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End of interview and Conclusion

  S10: Marcela describes her experience of raising bilingual children Marcela describes that it is difficult to you raise bilingual children. Marcela tried to speak in Slovac when her children were little and living in Australia to help them retain their mother tongue. They then moved back to Slovakia so it was good that they knew some Slovac. When they came back to Australia, Marcela spoke mainly English to her children. Marcela said that her daughter was nine when they came back to Australia and she notes that it is known that if you learn a language before the age of nine that you usually don't forget it and you are then a bilingual child. Her daughter however, felt that she was forgetting Slovac so she asked Marcela to just speak Slovac to her and she also talked to her aunty in Slovac. Marcela describes how her son who was six when they came back to Australia, forgot how to speak in Slovac, including the accent but says he has some understanding of Slovac. S11: Marcela reflect...
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The interview continued: Marcela learns English in England

  S5: Marcela attends an Summer School in England Marcela describes how she went to England to a Summer School to learn English, initially for two months, but she then extended this. She attended class every day Monday-Friday, from 9am-12pm,  12-3pm or from 3-6pm and worked part-time as a waitress. Marcela describes how the lessons, like the ones with the British Council, were a lot of fun and conducted by a native English speaker. She had the new opportunity of learning and speaking with students from a range of different countries such as Italy and Brazil. Marcela describes how she was exposed to many different cultures and they discussed how they lived. They listened to a lot of popular songs. Marcela realised that she would need to keep learning English for a whole year to gain fluency in the spoken language, so that she could work in a professional job. S6: Marcela read her first novels in English Marcela describes how she started reading books in English. The first book ...
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The interview

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  The interview An interview took place via Zoom with Marcela, who is the partner of my brother-in-law. Marcela is a 49 year old woman and she was born in Slovakia, where she was first taught English at school by a non-native English speaker in the 1980's, from Year 5. She first learnt English when Slovakia was still a part of Czechoslovakia, which was at that time heavily under Russian influence. Her first English language teacher was her classroom teacher. The method of teaching used was rote learning of the grammatical rules, using textbooks, which focused on tense and sentence structure. It was teacher centred and the individual needs of the students were largely not considered.  I will label the excerpts from the interview as follows: S(section) 1 = S1 and so on. S1: Marcela describes her early English language experiences Marcela describes her early English language at a selective language school. where she learnt Russian until Year 5 and then after that she learnt Engli...
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The Heutagogy Approach to learning and Complexity Theory

  The Heutagogy Approach and Complexity Theory Another language teaching approach I investigated was the heutagogy approach to learning, or self-directed learning. This approach to learning began in 2000, due to dissatisfaction with the teacher focused education that was occurring in universities. Heutagogy derives from philosophies of humanism and constructivism, where the learner is at the centre of their education.  Heutagogy (Hase, 2013 p. 7), is described as “self-determined learning” which stipulates that “in some learning situations, the focus should be on what and how the learner wants to learn, not on what is to be taught” and it is a learner, not teacher-centred method. Learning, according to this approach, is then successful, as students enjoy the learning and are therefore motivated to keep learning. Secondly, they claim that while learning “brain plasticity allows for existing neural pathways to be enhanced, and also for new pathways to be established” (Hase, 20...
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The Sociocultural Theory Approach to Second Language Acquisition

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The Sociocultural Theory Another approach to Second Language Acquisition was based on The Sociocultural Theory (SCT) which emerged in the 1990’s and contrasted with the cognitive learning theories that, “defined learning as an internal psychological process isolated in the mind of the learner and largely free from the social and physical contexts within which it occurs” (Lenneberg, 1967, in Johnson, K, 2006, p. 238).  The Sociocultural Theory (SCT) began from the writings of Russian psychologist L.S Vygotsky. His views on child development have influenced studies on L2 language acquisition in classrooms. SCT “argues that human mental functioning is fundamentally a mediated process that is organised by cultural artifacts, activities and concepts” (Ratner, 2002, in VanPatten & Williams, 2015, p. 207). Learners can use and create new cultural artifacts which they use to monitor behaviour. SCT theorists believe that the most important cognitive activity occurs during interactions w...
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Other Cogitive Theories

  Other Cognitive Theories An opposing view to Krashen’s theory was Swain’s (1985, in Mitchell et al., 2019), Output Hypothesis which proposed that input is comprehensible without the need for analysing grammar. Swain believed that L2 learners can guess meanings by using contextual clues. Swain further proposed the importance of production or output, during which L2 learners process grammar completely. This occurs because when learners are required to speak in the target language, they become aware of the gaps in their language, and they can then reflect on the errors and grammatical forms required. Swain observed that children in immersion programmes in Canada for several years, still were not achieving native-like language acquisition. She saw this as a lack of opportunity for language use and that “language production forces learners to move from comprehension (semantic use of language) to syntactic use of language” (Gass & Mackay, in VanPatten & Williams, 2015, p. 185)....
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Krashen's Monitory Theory

  Krashen's Monitor Theory, a Cognitive Perspective The research on input and interaction led to Krashen’s (1985) Monitor Theory, which was the first theory specifically for SLA. Krashen’s theory evolved in the 1970’s and was based around five hypotheses. The first hypothesis was the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis, the belief that acquisition, and learning are separate processes (Krashen, 1985, in Mitchell & Myles, 2004). Krashen proposed that acquisition is an informal, subconscious process which derives from natural and meaningful interactions. In contrast, learning is a formal, conscious process which occurs in classrooms where form and grammar is the focus. This theory has had a pivotal influence on current SLA theories. The second hypothesis was the Monitor hypothesis where Krashen stated, “that learning has only one function, and that is as a Monitor or editor…acquisition imitates the speaker’s utterances and is responsible for fluency” (McLaughlin, 1987, in Mitchell ...
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