Chapter 1: Language, Learning, and Teaching

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts, theories, and historical language teaching methods discussed in Chapter 1: Language, Learning, and Teaching.

Second Language (L2)

A generic term referring to any additional language acquired beyond the first language (L1), encompassing both foreign language learning and subsequent (third, fourth, etc.) languages.

Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

A generic term denoting the acquisition of an L2 in natural or instructional settings, including foreign language contexts (e.g., learning French in the United States) and second language contexts (e.g., learning English within the target culture).

Teaching

The guiding and facilitating of learning, enabling a person to learn, and setting the conditions for learning.

Learning

Acquiring knowledge of a subject or skill through study, experience, or instruction, defined succinctly in educational psychology as a change in an individual caused by experience.

Paradigm (Kuhn)

An interlocking design, model, or theory that scientists and educators construct by fitting together discovered pieces of knowledge within normal science.

Language (Merriam-Webster)

A systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings.

Structural Linguistics

A 1940s and 1950s descriptive school of linguistics that examined only publicly observable responses, aiming to identify structural characteristics by breaking languages down into small units without mentalistic theorizing.

Behavioral Psychology

A psychological paradigm insisting on strict scientific observation of overtly observable responses, dismissing notions like ideas, meaning, or internal states of consciousness as explanatory fiction.

Generative Linguistics

A linguistic school initiated by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s asserting that human language cannot be understood merely through observable stimuli and responses, shifting focus to underlying levels of meaning and thought.

Descriptive Adequacy

The level of linguistic inquiry focused strictly on describing overt linguistic data and structures correctly.

Explanatory Adequacy

A principled basis, independent of any particular language, for the selection of the descriptively adequate grammar of each language, seeking the underlying 'why' of linguistic behavior.

Langue

Ferdinand de Saussure's term for underlying, unobservable language competence and ability.

Parole

Ferdinand de Saussure's term for observable linguistic performance or the outward manifestation of language.

Cognitive Psychology

A psychological approach utilizing logic, reason, and inference to discover underlying motivations and internal mental organization, asserting that the mind/brain is the necessary and sufficient locus of thought and learning.

Constructivism

A multidisciplinary perspective integrating linguistic, psychological, and sociological paradigms that emphasizes active discovery and the social construction of meaning.

Cognitive Constructivism

A constructivist branch rooted in Piaget's work holding that learners must individually discover, transform, and construct their own representation of reality, building on prior experiences.

Social Constructivism

A constructivist branch championed by Lev Vygotsky positing that thinking and meaning-making are socially constructed through interactions within collaborative groups and social practices.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The distance between a learner's existing developmental state and potential development, encompassing tasks a child cannot do alone but can achieve with the guidance of more competent peers or adults.

Language Socialization Paradigm

A sociocultural SLA perspective framed by Watson-Gegeo recognizing that cognition originates in social interaction and is shaped by cultural and sociopolitical processes.

Classical Method

A traditional language teaching approach initially used for Latin and Greek that emphasized grammatical rules, memorization of vocabulary forms, text translation, and written exercises.

Grammar Translation Method

The late nineteenth-century manifestation of the Classical Method characterized by grammar explanations, vocabulary lists, and translation drills, notable for having no theoretical basis or communicative focus.

Series Method

A late nineteenth-century foreign language teaching approach developed by François Gouin that initiated a series of revolutionary trends examined under observational research.

Audiolingual Method (ALM)

A mid-twentieth-century language teaching method derived from structural linguistics and behavioral psychology that heavily relied on oral production drills, pattern practices, and conditioning.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

A current language teaching paradigm that eclectically synthesizes past methods to engage learners in authentic, genuine, spontaneous, and meaningful communication in the L2.

Principled Eclecticism

Mellow's term describing a teaching framework where educators choose specific designs and classroom techniques based on a coherent, principled theoretical understanding tailored to unique learners and contexts.