Language is a construct humans work in every day to express a wide range of emotions, ideas, concepts, and

actions. Yet it still seems to be incredibly difficult to learn a second language. It seems odd because we didn’t really
have to work to learn the one we know now.

This is a common thought, and it is entirely wrong.

You worked incredibly hard to learn what the people around you were saying. It didn’t happen overnight, so you
should not expect learning another language to be any easier. In fact, if it takes you less than a few years to be
comfortable using a new language, it was easier than learning your first language. Remember, you are still studying
your first language in high school, so you aren’t quite as adept at it as you may think you are.

To learn your next language faster, you are probably looking for the right language theory. IT can help you move
faster through the learning process. However, it is not the only thing you need, in fact its effect will largely be at the
start. Still, knowing it will give you a boost that most people lack.

There is no one better to talk about language theory than the men known for thinking in terms of theory. They
break down the thinking process in a way that helps you to understand how and why you think in a certain way.

In the end, this will help you keep your thought process where it needs to be to get the most out of the language
learning experiences.

Plato – One of the Biggest Names in Western Philosophy

While he is best known for philosophy, Plato did a good bit of thinking about language. This shouldn’t come as a
surprise, considering the fact that the use of language was how he got his point across about philosophy.

Plato believed that knowledge was something that humans simply had; it was innate. His idea is called Plato’s
Problem, in which he asked how humans were able to accomplish so much with so little time given to them.
Language was an innate human element, and that is why most humans are able to start talking well before they are
ten years old.

When you consider that language is part of your thinking process, it will be a lot less intimidating to simply learn
another way to think the thoughts you already have.

Descartes and Cartesian Linguistics

Descartes subscribed to Plato’s idea that language is simply something people do naturally. Descartes’ belief was
based on the fact that he believed humans to be largely rational creatures, and language was required to interact.

The Cartesian movement that started based on his beliefs reflected on the fact that language was used creatively.
Yet there are still many similarities even between the least similar languages.

This is heartening because it means that you just need to find the similarities between English and your target
language to start understanding how the language works.

Locke and Tabula Rasa

You have probably heard of the blank slate concept put forth by Locke. It shows that he did not subscribe to the
idea that anything was innately known. Everyone began with a blank slate that they had to fill, and that includes
language. Everything is learned from our senses.

This can be comforting if for no other reason than because you probably feel that is where you are right now with
your target language.

These three philosophers largely discussed language in passing, not postulating many specifics. The next four
theories are much more language specific.
Skinner and the Theory of Behaviorism

Skinner agreed with Locke and he spent a lot of time developing the Theory of Behaviorism from it. His theory says
that all behavior is in response to the stimuli around us. He applied this to language learning through operant
conditioning, which used reinforcement and punishment to teach.

One of the most common examples of this is parents who refuse to acknowledge a child’s request until the child
says “please.” The reward is getting what was requested, and the idea of saying “please” is reinforced through that
reward.

Theory of Behaviorism says we need feedback to be successful, even in learning a language.

Chomsky and Universal Grammar

Noam Chomsky was developing his own ideas while Skinner was working on his Theory of Behaviorism. Chomsky
developed the theory of Universal Grammar. It was pretty much the antithesis of Skinner’s theory. Chomsky
believed in at least some innate ability in humans for language. His proof was the fact that there are some universal
elements in all languages.

While it definitely goes farther to explain learning a first language than Skinner’s theory, it really doesn’t apply to
learning a second language. It simply reinforces that there are similar elements, but does nothing to help identify
how to learn everything that is completely dissimilar.

Schumann and the Acculturation Model

John Schumann looked specifically at how immigrants learn a new language once they relocate. His theory is called
the Acculturation Model and addresses language in much more detail than the other theories.

Instead of thinking of language learning in terms of learning for pleasure, he examined it when it was a necessity.
Immigrants learned a new language with much more pressure from social and psychological areas. It usually
meant either success or failure.

If an immigrant’s language was roughly equal socially to the language of their new home, they were more likely to
learn the language. The same was true if the cultures were similar. This points out that there are many
psychological and social reasons for learning a language – ideas that were not examined by any of the earlier
philosophers.

Krashen and the Monitor Model

Stephen Krashen compiled several theories about language, theories which today are the most often used to
describe learning a second language. The following are the primary ideas to take away from his theories.

Acquiring a language is largely subconscious because it stems from natural and informal conversations.
Learning a language is very much conscious effort and relies heavily on correction, which is more formal.
Grammar is largely learned in a predictable series and order.
Acquiring a language occurs when it is provided through comprehensible input, such as talking or reading.
A monitor can be anyone or anything that corrects your language errors and to pressure you to improve.
The primary take away from the theory is that acquiring and learning a language are different, but they can have
similar elements. Error correction is essential for both acquisition and learning.

