DEFINITION

Applied linguistics
A field of study that identifies, investigates and offers solutions to language problems. It can
be applied to all language use. It includes the mother tongue (L1). Second language (L2) or
a foreign language (FL). It describes the language and shows how it is learned and used.

Applied linguists try to offer solutions to ‘real-world problems in which language is a central
issue. • It would be a mistake to associate AL only with language learning and teaching •
A.L. relies on linguistics to offer insights and ways forward in the resolution of problems
related to language in a wide variety of contexts:

Examples: speech therapist, english teacher, investigator, zoologist with monkeys

• Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic
knowledge, methods, and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime
investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. There are principally three areas of application for
linguists working in forensic contexts, • understanding language of the written law, •
understanding language use in forensic and judicial processes, and • the provision of
linguistic evidence

Language is the system of human communication by means of a structured arrangement of

sounds (or their written representation) to form larger units, e.g. morphemes, words,
sentences. • Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child
spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness
of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more
general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.

Learning a second/foreign language is a long and complex process because

challenges both your mind (your brain has to construct new cognitive frameworks) and time
(it requires sustained, consistent practice). The person is affected as he/she struggles to
reach beyond the confines of his/her first language and into a new language (a new system),
a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Few if any people achieve fluency in a foreign language solely within the confines of the
classroom.

Language is systematic
A set of arbitrary symbols
They have conventional meaning
Medium of communication
Essentially human
Operates in a speech community
Acuiqred by peple the same way

L1
L2
I KNOW THESE OK
U consider many variables during language learning
1- learners profile
Who are they blabla ehtnicity religious social status
2- linguistic factors
What is language communication how is a person considered good f language
3- learning process
How does learning happen how can it be successful what cognitive processes are used
4- age
Does learning differ with age between adults w children blabla if so whats the difference
5- instructional variables
Effects of methodological variables like textbooks teachers methods etc… amount of time
spent in classroom, how active learner is
6- context
Where is the language learned, in an artificial or real context, sociopolitical status of a
country effect like morocco with france etc
7- goals
Why are u learning this language
Consider ur goals to adapt an appropriate learning method

Second language acquisition

Second language acquisition • The process by which people develop proficiency in a second
or foreign language. These processes are often investigated with the expectation that
information may be useful in language teaching.

DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHtS IN SECOND LANG LEARN

Behaviorism: (important influence on psychology, ducation, and languge teaching)

language is a set of habits and behaviors that can be learned through repetition and
reinforcement, learners can acquire a second language by repeatedly practicing and using
the language in a structured and controlled environment.
emphasize the role of the teacher in providing clear and consistent instruction, as well as the
use of rewards and punishments to shape language learning behaviors.
- Criticisms: tends to overemphasize the importance of formal language rules and
structures, and does not take into account the social and cultural context in which
language is used, doesnt take into consideration the nuances of language learning,
role of individual diffs and motivations etc
- Example: Pavlov’s dog and the bell
- Who: Skinner, Pavlov, Osgood, Staats

Generative Linguistics and Cognitive Psychology: (emerged thru the influence of

Chomsky and his followers, 1960s) language is a mental system that is shaped by innate
cognitive processes. language learning is a process of constructing and internalizing mental
representations of the structure and rules of a language, which are then used to produce
and comprehend language. language learning is a process of constructing and internalizing
mental representations of the structure and rules of a language, which are then used to
produce and comprehend language.

ALL HUMANS HAVE innate knowledge of the underlying grammatical relations according to
chomsky
the child comes into the world with very specific knowledge of the nature of language.
(extreme innateness view)
LAD (language acq device) since children can learn any language as a native then
knowledge in the lad must accommodate all languages (lang universals)
Chldren have a hypothesis and testing device to determine which language out of many
they’re exposed to with minimal experience
Innate properties also to explain how fast htye learn lang (5 years they can say things they
never heard before)
- Criticisms: tends to overemphasize the role of individual cognitive processes and
may not adequately take into account the social and cultural context in which
language is used, doesnt take into account affective and emotional factors
- Who: Chomsky and his followers

CONSTRUCTIVISM:
Who: Jean Piaget and Lev Vygostsky

Lev: social relations

Jean: Cognitive

CONSTRUCT your own representation of reality thru experience

Thru processes of accommodation and assimilation, individuals construct new knowledge
from their experiences (Piaget)
Assimilate: incorporate info into existing framework without changing it, happens when their
experiences aligned with their mental representations of the world
If experiences contradict, change the perceptions of the world to fit internal representations
Accomodation: is the process of reframing one’s mental representation of the external
world to fit new experiences

Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children actively construct their own
understanding of the world through their experiences and interactions with the environment.
He argued that children go through stages of development, and their cognitive abilities
change as they progress through these stages.

Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development focuses on the role of social interaction in

shaping cognitive development. He argued that children learn through their interactions with
more knowledgeable others, such as adults or peers, and that these interactions help them
to construct their own understanding of the world. Vygotsky also emphasized the importance
of the cultural and historical context in which learning takes place.

Constructivist approaches to education often involve actively engaging students in hands-on

activities and problem-solving tasks, rather than simply presenting them with information

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.

• It is a special process by which a person learns a language, mostly native language.
Linguists, developmental psychologists and psycholinguists have been interested in
discovering the nature of language and of the learning process

There are many differences between acquiring a first language and a second one
: the most obvious difference, in the case of adult second language learning, is the
tremendous cognitive and affective contrast between adults and children
A coherent grasp of the nature of first language learning is an invaluable aid, if not an
essential component, in the construction of a theory of second language acquisition

The end result of L1 acquisition is the internalization of the grammar of the language they’re
exposed to.
Children respond differently to human voices than other sounds. • Children show preference
for the language of their parents than any other language by the time they are two days old.
• Children can recognize their mother’s voice within a matter of weeks

Children from different languages exhibit significant similarities in their babbling.

Around 6 months of age: the opportunity for infants to experiment and gain control over their
vocal apparatus.
As they reach the end of their first year, children make specific attempts to imitate words
and speech sounds they hear around them, and about this time they utter their first "words."
• By about 18 months of age, these words have multiplied considerably and are beginning to
appear in two and three-word "sentences"— commonly referred to as "telegraphic” • E.g.
gimme toy • There cat • Me milk • Down floor this

HOW DO CHILDREN ACQUIRE MEANING?

Thru several strategies
Whole object assumption: (Bowa) new word refers to entire subject. Like car means entire
car, including wheels etc…
The Type Assumption • A new word refers to a type of thing, not just a particular thing.
• The Basic Level Assumption • A new word refers to objects that are alike in basic ways
(appearance, behavior etc.)

WHAT ABOUT MORPHOLOGY

Initially: affixes are systematically absent and most words consist of single root morphemes.
Overgeneralization and overregulation in plural and past tense
Then bound morphemes and functional categories

WHAT ABOUT SYNTAX

Orderly manner
- One-word stage
- Two-word stage
- Telegraphic stage: characterized by the use of short, simple sentences that convey a
message, much like a telegram. These sentences often consist of only a subject and
verb, and may omit articles, auxiliary verbs, and other function words.
- Later development
Language acquisition is possible thanks to
Role of adult speech
 - Childcare talk: type of speech is characterized by a high pitch, exaggerated
intonation, and slow tempo
Feedback
Any information which provides a report on the result of behavior. For e.g. verbal or facial
signals which listeners give to speakers to indicate that they understand what the speaker is
saying.

Issues in language acquisition

• Performance/competence • Comprehension and Production • Nature or nurture •
Universals • Systematicity and variability • Language and thought • Imitation

Competence refers to one's underlying knowledge of a system, event, or fact. It is the non-
observable ability to do something, to perform something. •
Performance is the observable and concrete manifestation or realization of competence. It
is the actual doing of something: walking, singing, dancing, speaking.

In reference to language, competence is one's underlying knowledge of the system of a

language—its rules of grammar, its vocabulary, all the pieces of a language ;and how those
pieces fit together. • Performance is actual production (speaking, writing) or the
comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events.

One conclusion that can be drawn from the competence-performance model is that
language acquisition is a complex process that involves both cognitive and social factors.

