Unit three Error Analysis 11

Unit four Contrastive Analysis

Unit five Discourse Analysis
Unit six Corpora linguistics
Unit seven Forensic linguistics

MODULE 2 UNIT 1

PERFORMANCE IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

This unit is a continuation of what you learnt in Module 1 unit 7 where you
were introduced to psycholinguistics and language learning. You were told that
psycholinguistics is one of the subfields of applied linguistics and that it is not
only important for AL but also for other areas of language work. You also
learnt that the principal concern of psychology of language is to give an
account of the psychological processes that go on when people produce or
understand utterances- that is, the investigation of language performance. You
were also taught the differences and similarities between language acquisition
and language learning and that the issue performance in language learning will
be discussed in this unit. I think you now remember some of the things we
talked about in the last unit.

CONTENTS
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
3.0 Main content
3.1 Productive and receptive performance
3.2 Process of language learning
3.2.1 Recognition
3.2.2 Identification
3.3 Theories of language learning
3.3.1 Language learning
3.3.2 Inductive learning
3.3.3 Deductive learning
3.4 Language learning and language teaching
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 Tutor marked assignments
7.0 References and further reading

1.0 INTRODUCTION

This unit as mentioned above is a continuation of Module 1 unit 7 which is on

psycholinguistics. Corder (1973:115) notes two problems that psycholinguistics
concerns itself with. These are language acquisition and language performance.

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Language performance has to do with the psychological processes that go on
when people use sentences. The language skills that scholars commonly refer
to are listening, speaking reading and writing. As labelled categories, they do
not take care of what goes on in the head. We still have to rely on
psycholinguists to tell us what goes on when people actually use language.
Corder notes that there are two types of performance-productive (the ones we
say or do) and receptive performance (the ones we listen to or exposed to).
Before we go on, let us look at what you are expected to be able to do after you
have completed reading through this unit. Below are some of the objectives of
this unit.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

- describe productive and receptive types of performance

- discuss briefly what is meant by language learning and language teaching
strategies

3.0 MAIN CONTENT

3.1 Productive and receptive performance

Production and performance are two basic activities that human beings engage
in during language learning. The language teacher should not approach his
work based on the teaching of speaking, hearing, writing and reading alone
because the pupils are already familiar with these in their mother tongue.
Learning to read and write presupposes the ability to speak and hear- that is the
possession of some verbal behaviour. The language teacher does not start from
the scratch because the learner already has a base on which the teacher can
build the new language activities. He/she only needs to extend this skill in the
pupils relatively to a particular level (Corder (1973). For example, one can read
and make meaning of writing in a language that has some Roman alphabets
because one knows the alphabets.

Reading involves different levels of activity or different kinds of skills. When

you read to yourself, you are processing the written material in a number of
highly complex ways. You recognise the sentences and understand the
message. You internalise the message. You can be said to be doing some form
of receptive performance. Listening implies giving attention and it involves
one’s awareness of the language activity going on around the person. One
should be able to detect the differences in pitch and duration. One must be able
to detect differences in the quality of sound. It is a receptive performance.

In speaking, we need the skill to make use of our organs in such a way that we
are able to control all the sounds that we produce. We should be able to

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monitor our own production. This is a productive performance and the ability
to monitor our own production is what Corder refers to as auditory feedback.
He notes that deaf speakers often take on certain peculiarities of sound because
of the lack of the monitoring process.

Self Assessment Exercise 1

Explain what you understand by productive and receptive performance in

language learning.

3.2 Process of language learning

Language learning is in stages. It is like a child learning to walk. He/she starts

by crawling. The child then tries to stand, takes one step, then two, three until
he/she is able to have a balanced movement. Language learning starts with
recognition of different features of the language and this leads to identification
and use of grammatically and semantically well formed sentences in the
language.

3.2.1 Recognition

Recognition is important in the psychology of perception. It is an active

process which extends beyond the level of sounds, intonation patterns and
rhythms of language to groups of sounds or lexical words. Corder (1973:118-
122) notes that the process is also called sentence identification-analysis by
synthesis. He notes that the criticism of this procedure is that it suggests that in
order to identify a sentence, we must first analyse it completely and see if the
structure of the sentence can be generated by the rules of the grammar we have
internalised. Sutherland (1966) suggests that we do not have to go through that
cumbersome process but sample or predict the structure of the utterance and act
accordingly. That is, we should go into the next phase of the performance. This
accounts for why we often have to go over what we have read before or
listened to when we make mistakes in our receptive processing of utterances.

3.2.2 Identification

Corder notes that identification is the process of recognising utterances as

grammatically and semantically well formed. He further notes that it is not
enough to identify utterances as grammatical but linguistic terms, we have to
internalise not only the grammatical but also the lexical rules. These are rules
that have to do with the semantic structure of the language with its internal
sense relations. Corder (1973 reports on Laver (1970) who identifies five chief
functions in speech production which can be described as neuro-linguistic.
These are ideational (initiates the appropriate semantic content of any verbal
message, planning process (constructs an appropriate linguistic programme for
the expression of the idea. The remaining processes are the permanent storage

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of linguistic information, the execution of the programme which is the actual
set of articulatory actions; and the monitoring function which is simultaneous
with the execution.