While none of these theories may do much to help you actually learn a language, it can make you feel better to
know that even the knowledge of learning a language is up for debate. You may feel one or two of them more
closely works for the way you think, and that can help you better understand how to use that theory to your
advantage.
Historical Theories and Models of Language Acquisition
Behaviourist Theory

B.F Skinner 1950

In 1957 a piece of literature appeared that would come to affect how we view language, human behaviour and
language learning. B.F Skinner's Verbal Behaviour (1957) applied a functional analysis approach to analyze
language behaviour in terms of their natural occurrence in response to environmental circumstances and the
effects they have on human interactions.[3] Skinner's behaviour learning approach relies on the components of
classical, which involves unconditioned and conditioned stimuli, and operant conditioning but particularly the
elements of operational conditioning. Operational conditioning refers to a method of learning that occurs through
rewards and punishments for behaviour. Behaviour operates on the environment to bring about favorable
consequences or avoid adverse ones. These same ideas of operant conditioning can also be applied to language
acquisition because Skinner believed that language could be treated like any other kind of cognitive behaviour.
According to the behaviourist theory, language learning is a process of habit formation that involves a period of
trial and error where the child tries and fails to use correct language until it succeeds. Infants also have human role
models in their environment that provide the stimuli and rewards required for operant conditioning. For example,
if a child starts babblings, which resembles appropriate words, then his or her babbling will be rewarded by a
parent or loved one by positive reinforcement such as a smile or clap. Since the babblings were rewarded, this
reward reinforces further articulations of the same sort into groupings of syllables and words in a similar situation
(Demirezen, 1988).[4] Children also utter words because they cause adults to give them the things they want and
they will only be given what they want once the adult has trained or shaped the child through reinforcement and
rewards speech close to that of adult speech. Before long children will take on the imitation or modeling
component of Skinner's theory of language acquisition in which children learn to speak by copying the utterances
heard around them and by having their responses strengthened by the repetitions, corrections and other reactions
that adults provide. However, before a child can begin to speak, they first start by listening to the sounds in their
environment for the first years of their life. Gradually, the child learns to associate certain sounds with certain
situations such as the sound of endearment a mother produces when feeding her child. These sounds then become
pleasurable for the child on their own without being accompanied by food and eventually the child will attempt to
imitate these sounds to invite the attention of his mother or another adult. If these sounds resemble that of adult
language the mother will respond with reward and the operant conditioning process begins.

Innateness Theory
Noam Chomsky's innateness theory (or nativist theory) proposes that children have an inborn or innate faculty for
language acquisition that is biologically determined. According to Goodluck (1991), nativists view language as a
fundamental part of the human genome, as a trait that makes humans human, and its acquisition is a natural part of
maturation.[5] It seems that the human species has evolved a brain whose neural circuits contain linguistic
information at birth and this natural predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech. The child's
brain is then able to interpret what she or he hears according to the underlying principles or structures it already
contains (Linden, 2007).[6] Chomsky has determined that being biologically prepared to acquire language
regardless of setting is due to the child's language acquisition device (LAD), which is used as a mechanism for
working out the rules of language. Chomsky believed that all human languages share common principles, such as
all languages have verbs and nouns, and it was the child's task to establish how the specific language she or he
hears expresses these underlying principles. For example, the LAD already contains the concept of verb tense and
so by listening to word forms such as "worked" or "played,” the child will then form a hypothesis that the past
tense of verbs are formed by adding the sound /d/,/t/ or /id/ to the base form. Yang (2006) also believes that
children also initially possess, then subsequently develop, an innate understanding or hypothesis about grammar
regardless of where they are raised.[7] According to Chomsky, infants acquire grammar because it is a universal
property of language, an inborn development, and has coined these fundamental grammatical ideas that all
humans have as universal grammar (UG). Children under the age of three usually don't speak in full sentences and
instead say things like "want cookie" but yet you would still not hear them say things like "want my" or "I cookie"
because statements like this would break the syntactic structure of the phrase, a component of universal grammar.
Another argument of the nativist or innate theory is that there is a critical period for language acquisition, which is
a time frame during which environmental exposure is needed to stimulate an innate trait. Linguist Eric Lenneberg
in 1964 postulated that the critical period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years. He believed that
if no language was learned before then, it could never be learned in a normal and functional sense. It was termed
the critical period hypothesis and since then there has been a few case examples of individuals being subject to
such circumstances such as the girl known as Genie who raised in an abusive environment to age 13, which didn't
allow her to develop language skills.

