Teaching Method and Fundamental Facts

about Second Language Acqusition (SLA)

In this section, I'd like to cite relevant linguistic research findings on how people acquire second languages, and address why my teaching method can seem different when compared to the typical language classroom experience.

I understand language to be “an implicit and abstract mental representation that humans use to interpret and express meaning” (Keating 2016, p. 2). As Keating states, “the mental representations that end

up in people’s minds are of a different nature than the rules of thumb commonly found in textbooks and prescriptive grammars” (p. 2), a distinction that is key in second language instruction (see VanPatten, 2017). Implicit in Keating’s definition is the idea that language lies outside of our conscious awareness, and how it operates in our brains cannot be easily described. Native speakers have an intuition about whether a sentence is possible or not in a language, but often cannot explain why. Pedagogical rules that teachers have devised and which are presented in language textbooks “aren't psychologically real” (VanPatten, 2017, p. 20). These rigit

teaching method

In this section, I'd like to lay out the definition of a language, describe the process of second language acquisition and factors that contribute to it, addressing why my teaching method can seem different when compared to the typical grammar-focused language classroom experience.

I understand language to be “an implicit and abstract mental representation that humans use to interpret and express meaning” (Keating, 2016). As Keating states, “the mental representations that end

up in people’s minds are of a different nature than the rules of thumb commonly found in textbooks and prescriptive grammars”, a distinction that is key in second language instruction (see VanPatten, 2017). Implicit in Keating’s definition is the idea that language lies outside of our conscious awareness, and how it operates in our brains cannot be easily described. Native speakers have an intuition about whether a sentence is possible or not in a language, but often cannot explain why. Pedagogical rules that teachers have devised and which are presented in language textbooks “aren't psychologically real” (vanPatten, 2017). they do not account for all

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