A recent question from one of my SLA students regarding competence and performance: I am still confused about you mentioning that competence equals performance. In general, we can see that even native speakers make mistakes while they are speaking. If so, can we say that his competence is still equal to the performance? Also,it is said that competence is measured by the test. Does the test result represent the competence 100%?
Native speakers do make mistakes, but do they make the same mistakes repeatedly? Imagine that you listen to a native speaker talk and that person uses correct subject/verb agreement 100 times. Then you hear that person make a mistake with subject/verb agreement. After observing the performance, what can you determine about that native speaker's competence?
While I'm happy that you're considering the issues, please remember your main focus: to come up with an analogy that shows that competence generates performance and use your visual to help the class understand the relationship between competence and performance.
When talking about Cognitivists and their view of FLA, we have to mention the environment as a source of input. Here's an analogy that we use at SMU-TESOL:
Input can be compared to a lending library, a place where you borrow books. People go to libraries to borrow books that interest them. But this is no ordinary lending library. In fact, it is filled not with books, but with rules - linguistic rules. This library has shelves filled with the totality of all the rules parents use. This library is not visited by adults. Rather, it is visited by young children. When children go there, they take the books that they are biologically ready to take. That is, when a child reaches a certain age, s/he will reach up and select the rules that are right for that stage.
The lending library analogy is really good at capturing the relationship between environment and child. Here, parents make rules available. It's the child who makes the selection.
So I've been bust correcting SMU TESOL students first SLA homework which includes goodies like paraphrasing keywords in Pinker's definition of language, drawing timelines, summarizing the Behaviorist perspective, explaining the LAD, and describing learning or teaching experiences in light of Cognitive principles.
The questions are good ones that make students think (if they want a good grade anyway) but one student went for the extra credit (which I never offered and can't give) and offereed three focus questions of her own. Since next semester I will be in charge of the SLA course, I have to consider if the homework questions need to be changed (there may be lots of previous students' answers floating around out there). Anyway, her questions were food for thoguht:
Why is Charles Osgood's mediation theory necessary for Behaviorists to explain langauge learning?
Explain the language acquisition principles at work in the following dialogue:
Child: I putted the plates on the table!That one of course was an excerpt from Lightbrown and Spada's How Languages Are Learned (the cartoon on p.16). The one from McNeil (1966 p.69 as quoted in Brown's Principles of Language Learning and Teaching p.39) would be another possibility.
Mother: You mean, I put the plates on the table.
Child: No. I putted them on all by myself.
Define UG (Universal Grammar).
The three most importantapproaches to first language acquisition (FLA) are Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. Here at SMU-TESOL we deal only with Behaviorism and Cognitivism. We stress that Behaviorism is no longer supported and that Cognitivism is the dominant theory when it comes to explaining FLA. Next semester, when I am head teacher of SLA, I may try to alter the curriculum to include Constructivism. Constructivist theory has influenced numerous approaches to SLA.
Before going any further, a few definitions:
Behaviorism focuses on behavioral changes. Behavioral patterns are repeated after positive feedback until they become automatic. What might or might not be happening in the mind is not considered. The idea is that FLA can be explained without reference to mental activity.
Cognitivism focuses on thought process. Changes in behavior indicate what is going on in the learner's head. Interestingly, Cognitivists do acknowledge behavioristic concepts such as repetition and reinforcement. (Good and Brophy, 1990, pp. 187) stress that rather than focusing on behavior, "cognitive theorists view learning as involving the acquisition or reorganization of the cognitive structures through which humans process and store information." This indicates that to a cognitivist repetition and reinforcement affect thought processes.
Constructivism focuses on learning as an active process based on individual experiences. Negotiation of meaning is critical. This is not to say that each person has a unique reality. Constructivists argue that people interpret the physical world roughly the same way.
The main reasons we stress cognitivism is that language is an instinct and every (normal) person succeeds in learning their first language. Differences in the environment are simply not important.
Also, everyone learns language without getting taught. 5-year-olds have pretty much mastered L1 grammar without a teacher. We stress that mothers don't teach their children and that even if a few do, it makes no difference.
Language does consist of rules (grammar, vocabulary, phonology) that everyone knows. People don't think about the rules when they speak (remember we're talking about L1). Rules existing in the mind and being used to create novel chunks of language can only be explained by talking about the mind. Behaviorists try to explain language production as a habit.
Finally, children acquire language at pretty much the same rate regardless of how much repetition, reinforcement, etc. they are exposed to. Exceptions (for example I said my first word at 2 years when the norm is 12 months) prove the rule.
One of the things I love about my new teacher trainer position at SMU-TESOL is that there is a system in place. Every teacher uses it and the idea (like it always is with content based instruction) is to help students improve English proficiency as they study course content.
I've had lots of expereince with CBI, but never in a program that puts as much emphasis on getting individual students to take turns and error correction as SMU-TESOL.
I'll try to go into more detail later, but here's a quick example. I introduce the outline for todays's lesson. I ask a student to be the teacher and intorduce today's lesson (I probbaly write an outline on the board with a few key words to help). If the student makes a mistake I correct it (since I've already modeled the language).
It certainly puts more emphasis on accuracy than classes I'm used to teaching which focus largely on fuency. I'm sure people have had different experiences, but when I did task-based CBI classes in the past, I didn't do a lot of specific error correction when students spoke (I did on written work and I tried to prepare worksheets based on errors I overheard in class) because correcting one student in front of the class seemed too harsh (it might raise the affective filter).