Diary: What I have been supposed to learn about Learning and Learning Process

Diary is the title which hardly fully illustrates what I am going to do in the following lines. As far as diary is concerned, I may think of it as a collection of sentences describing – or maybe reporting – what has happened during any time unit in any given circumstance. However, I have titled this entry DIARY just because I have been supposed to do so. In the following lines, I mostly try to reflect my own understanding of what is called Learning and Learning Process. This understanding comes mostly from the book chapters cited in the syllabus and from class discussions.

Since I see the understanding process as a whole, I will not try to distinguish the source of this understanding which may be either the books or the class discussions.

We are constantly learning and when a phenomenon is a subject of constant happening, the study of such phenomenon is likely to be neglected or might seem impossible as it is so mush an ordinary process that we might become forgetful about.

Learning – and Learning a Foreign Language as well - has been studied by various scholars and thus from different perspectives. When it comes to study of the second language learning, the first question which might pop up is "Is learning a second language similar to learning the first?"

Nunan puts this question as his start point and proceeds with elaborating on this issue through three pathways:

Psycholinguistic mechanism

The acquisition of syntax

Discourse acquisition

As a conclusion Nunan through reviewing different studies have come to this conclusion that though there are undeniable similarities between L1 and L2 learning, the differences should not be neglected. It is quite obvious that learning L1 and L2 involve different groups of learners – mostly children in case of the former and adults in case of the latter.

Children if viewed as human beings on their midway of developing their cognitive potentials, benefit from a quite different learning process from what adults may employ. Here comes the distinction between conscious and unconscious learning. Two concepts that can now be categorized as distinct entities Learning and Acquisition. Since adults have fully developed their cognitive potentials, they tend to attend to the input of learning in a mostly conscious fashion. While children are more holistic and most of what they learn – especially in case of language – are unconscious.

Here comes another question: while adults employ an entirely different process of learning is it still possible for them to benefit from acquisition rather than learning?

Before answering this question lets take a look at different point of views about learning thorough different schools of thought.

As far as learning is viewed as rote or mechanical processes which lead to formation of habits we are dealing with Behavioristic approach which initially disclosed by Ivan Pavlov and later modified by B. F. Skinner. The core of this theory _ as I've understood- is about the importance of stimulus and response and generally the process of reinforcement. Skinner later in his influential book called Verbal Behavior viewed language as a product of his modified theory of conditioning, Operant Conditioning.

As a strong opposition to this pure behavioristic view, cognitive theoreticians like Asubel differentiated Rote learning and Meaningful Learning. According to Ausubel, Learning can take place only when the new incoming data has been incorporated into the existing network of knowledge that one has already acquired. He called this process "subsumption". Later the humanist theoretician Carl Rogers brought the social and affective aspects into practice.

In order for meaningful learning to happen, the incoming data should be relatively comprehensible i.e. it has to have something to do with the existing network of knowledge. Krashen, a theoretician who was strongly in favor of acquisition rather than learning conceptualized this comprehensible input in his infamous i+1 theory.

According to Krashen, an input in order to be comprehensible should be slightly above the current level of knowledge of the learner, otherwise it can not be acquired.

i+1 is one of the components of Krashen's Input Theory. The other four are as follow:

The Natural order Hypothesis

The monitor hypothesis

The input hypothesis

The affective filter hypothesis

According to Krashen, Comprehensible Input itself is responsible for acquisition and the learned things just function as monitors. He believes learning never leads to acquisition.

In the first lines of my diary I mentioned that when a phenomenon is subject to constant occurrence, study of such phenomenon is likely to be neglected.

According to Johnson, mistakes learners make in their target language provide us with more material to study and analyze rather than they make perfect utterances.

Johnson seems to be inclined to employ an error-oriented approach toward learning and acquisition. As far as errors have been concerned, studies have been conducted to identify the possible sources of errors. Johnson by starting from error, soon comes to CA which has its origins in behaviorism. CA, for a long time, claimed that by means of contrastive study of L1 and L2 of learners, errors in L2 can be predicted. Though like other achievements of behaviorism, CA has experienced a lot of critisim but still its weak version is of high value.

As behaviorism was losing its popularity, another view toward errors emerged. This new approach tried to deal with non-contrastive errors or as Richards – the founder- suggests the intralingual errors. Another term he uses is developmental error which talks about errors emerge while a language learner steps toward the mastery of the target language. In this stage, surprisingly, such error like overgeneralization which is observed in children acquiring their first language is seen. Having developmental as a common terminology, Dulay & Burt devised an alternative to CA called Creative Construction Theory. The word Creative has been used by these two scholars as some errors can not be related to transfer from L1. Creative Construction Theory, though experienced attacks by other scholars, still has its popularity.

Another acquisition theory, Acculturation Theory, has been devised by Schumann. The crucial assumption to this theory- which I believe is the disadvantage and a cause of being restricted- is that this theory deals with L2 learners who are living in the target-language speaking countries. We all know that not all the learners of a second language enjoy such circumstance. This theory tries to put much more emphasis on cultural aspects of the L2-speaking community and how much the learner is ready to be absorbed in that culture. Some key elements in this theory are fossilization and pidgin. According to Schumann, there are some similarities between fossilization and L2 learner talk. As we know, pidgins are semi-languages based on the target language that a community of L2 learners residing in the L2 speaking country develop in order to communicate their basic needs mostly business. Schumann sees the simplifications shared in both. The term fossilization talks about a state of showing no progress in learning target language in which errors tend to be stabilized and not to be modified in the course of time.

We have already taken a look at some acquisition theories. But, is it really a matter of acquisition only? Does learning have no obvious impact in this process?

To answer these questions, we'd better take a quick glance at different types of knowledge. Based on definitions, two distinctive types of knowledge can be identified: Declarative Knowledge and procedural knowledge.

Declarative knowledge is the accumulation of information about the subject e.g. a skill and on the other hand, procedural knowledge is the knowledge of how to perform that particular skill. Learning/acquisition involves two different sets of knowledge getting in terms of the order of appearance of these knowledge:

PRODEC and DECPRO

As definitions have already clarified, once we are dealing with PRODEC we are talking about the prior occurrence of acquisition to learning and once we are dealing with DECPRO we are talking about the prior occurrence of learning to acquisition.

Based on various studies, neither of these two types of knowledge is individually sufficient for an efficient learning/acquisition. It has been suggested that a combination of form-focused instruction and acquisition-based trainings like immersion programs will lead to better results.