Dear Mynglers, here we continue with our story…

The history or learning languages can be traced as far back to the 15th century during the time when Latin was considered the dominant language.  However, by the end of the 16th century, French, Italian and English displaced Latin as the languages of spoken and written communication.  John Amos Comenius (considered to be the father of modern education) tried to reverse this trend, by composing a complete course for learning Latin, by creating a curriculum that was fully in Latin.

Comenius, from his efforts, developed his theory of language acquisition, and is now acknowledged as one of the first theorists to write systematically about how languages are learned, including the pedagogical methodology for language acquisition.  He believed that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience. Teaching must be oral and the classroom should contain physical models and pictures of things.  His theory lead him to publishing the world’s first illustrated children’s book, the Orbis Sensualim Pictus.  Much of today’s language acquisition methods can be traced back to Comenius initial research and development.  (Source: Wikipedia )

In today’s time, there are several methods of learning a new language; however, none have been acknowledged as the one and only preferred method, and as such, many devote serious time and energy trying to unlock and discover the human abilities and what it takes to acquire a second language.  Today the market is crowded with “popular theories” and detailed research on how we acquire second languages.  While several experts focus their continued research on second language acquisition (SLA) and how we learn languages; current studies range from error analysis, inter-language, development patterns (order, and sequence of acquisition), to the variability between native and second languages.  Also incorporated into these studies are the analysis of external influences such as social effects, interaction, and pedagogical effects. (Source: Wikipedia )

Several methods exist in learning a new language; early methods such as Grammar Translation, focused directly on memorization in an order to achieve proficiency in reading and writing.  The Direct Method targeted achieving proficiency through oral communication, with lessons occurring in the target language and the student is refrained from the use of his or her native language.  The Audio-Lingual Method, which is based on behaviourism, is a method that in which the student acquires the language from the study and understanding of the cultural context of the target language.  Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has become the corner stone of most of today’s self study programs; the concept behind CLT is that the teacher (or program) servers as a facilitator and shoulders the responsibility of learning the language towards the student, CLT accomplishes this by focusing on real life situations and interactions, causing the student to learn how to effectively communicate based on everyday interactions. (Source: Slideshare ) A method that has become vastly popular because of the current consumer demand of language fluency in human interactions.

More to come…

Marina

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 9:09 am and is filed under Language Facts. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.