Cognitive Theory
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who was famous for his four stages of cognitive development for children,
which included the development of language. However, children do not think like adults and so before they can
begin to develop language they must first actively construct their own understanding of the world through their
interactions with their environment. A child has to understand a concept before he or she can acquire the
particular language which expresses that concept. For example, a child first becomes aware of a concept such as
relative size and only afterward do they acquire the words and patterns to convey that concept. Essentially it is
impossible for a young child to voice concepts that are unknown to them; therefore, once a child learns about their
environment, then they can map language onto their prior experience. An infant's experience of a cat is that it
meows, is furry and eats from a bowl in the kitchen; hence they develop the concept of cat first and then learn to
map the word "kitty" onto that concept. Language is only one of the many human mental or cognitive activities, and
many cognitivists believe that language emerges within the context of other general cognitive abilities like
memory, attention and problem solving because it is a part of their broader intellectual development. However,
according to Goodluck (1991), once language does emerge it is usually within certain stages and children go
through these stages in a fixed order that is universal in all children.[8] There is a consistent order of mastery of
the most common function morphemes in a language and simple ideas are expressed earlier than more complex
ones even if they are more grammatically complicated. Piaget's cognitive theory states that children's language
reflects the development of their logical thinking and reasoning skills in stages, with each period having a specific
name and age reference.[9] There are four stages of Piaget's cognitive development theory, each involving a
different aspect of language acquisition:

Sensory-Motor Period- (birth to 2 years) Children are born with "action schemas" to "assimilate" information
about the world such as sucking or grasping. During the sensory-motor period, children's language is "egocentric"
and they talk either for themselves or for the pleasure of associating anyone who happens to be there with the
activity of the moment
Pre-Operational Period- (2 years to 7) Children's language makes rapid progress and the development of their
"mental schema" lets them quickly "accommodate" new words and situations. Children's language becomes
"symbolic" allowing them to talk beyond the "here and now" and to talk about things such as the past, future and
feelings.
Egocentrism- Involves "animism" which refers to young children's tendency to consider everything, including
inanimate objects, as being alive. Language is considered egocentric because they see things purely from their own
perspective.
Operational Period- (7 to 11 years) and (11 years to adulthood) Piaget divides this period into two parts: the
period of concrete operations and the period of formal operations. Language at this stage reveals the movement of
their thinking from immature to mature and from illogical to logical. They are also able to "de-center" or view
things from a perspective other than their own. It is at this point that children's language becomes "socialized" and
includes things such as questions, answers, commands and criticisms.
Social Interactionist Theory
Opening a window to the autistic brain.jpg
Vygotsky's social interaction theory incorporates nurture arguments in that children can be influenced by their
environment as well as the language input children receive from their care-givers . Although the theories of
Skinner, Chomsky and Piaget are all very different and very important in their own contexts, they don't necessarily
take into account the fact that children don't encounter language in isolation. The child is a little linguist analyzing
language from randomly encountered adult utterances. The interaction theory proposes that language exists for
the purpose of communication and can only be learned in the context of interaction with adults and older children.
It stresses the importance of the environment and culture in which the language is being learned during early
childhood development because this social interaction is what first provides the child with the means of making
sense of their own behaviour and how they think about the surrounding world. According to Williamson (2008),
children can eventually use their own internal speech to direct their own behaviour in much the same way that
their parents' speech once directed their behaviour.[10] Speech to infants is marked by a slower rate, exaggerated
intonation, high frequency, repetition, simple syntax and concrete vocabulary. This tailored articulation used by
care-givers to young children to maximize phonemic contrasts and pronunciation of correct forms is known as
child-directed speech (CDS). Vygotsky also developed the concepts of private speech which is when children must
speak to themselves in a self guiding and directing way- initially out loud and later internally and the zone of
proximal development which refers to the tasks a child is unable to complete alone but is able to complete with the
assistance of an adult. The attention and time that a mother spends talking about topics that the child is already
focused on highly correlates with early vocabulary size. In the early stages of a child`s life this is usually done
through motherese or ``baby talk`` which may allow children to ``bootstrap`` their progress in language acquisition
(Williamson, 2008).[10] The mother and father also provide ritualized scenarios, such as having a bath or getting
dressed, in which the phases of interaction are rapidly recognized and predicted by the infant. The utterances of
the mother and father during the activities are ritualized and predictable so that the child is gradually moved to an
active position where they take over the movements of the care-taker and eventually the ritualized language as
well. Basically the care-giver is providing comprehensible contexts in which the child can acquire language (Mason,
2002).[11] Another influential researcher of the interaction theory is Jerome Bruner who elaborated and revised
the details of the theory over a number of years and also introduced the term Language Acquisition Support
System (LASS), which refers to the child`s immediate adult entourage but in the fuller sense points to the child`s
culture as a whole in which they are born. Adults adapt their behaviour towards children to construct a protected
world in which the child is gradually inclined to take part in a growing number of scenarios and scripts and in this
way the child is led gradually further and further into language. However, one must remember that although our
social context provides support for language acquisition, it does not directly provide the knowledge that is
necessary to acquire language; and this, perhaps, is where a child’s innate abilities come into play.