Production-comprehension
• In child language, most observational and research evidence points to the general
superiority of comprehension over production; children seem to understand "more" than they
actually produce, For instance, a child may understand a sentence with an embedded
relative in it (e.g., "The ball that's in the sandbox is red") but not be able to produce one. •
Even adults understand more vocabulary than they ever use in speech, and also perceive
more syntactic variation than they actually produce. • We can conclude that all aspects of
linguistic comprehension precede, or facilitate, linguistic production.

Nature/nurture
• Nativists contend that a child is born with an innate knowledge of or predisposition toward
language, and that this innate property (the LAD or UG) is universal in all human beings. The
innateness hypothesis was a possible resolution of the contradiction between the behavioral
notion that language is a set of habits that can be acquired by a process of conditioning and
the fact that such conditioning is much too slow and inefficient a process to account for the
acquisition of a phenomenon as complex as language •

What are those behaviors that "nature" provides innately, in some sort of predetermined
biological timetable, and what are those behaviors that are, by environmental exposure—by
"nurture," by teaching—learned and internalized?

• An interesting research on innateness was pursued by Derek Bickerton (1981), who found
evidence, across a number of languages, of common patterns of linguistic and cognitive
development. • He proposed that human beings are "bio-programmed" to proceed from
stage to stage.

Universals
theory that suggests that all human languages share certain fundamental characteristics or
properties.One of the key features of the theory of universals is the idea that all languages
have a common underlying structure or grammar, which is made up of rules that govern how
words can be combined to form sentences. This common structure is thought to be present
in the brain of all humans, and is believed to be responsible for the ease with which children
learn language.
Word order, morphological

Systematicity and Variability

• One of the assumptions of a good deal of current research on child language is the
systematicity of the process of acquisition. From pivot grammar to threeand four-word
utterances, and to full sentences of almost indeterminate length, children exhibit a
remarkable ability to infer the phonological, structural, lexical, and semantic system of
language. • But in the midst of all this systematicity. there is an equally remarkable amount
of variability in the process of learning! • As an example: children's learning of past tense
forms of verbs like go offers an illustration of the difficulty of defining stages

Language and thought

Piaget: cognitive development comes first
Jerome bruner: Language influences cognitive development, like words shaping concepts,
dialogues between child and parents or teacher serving to orient and educate etc
Vygotsky: Social interaction matters

Champions of theories concerning language shaping thoughts was benjamin whorf, Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis, suggests that the language that a person speaks influences the way they
think and perceive the world. This theory suggests that the structure and vocabulary of a
person's native language shapes their understanding of concepts and experiences, and
therefore influences the way they think and process information. (example: language with
more words for colors)

Imitation
imitation is one of the important strategies a child uses in the acquisition of language
especially at early stages and an important aspect of early phonological acquisition

Behaviorists assume one type of imitation, but a deeper level of imitation is far more
important in the process of language acquisition. • The first type is surface-structure
imitation, where a person repeats or mimics the surface strings, attending to a phonological
code rather than a semantic code. It is this level of imitation that enables an adult to repeat
random numbers or nonsense syllables, or even to mimic nonsense syllables.

PERSONALITY FACTORS
Personality factors contribute to second language learning
Understanding how human beings feel and respond and believe and value is an exceedingly
important aspect of a theory of second language acquisition

Self-esteem
self-esteem is a personal judgment of worthiness that is expressed in the attitudes that
individuals hold toward themselves
General or global self-esteem: It is the general or prevailing assessment one makes of
one's own worth over time and across a number of situations.
Situational or specific self-esteem refers to one's self-appraisals in particular life
situations, such as social interaction, work, education, home, or on certain relatively
discretely defined traits, such as intelligence, communicative ability, flexibility, empathy… •
Task self-esteem relates to particular tasks within specific situations. For example, within
the educational domain, task self-esteem might refer to one subject-matter area. The learner
might appropriately refer to one's self-evaluation of a particular aspect of the process (as
speaking, writing, a particular class in a second language, or even a special kind of
classroom exercise.)