3.3 Theories of language learning

Some theories of language learning were discussed in Mod 1 unit 2. You will
get to know a few more in this section as they relate to performance in
language learning. Researchers ask questions on how the child and the learner
acquire language skills. The answers to their question border on the theories of
language acquisition and learning. Below are some of them.

3.3.1 Language learning

Language learning is a process whereby certain combinations of words and

intonation of voice are strengthened and are gradually made to occur in
appropriate situations by the process of discrimination learning’ (Corder 1973).
A speaker of any language can produce new sentences and utterances all the
time which shows that the learner interacts with his/her environment. This
interaction helps him/her to have new language experiences that make demands
on him/her to either describe them or relate with other people concerning them.
In learning a new language, a learner also makes new utterances depending on
the situation. The learner however builds on the repertoire of his/her previous
knowledge of the first language. The learning of language must be related to
the learning and knowledge of the world. Language learning can be seen from
two perspectives- inductive learning and deductive learning.

3.3.2 Inductive learning

Inductive learning is ‘the creation and storage of abstract internal

representations (linguistic information) through a process of generalization,
classification and association’. (Corder 1973:128) The inductive theory of
language learning is based on the assumption that verbal behaviour is not
different in kind from other behaviour and is acquired in fundamentally the
same way (Skinner (1957). Corder (1973:129) notes that by processes of
conditioning, imitation, practice, generalisation and reinforcement, the learner
is able to process information and learn.

3.3.3 Deductive learning

According to Corder (1973:128), deductive learning is the discovery of the

linguistic information to be stored by a process of applying to the data some
inborn theory about language. Corder refers to some set of ready made

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inherited categories or concepts common to all human language (linguistic
universals). He refers to this latter theory as the nativist hypothesis which is
based on three considerations; first, all human language in spite of their
obvious superficial differences show remarkable superficial similarities;
second, the process of constructing a theory from the data i.e the inductive
theory would take too long, third; that the data on which it works is too
distorted and partial for the purpose.

The deductive theory assumes that language is peculiar to human beings- that
they are born with a specific programme for acquiring it. To Skinner (1957), it
is learned by some sort of data-processing by heuristic (aiding or guiding)
processes of hypothesis formation and testing; that language is a matter of rule-
governed behaviour, not responses but rules for making responses.

Self Assessment Exercise 2

Explain what you understand by the process of language learning.

3.4 Language learning and language teaching

Many scholars have researched on language learning but according to Corder

the development of language teaching methods have been a little bit
controversial. Scholars have noted that most teachers in classrooms try to adopt
some methods of teaching which were not consistent with the language
learning theories that have earlier on been discussed. Corder noted that teachers
have continued to use teaching procedures such as imitation, drill, formal
practice and over learning of sentence patterns. He further notes that this
method has been accompanied by what is considered the traditional techniques
of exemplification, rule giving, description and translation which are more
appropriate to a deductive than an inductive theory of learning.

Teachers have probably noticed some deficiencies in the theories and have
therefore decided to stick to the techniques which seem to be working for them
and their students. To the teachers, the techniques they use are as good as the
newer techniques which emphasise audiovisual. In short, teachers seem to be
using an eclectic approach to get the best from their pupils. Recently however,
with the advent of computer facilities, there has been a lot of research on how
to use the computer to aid learning. This is fast gaining grounds in many
advanced countries and this has led to a shift in emphasis from the traditional
method to some other modern methods of teaching. You will be introduced to
this in one of the units latter on in this course.

4.0 CONCLUSION

In this unit we have talked about performance in language learning and that
performance has to do with the psychological processes that go on when people

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use sentences. The process of language learning involves recognition and
identification and that the speech production functions involved in
identification are – ideational, planning, execution, monitoring and storage.
Inductive and deductive learning are some of the learning theories that we
have. You have learnt about some other learning theories in Mod 1 unit 2.

5.0 SUMMARY

In this unit, you have learnt that:

two problems that psycholinguistics concerns itself with are language

acquisition and language performance.
there are two types of performance-productive (the ones we say or do)
and receptive performance (the ones we listen to or exposed to).
In speaking, we need the skill to make use of our organs in such a way
that we are able to control all the sounds that we produce.
Language learning is a process whereby certain combinations of words
and intonation of voice are strengthened and are gradually made to
occur in appropriate situations by the process of discrimination learning
Recognition is important in the psychology of perception. It is an active
process which extends beyond the level of sounds, intonation patterns
and rhythms of language to groups of sounds or lexical words
identification is the process of recognising utterances as grammatically
and semantically well formed.
Scholars have noted that most teachers in classrooms try to adopt some
methods of teaching which were not consistent with the language
learning theories that have earlier on been discussed
Recently however, with the advent of computer facilities, there has been
a lot of research on how to use the computer to aid learning

6.0 TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENTS

1. You happen to be invited as a student who has studied applied linguistics to

give instructions on how to use inductive method of learning to teach a class of
primary two pupils the prepositions –‘in’ and ‘on’. What will you do and how
will you do it?
2. Describe how you will use the deductive type of teaching to teach your
younger sister who is in primary five a topic on common nouns.

7.0 REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Corder, P.S (1973) Introducing Applied Linguistics. Harmodsworth,

Middlesex, England: Penguin Books Ltd.

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