COGNITIVE INFLUENCES ON LANGUAGE LEARNING

COGNITIVE INFLUENCES ON LANGUAGE LEARNING

1. 4. LEARNING STRATEGIES

   • Oxford and Crookall, 1989: -Steps taken by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage and retrieval of information. 
   • Particular approaches or techniques to learn an L2.
     • ELLIS, 1997: -Behavioural -Mental -Problem oriented - Learners are awre of the strategy they use. 
     • communicative competence
     • learner´s autonomy
     • problem oriented
     • specific actions
     • conscious and flexibe
     • support learning
   • Typologies
     • COGNITIVE:Manipulstion of the language MEMORY: Help to store COMPENSATION: Behaviours for missing knowledge. METACOGNITIVE:Reflection upon the learning process SOCIAL:Social behaviours involving other people AFFECTIVE: Control over the learners emotions COMMUNICATION:Oral production level
     • ELLIS,1985: Reduction strategies and achievement strategies
       • REDUCTION STRATEGIES: An attempt to avoid a communication problem. ACHIEVEMENT STRATEGIES: The learner decides to keep the original message but is forced to compensate for his/her lack of means of linguistic resources. 

2. 1. INTELLIGENCE OR "G" FACTOR

   • Knowledge of a foreign language = highly intelligent learner. 
   • The importance in L2 learning depends on what we understand by it.
     • Effects of intelligence
       • naturalistic settings
         • may play a less important role
       • formal instruction
         • may be a predictor of success

3. 2. LANGUAGE APTITUDE

   • Ellis, 1985. Its definition depends to a large extent upon underlying language teaching theories and interpretations of the language learning. 
   • Carroll and Sapon´s MLAT, 1959.
     • Modern Language Aptitude Test. -Phonetic coding ability.-Grammatical Sensitivity.-Inductive language learning.-Rote learning ability. 
     • A more progressive and scientific approach
     • Individualised learning, skills promotion and rate of learners´acquisition.
   • Unmodified and not trainable, (Krashen,1981).
   • Important factor
     • The most succesful predictor of language learning success, (Skehan,1989).
       • It involves  certain ddegree of trainig in some elements which seem to make up the construct of aptitude. 

4. 3. COGNITIVE STYLE

   • A characteristic self-consistent mode of functioning which individuals show in their perceptual and intellectual abilities,( Wilkins et al. 1971)
   • Combination of affect and cognition
     • VARIABLES: >Reflective-impulsive thinking>Broad-narrow categorizing>Skeletonizing-embroidering>Belief congruence-contradiction
   • Duality field dependence/independence.
     • ELLIS, 1985: FIELD DEPENDENCE 1. Personal Orientation 2. Holistic 3.Dependent 4.Socially sensitive FIELD INDEPENDENCE 1. Impersonal Orientation 2.Analytic 3.Independent 4.Not socially aware
     • independent learner: Natural analysis of the language
       • Dependent learners:More effective learning
         • naturalistic settings
       • classroom setting
       • No connection between approach to learning and success of it.
         • Factors such as intelligence, aptitude, age, strategies and personality should be studied as regards the role of cognitive style. 
   • REID perceptual learning tendencies.
     • -Visual learning -Auditory learning -Kinaesthetic learning -Tactile learning

5. STRATEGY TRAINING

   • student´s autonomy and responsibility
   • out of class learning strategy
     • coming into contact with the target language outside the classroom

6. REFERENCES IEXPRO. Individual Factors in the Learner´s Development. Anthology.

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