Attribution theory and self efficacy

Basically attribution theory is what people attribute their success or failure to
Weiner and others describe attribution theory in terms of four explanations to success and or
failure in achieving smth personal
Internal factors are: ability and effort
External outside of the learner: difficulty and luck

According to weiner, learners tend to attribute this success on a task on these four
dimensions depending on the individual

This is where self efficacy comes in

An appropriate degree of effort may be devoted to achieving success if a learner feels that
they’re capable of carrying out a given task
Inversely, a learner with low self efficacy may easily attribute their failure to external factors,
which is an unhealthy psychological attitude to tasks

Willingness to communicate
Inhibition: suppression of a particular behavior on action thru influence of external factors
(self control, social norms…)
Risk taking
Anxiety
Empathy
Extroversion

Motivation
Countless studies and experiments in human learning have shown that motivation is a key to
learning in general and In the field of second language acquisition, in particular, the subject
of motivation has gained plenty of attention.
Most studies of motivation in second language acquisition often refer to the distinction
between integrative and instrumental orientations of the learner .
Instrumental: attaining instrumental goals such as getting a job, reading technical material,
translation, etc
Integrative: integrate into the culture of the second language and involve in social
interchange in that group
some learners in some contexts are more successful in learning a language if they are
integratively oriented, and others in different contexts benefit from an instrumental
orientation

These two orientations are not necessarily exclusive, second language learning involves a
mixture of each orientation (doesnt happen in a context exclusive to one)
Example of international students learning english

These orientations are important to account for successful language learning, and the
degree of impact of either depends on
Individual learners
Educational context
Cultural milieu
Teaching methodology and social interaction

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation refers to indulging in a task for the sake of it, the activity itself is the
reward and its fun
Extrinsic motivatio nis fueled by the anticipation for a reward from outside and beyond the
self for the task done. (money, prizes, grades, types of positive feedback etc…)

We can probably never completely remove extrinsic motives, and some extrinsic motives
may be useful. Every classroom context has its share of extrinsic motives, and successful
classrooms usually incorporate both.

STYLE AND STRATEGIES

Style is a term that refers to consistent and rather enduring tendencies or preferences within
an individual. Styles are those general characteristics of intellectual functioning (and
personality type, as "well) that pertain to you as an individual, and that differentiate you from
someone else. For example, you might be more visually oriented, more tolerant of ambiguity,
or more reflective than someone else— these would be styles that characterize a general or
dominant pattern in your thinking or feeling.

Strategies are specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation for
achieving a particular end, planned designs for controlling and manipulating certain
information.

In second language learning, different learners may prefer different solutions to learning
problems.
Learning styles mediate between emotion and cognition. People's styles are determined by
the way they internalize their total environment, and since that internalization process is not
strictly cognitive, we find that physical, affective, and cognitive domains merge in learning
styles.
Field Dependence: A learning style in which a learner tends to look at the whole of a
learning task which contains many items (difficulty studying an item in a field of other items)
Field Independence: identify or focus on particular items and is not distracted by other
items in the background or context (Studying in a noisy train, for example)

Fl increases as a child matures to adulthood, that a person tends to be dominant in one

mode or the other, and that FID is a relatively stable trait in adulthood

. It is more likely that persons have general inclinations, but, given certain contexts, can
exercise a sufficient degree of an appropriate style. The burden on the learner is to invoke
the appropriate style for the context. IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

Teachers need to understand this

Also

Random (non-linear) vs. sequential (linear) Global vs. particular Inductive vs. deductive 5-
Synthetic vs. analytic Analogue vs. digital Concrete vs. abstract Leveling vs. sharpening
Impulsive vs. reflective

Left- and Right-Brain Dominance

. As the child's brain matures, various functions become lateralized to the left or right
hemisphere.
The left hemisphere is associated with logical, analytical thought, with mathematical and
linear processing of information.
The right hemisphere perceives and remembers visual, tactile, and auditory images; it is
more efficient in processing holistic, integrative, and emotional information.

it is important to remember that the left and right hemispheres operate together as a "team“.
the best solutions to problems are those in which each hemisphere has participated
optimally

Ambiguity Tolerance
Third learning style concerns the degree to which you are cognitively willing to tolerate ideas
and propositions that run counter to your own belief system or structure of knowledge.
 relatively open-minded in accepting ideologies and events and facts that contradict their
own views; they are ambiguity tolerant, that is. more content than others to entertain and
even internalize contradictory propositions.
• Others, more closed-minded and dogmatic, tend to reject items that are contradictory or
slightly incongruent with their existing system

Successful language learning necessitates tolerance of such ambiguities, at least for interim
periods or stages, during which time ambiguous items are given a chance to be resolved

Research found that learners with a high tolerance for ambiguity were slightly more
successful in certain language tasks.