Learning a new language? Or teaching a second language? Facing difficulties in learning or teaching a second
language? What are some of the strategies in language learning? Here, we will be exploring some tips and tricks in
language learning suited to different personality types. We will also look at ways teachers can apply the learning
strategies into their course planning to teach the second language more effectively!

While language learning styles are more general, it should not be confused with language learning strategies as the
same thing. “Language learning strategies are the specific behaviors…that students adopt to help them learn
(Oxford and Lavine (1992), pg. 1-2).” We will be looking at how language learning strategies affect language
learning styles (related to the Myers-Briggs personality types). It was argued that the learning style impacts the
learning strategies employed by an individual (Ehrman & Oxford, 1990). It is within this context that Oxford
developed the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, or SILL (Oxford, 1990), which we will be working with in
the subsequent subchapters.

Second Language Learning

Second language learning is a conscious process where the learning of another language other than the First
Language (L1) takes place. Often confused with bilingualism and multilingualism, the process has to take place
after the first language(s) has already been acquired. Having said that, Second language learning could also refer to
the third, fourth, or fifth (so on and so forth) language the learner is currently learning.

L1 versus L2
The First Language (L1) refers to the language you learn since you were born (not literally, of course). It is
commonly known as the language(s) of your parents or caregivers, basically, the person(s) you spend time with
the most from you were in your mother’s womb till you are about 5 years old. It is possible to have more than one
L1. The Second Language (L2), on the other hand, refers to the language learned after the L1 has been acquired. A
language can only be referred to as your L2 if the learning occurs after you have acquired your L1.

Memory strategy
People who adopt the memory strategy depend on their memorizing ability. They find ways to remember better to
aid in entering information into long-term memory, by creating a word-meaning map in their brain (mental
linkages), and then being able to retrieve that information. Adopting this strategy will allow the learning and
retrieval via sounds (e.g., rhyming), images (e.g., a mental picture of the word itself or the meaning of the word), a
combination of sounds and images (e.g., the keyword method), body movement (e.g., total physical response),
mechanical means (e.g., flashcards), or location (e.g., on a page or blackboard).

Things they do: Do a lot of exercises on English grammar. Create a word bank from your reading materials or TV
shows and memorize the meaning of the words and try to use them.

Cognitive strategy
People who adopt the cognitive strategy tend to analyse and reason. They form internal mental codes and revise
them to receive and produce the message in the target language. Adopting this strategy will enable you to
internalize the language in direct ways such as through reasoning, analysis, note-taking, summarizing,
synthesizing, outlining, practicing in naturalistic settings, and practicing structures and sounds formally.

Things they do: Watch Korean dramas and try to replicate how the characters pronounce Korean words. Watch
Korean dramas and try to replicate how the characters use certain words in a sentence. Write emails or letters in
SL. Read SL reading materials such as magazines and newspapers.

Comprehension strategy
People who adopt the comprehension strategy find themselves guessing unknown words when listening and
reading. They also try to replace words they do not know with longer phrases or other words that they know when
speaking and writing to overcome gaps in knowledge.

Things they do: Try to guess the meaning of words they don’t know. Try to understand the meaning through
looking at the word in context. Guess the meaning of some words by reading the whole passage. Try to look for
cues or nonverbal signs when in conversation.
Metacognitive strategy
People who adopt the metacognitive strategy plan, arrange, focus, evaluate on their own learning process. They
identify and monitor their own learning style preferences and needs, such as gathering and organizing L2
materials, arranging a study space and a schedule for L2 revision and learning, monitoring mistakes made in L2,
and evaluating task success, and evaluating the success of any type of learning strategy.

Things they do: Observe how the SL teacher speaks in the SL. Observe how they themselves speak in the SL.
Practice speaking in SL in front of the mirror. Crosscheck with Google to find out if their pronunciation is correct,
and correct it. Doing crossword puzzles and play word games like scrabble. Take note of how other people
communicate in SL, especially natives.

Social/Affective strategy
People who adopt the social/affective strategy control their feelings, motivations and attitudes when in social
situations such as asking questions, communicating with others, facilitate conversation and interaction.

Things they do: They encourage themselves to speak in SL even when they are afraid of making a mistake. They
reward themselves for good performance. They remind themselves that it is okay to make mistakes. They tell
themselves to be confident and not be afraid to make mistakes. They try to speak in SL to others. They ask for
clarifications of a confusing point of the L2, or when communicating. They are people to correct their speech when
communicating.