly beyond their existing level of proficiency by engaging them in tasks which are, on the one hand, stimulating, and, on the other hand, are problematic and achievable.

Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use. In ELT the expression authentic materials is used to refer to samples of language that were not designed for language learning purposes but which are used in this way. J. Edge, S. Garton express an idea that authentic reading texts which the scientists call textual realia such as brochures, leaflets, menus, and timetables soften the boundaries between the classroom and authentic social contexts. The learners' attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input. Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes. Most researchers (T. Hutchinson, J. Scrivener, А. Waters) emphasize that learners should be given opportunities to use language for communication rather than just to practice it in situations controlled by the teacher and by the materials. Otherwise, it has a destructive influence on the accuracy and fluency of the learners. Materials should lead to a communicative task (Hutchinson, 2010: 109-110). Interaction can be achieved through: information or opinion gap activities which require learners to communicate with each other and or the teacher in order to close the gap (Find the Difference; Describe and Draw); post-listening and post-reading activities which require the learners to use information from the text to achieve a communicative purpose (e.g. deciding what television programmes to watch, discussing who to vote for, writing a review of a book or a film; matching words and phrases with the characters from the text); creative writing using music, pictures or poetry, story circle, dictogloss or dictocomp; creative speaking activities such as story reconstruction, balloon debate, moral dilemma (Harmer, 2010: 130-131).

Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction are normally suspended. It is notably true if we speak about vocabulary acquisition of the learners which demands frequent, spaced in time reprocess of language items to be successful. It means that learners cannot be expected to learn a new feature and be able to use it effectively in the same lesson (Tomlinson, 2011: 17). Materials should take into account that learners have different motives, emotions and attitudes to the process of learning. There do not exist ideal language learners who have strong and consistent motivation and positive feelings towards the language learning process. In order to diversify the language material provided for this purpose the teachers may submit different types of texts (poetry, narrative or personal response), supply the more positive and motivated learners with additional tasks.

Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles. According to the Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences styles of learning which need to be catered for in languagelearning materials comprise: visual or spatial (learners prefer to see the language written down. The following activities may be offered to the learners: flashcards, project work); auditory-musical (the use songs, chants and drilling is the most appropriate for the learners who prefer to hear the language); bodily-kinaesthetic (learners prefer to do something physical, that is why TPR activities, action songs, running dictation are applicable to the pupils); studial (learners like to pay conscious attention to the linguistic features and want to be correct); experiential (learners like to use the language and are more concerned with communication than with correctness); analytic (learners prefer to focus on discrete bits of the language and to learn them one by one); global (learners are happy to respond to whole chunks of language at a time and to pick up from them whatever language they can); dependent (learners prefer to learn from a teacher and from a book); independent (learners are happy to learn from their own experience of the language and to use autonomous learning strategies).

Conclusions

In the present article we paid special attention to the main principles in second language learning, put emphasis on the importance of taking into account pupils' needs when designing a learning process. To sum it up, among the described principles applicable to developing materials in the English language classroom the most essential ones are as follows: materials should have a noticeable effect on learners, stimulate their curiosity, interest and attention; materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles; materials should take into account that learners have different motives, emotions and attitudes to the process of learning.

The prospects for further research in this field are to develop new means and techniques aimed at activating learners' language competence considering the psychological basis of this process.

References

1. Edge J., Garton S. From Experience to Knowledge in ELT. Oxford, 2012. 204 p.

2. Harmer J. How to Teach English. Pearson Education Limited, 2010. 288 p.

3. Hutchinson T., Waters A. English for Specific Purposes. Cambridge University Press, 2010. 183 p.

4. Krashen S.D. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. University of Southern California, 2009. 209 p.

5. Scrivener J. Learning Teaching. Macmillan, 2005. 432 p.

6. Thornbury S. An A-Z of ELT (A dictionary of terms and concepts used in English Language Teaching). Macmillan, 2010. 256 p.

7. Tomlinson B. Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011. 351 p.

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