Reflectivity and Impulsivity

A person tends to make either a quick or gambling (impulsive) guess at an answer to a
problem or a slower, more calculated (reflective) decision.

An intuitive style implies an approach in which a person makes a number of different

gambles on the basis of "hunches," with possibly several successive gambles before a
solution is achieved.
Systematic thinkers tend to weigh all the considerations in a problem, work out all the loop-
holes, and then, after extensive reflection, venture a solution.

Children who are more reflective make less reading mistakes, those who are impulsive are
faster readers
inductive reasoning was found to be more effective with reflective persons,

When cognitive styles are specifically related to an educational context, where affective and
physiological factors are intermingled, they are usually more generally referred to as learning
styles

(the way we learn is hinged on an amorphous link between personality and cognition)

Visual, auditory and kinesthetic styles

• Visual learners tend to prefer reading and studying charts, drawings, and other graphic
information.
• Auditory learners prefer listening to lectures and audiotapes.
• And kinesthetic learners will show a preference tor demonstrations and physical activity
involving bodily movement.
slight preferences one way or the other may distinguish one learner from another, an
important factor for classroom instruction.

Autonomy, Awareness, and Action

The three As
the language teaching profession began to encourage learners to "take charge" of their own
learning, and to chart their own "pathways to success

The process of developing within learners a sense of autonomy required the use (and
sometimes invention) of strategies according to the specificity of the learner and a variety of
language programs and courses increasingly emphasized to students the importance of self-
starting and of taking responsibility for one's own learning.
Closely linked to the concept of autonomy is the demand on learners to become aware of
their own processes of learning (eg scrutinize the learning process and remember details
like what activity, do you remember this and that…)

Until recently, few courses in languages provided such opportunities for learners to become
aware of what language learning was all about and what they could do to become better
learners.

language programs are offering more occasions for learners to develop a metacognitive
awareness of their ongoing learning.

Until recently, few courses in languages provided such opportunities for learners to become
aware of what language learning was all about and what they could do to become better
learners.

Communication strategies
Communication strategies are defined as "potentially conscious plans for solving what to an
individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal."

Avoidance strategy
- Message abandonment: leaving a message unfinished cuz of language diffs
- Topic avoidance: avoiding a topic entirely cuz its difficult

Compensatory strategies
- Circumlocution: describing or exemplifying the object (thing u open bottles with)
- Approximation: using a term that’s close enough to yopur target lexical term (ship
for sailboat)
- Use of all purpose words: Extending a general, empty lexical item to contexts
where specific words are lacking (stuff, things)
- Word coinage: creating a non existing L2 word based on a specific rule (to zwinify =
to pretty)
- Prefabricated patterns: Using memorized stock phrases, usually for "survival"
purposes. where the morphological components are not known to the learner
- Literal translation: Translating literally a lexical item, idiom, compound word, or
structure from LI to L2
- Foreignizing: Using a LI word by adjusting it to L2 phonology (i.e., with a L2
pronunciation) and/or morphology (e.g., adding to it a L2 suffix)
- Code-switching: Using a LI word with LI pronunciation while speaking in L2
- Appeal for help: Asking for aid from the interlocutor eitherdirectly (e.g., What do you
call . . ,?) or indirectly (e.g., rising intonation, pause, eye contact, puzzled
expression…)
Learners manage to devise ingenious methods of topic avoidance: • changing the subject, •
pretending not to understand (a classical means for avoiding answering a question), simply
not responding at all, • or noticeably abandoning a message when a thought becomes too
difficult to express.
syntactic or lexical avoidance within a semantic category
Lexical avoidance refers to the use of words or phrases that are substituted for potentially
offensive or sensitive terms. Lexical avoidance can also be used to avoid using terms that
may be considered too technical or difficult for a particular audience to understand.

Syntactic avoidance refers to the use of language that deviates from the normal syntactic
structure of a language. To simplify, to create a more colloquial or familiar language, etc…