Language , Learning and Teaching .

By Prof. Manuel Jiménez Campos 

Learning a second language is a long and complex process, a new culture, a new way of thinking or different viewpoint, feelings and acting, a compromise, a good total immersion, an efficient reaction towards the new language, all these factor are required in order to success in the acquisition process.

Language learning is not a set of easy steps that can be programmed to be applied immediately, not all participants in this quest are able to achieve fluency in a foreign language, most of the time practice is only in class, but we should ask to ourselves if we applied in every environment which are in contact with. Some current issues in second language acquisition are barriers to achieve this complex, but possible way to establish a connection between what we think about the language and the language itself, it leads to these questions; Who ? What? How? When ? Where? and Why ? are the suitable moments in which we have to apply in the second language.

Learning and Teaching

What is learning and what is teaching and how do they interact? According to 
a search in contemporary dictionaries reveals that learning is "acquiring or getting of knowledge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or instruction." A more specialized definiton might read as follows: "Learning, is relatively permanent change in behavioral tendency and is the result of reinforced practice"(Kimble and Garmezy 1963:133). Teaching may be defined as "showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or understand." 
Breaking down the components of the definition of learning, we can extract, as we did with language, domains of research and inquiry:

1. Learning is acquiring or "getting."

2. Learning is retention of information or skill.

3. Retention implies storage systems, memory, and cognitive organization.

4. Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside the organism.

5. Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting.

6. Learning involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice.

7. Learning is a change in behaviour.

Language Teaching Methodology

One of the most studied issues applied linguistics for the last century has been the foreign or second language classroom, many approaches had been tried, using a cautious, attractive and traditional methods, one of these methods is: The Grammar Traslation Method It is typical of this approach, therefore, to place emphasis on the rote memory learning of long lists of bilingual ‘vocabulary equations’, and on the learning of explicit rules of grammar, frequently in form of tables for the declension and conjugation of nouns and verbs. In the eyes of proponents of the Grammar Translation Method vocabulary learning required diligence and the analysis of the grammatical construction of sentences required intelligence. Learners who failed to do translations correctly where therefore blamed for being either not intelligent or lazy or both. In any case, errors were to not be tolerated. And because many people feel, up to this day, that learning a foreign language means learning to translate sentences from the mother tongue into the target language and vice versa, this approach to FLT still has its adherents. 

The Grammar Traslation Method 

The Grammar Translation Method has its historical origins in the teaching of Latin, which was the dominant language in universities, the public services and intellectual life in general from medieval times up to the 19^th century. Knowledge of Latin was needed for the study of the bible and for academic purposes like the study of medical books and legal documents. In Latin studies the focus was, therefore, on the study of written texts. Knowledge of Latin distinguished ‘educated people’ from ordinary folks. Study of the canon of classical texts from well-known ancient authors like Ovid and Cicero was considered morally and aesthetically edifying and superior to anything which the study of modern languages could afford. Speaking Latin played a subordinate role because it was a ‘dead language’ and because there were no authentic living people who could serve as a model for its phonetically correct pronunciation. It was not before the year 1886 that linguists like Wilhelm Vietor, Henry Sweet, and Daniel Jones created the International Phonetic Alphabet for the phonetic description of sounds in different languages.

When in the late 19th century, mainly for political, economic, military, and other practical purposes, some people proposed that in public schools the study of modern languages like French and English should be introduced, it stood beyond question that their teaching had to be based on the methods used for the study of Latin. The focus was on the study of written texts, therefore, and the learners' first language was the language used in foreign language classes. Studying a foreign language was considered something like an intellectual exercise, and the analysis of complicated grammatical constructions and the translation of rows of isolated sentences in both directions was the test by which students could be shamed or show their superior cognitive abilities. Failure to produce correct answers was considered a sign of indolence or inferior intellectual qualities and might provoke physical punishment.

Five principles of Language Acquisition 

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