English Language Acquisition: Cognitive Processes of Learning

I am going to focus on the science of learning – in this case learning foreign languages. This process includes:

_ Cognition. Cognitive processes will differ, depending on whether this is your first, second, or third language. In any case, you will fare better in your language-learning activities if you understand such concepts as coding and encoding and the difference between knowledge and proficiency.

_ Memory. Memory has a number of components. These include sentient memory (or awareness), short-term memory, long-term memory, and working (or activated) memory. Activated memory is important for recognition, recall, and reconstruction of others’ expressions and construction of our own (new) expressions. Good memory depends on memory strategies and body chemistry; both of these can be improved by learners.

_ Aptitude. Aptitude refers to the ability to learn a foreign language, much of which may be innate or at least developed over a long time. Some students just seem to learn languages more easily than other students. There are a number of components of aptitude, and even students with low aptitude can learn a foreign language by being aware of their strengths and knowing how to compensate for their weaknesses.

_ Metacognition. Metacognition is that which is “above” cognition. In other words, it is “thinking about thinking.” Being aware of one’s own progress, actions, and thinking processes can do much to improve language-learning success.

Cognition means thinking. There are many processes involved in thinking, and all of them are considered part of cognition. Some examples are noticing, paying attention, making guesses and hypotheses, monitoring what you say, interpreting what you read or hear.... For example

In Spanish and Portuguese, tenses are generally the same, there are some of the difficult moments for students of English who are studying both languages, such as the choice between two different verbs expressing to be, ser and estar.  Spanish and Portuguese sometimes use these verbs in the same way and at other times where Spanish requires estar, Portuguese requires ser. The tendency of the learner who has learned Spanish as a second language and is learning Portuguese as a third language is to overgeneralize the Spanish rules to Portuguese and vice versa. Similarly, students of Portuguese can make the same erroneous overgeneralization when learning Spanish.

An advantage in studying a third language that is related to a language you already know is that some of the vocabulary will look and sound similar, making a sense of instant familiarity. The student may tend to overgeneralize and use words from the second language in the third language e.g: anglicized (if English is the source of influence), gallicized (if French is the source of influence). To avoid this, look for that  will allow you to acquire a large reserve of vocabulary very rapidly.

Every single student has developed  a set of strategies to use in language learning. For example:

1. You know how to figure out the meaning of new words based on the context in which you see them.
2. You know how to figure out grammar rules by seeing specific forms in several contexts.
3. You know how to ignore what you don’t know yet and use what you do know in order to decipher meaning.
4. You know the kinds of actions you need to take in order to remember vocabulary and grammar rules.
5. You know what to do in order to communicate with a native speaker – both when you know all the expressions you need and when you do not.

There is a considerable difference between knowledge and speaking accurately and fluently. For example, the student may well know a lot of grammar rules and words – he or she has got knowledge. It is in the background of One ability to communicate, but it rarely results directly in communication. The amount of information the students have does not determine their level of fluency, or even accuracy, in a foreign language. It is not what they know that counts in foreign-language proficiency, it is what they do with it. There are people with very limited knowledge of a language who are able to negotiate all kinds of things in the language with native speakers. Other people know a lot about the language, but fail miserably if asked to accomplish something that requires real communication, such as negotiating a contract, because they have almost no fluency. For proficient speech, knowledge is just a stepping stone to being able to use the language – and some learners actually develop the knowledge from the experience of using the language and not vice versa. What is specifically needed for proficient speech (and understanding) is a combination of accuracy (saying things correctly and understanding them the way speakers or writers meant them) and fluency (speaking with a normal tempo).

Researchers and cognitive psychologists have developed a number of classifications of memory that can be helpful to the foreign-language learner. They gain better insights into how memory works, what role chemicals play, and what happens to information once it enters memory. Psychologists look at memory in several ways – and at the possible taxonomies of memory types. Some of these taxonomies are portrayed below.

• Episodic memory (remembering events, such as what happened at a party you attended two weeks ago);
• procedural memory (developing habitual processes, such as driving a car or riding a bike);
• semantic memory (remembering content information or linguistic elements  and their meanings).

All three kinds are very significant and play a role in language learning, semantic memory is considered the most important, because it is in fact memory for language. However, you need episodic memory to store learning events and procedural memory to make what you learn automatic (a key to fluency). Remembering grammar rules and developing a knowledge base about your language will require semantic memory. All of them work together to make you a good language learner.

What does this mean … the foreign-language learner? Until One find it out more, it would appear beneficial to do all of the following:

• pay careful attention to the environment in which you learn language elements;
• pay attention to as many aspects as possible of the language you hear and see;
• try to use as many senses as possible in learning a new language; and attempt some sort of rehearsal.

Short-term, long-term, and permanent memory are what psychologists call memory store. They are less a “place” than an “action.” Usually, cognitive processing that involves these three kinds of memory is considered to begin with sentient memory, as described above. Once information is in some form of transient memory, it is either lost forever or transferred to long-term memory through a two-step process (from sentient to short-term to long-term) or a one-step process (from sentient or short-term to long-term), depending on the view of memory processing. The important things for you, as a language learner, to know are:

• some information/language can and should be lost (otherwise you will be overwhelmed with too much information that you cannot sort through),
• paying selective attention to the things you want to be able to recall will do much to make sure these items reach your long-term memory.

For memory to “work,” these memory stores must be activated. It is accomplished via working, or activated, memory.

Learners can help create a shortcut to permanent memory by associating sounds of new words with sounds that already have meaning for them, even if the grammar is not equivalent. Thus, in Arabic, someone named John could introduce himself, saying Ismee John, or My name is John. Trying to remember ismee (name) will be much easier if John associates it with similar sounds in English: (it) is me.

Long-term memory lasts up to three years. An example of long-term memory is the information you learn for a test and forget the next day or the next semester. Long-term memory generally holds information that you need right now and for the next little bit, but unless there is further use and repetition (i.e. further need for use), this information will not stay with you for a lifetime. Information can be lost from long-term memory through trace decay (one loses the thread of the information), stroke, and other things that interfere with retention. You as a language learner  need to use what you have learned, you need to have many opportunities for reading the same kinds of things, hearing them, speaking them, and writing them over a long period of time. Consciously making an effort to return to topics you have not concentrated on in a while will help you keep the vocabulary and grammar associated with them fresh in your long-term memory; at some point, they will become part of your permanent memory store. Permanent memory lasts, theoretically, forever, though it may become latent, requiring refreshing and activation when needed. (This is knowledge you have not used for quite a while but which never really goes away.) What remains and what disappears may be very situational and very much dependent upon individuals. The more you read within one topical domain, the more likely it becomes that each new reading will contain relatively fewer new words or grammar points.

Processing activities generally consist of one or more of the following:

• recognition
• recall
• reconstruction
• construction of information.

In order to recognize words, grammar, or ideas, we need to have related information about them stored in memory already. Activated memory pulls up this information so that we can use it in a variety of ways, such as using context to guess the meaning of a new word or using background knowledge about a topic to figure out the gist (general meaning) of a text.

Summing up thinking about related things can  stimulate recall. For example, if you are trying to remember the word ball, you might group it with other words for toys, with words that start with the letter b, with words that rhyme ( fall, hall, mall, etc.), it activates the process of  differentiation by very easy association.

Bibliography:

1. Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,
2. S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,
3. Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP
4. B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

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