Foreign language teaching and learning research

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The school foreign language teaching and learning research (SFLLF) deals on the one hand with the “natural” and on the other hand with the institutional, in the narrower sense school, language acquisition in the course of a lifetime. The SFLLF highlights the differences (and similarities) between natural and institutional learning paths, evaluates age-dependent employment processes, and discovers regularities and differences.

Research bases

In order to work out the characteristics of methodically supported school-based learning, the differences in the learning arrangements and types of learning are weighted.

Four perspectives are examined:

The phylogeny is included in the considerations because phylogeny and ontogeny , ie tribal history and personal development, in relation universally-individually in the actual genesis and epigenetic influence each other. Talents and family history come together in the formation of individual consciousness to an extent that was only anticipated.

The foundations of this branch of research, which was launched by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 1986, are laid insofar as its subjects are meanwhile essentially capable of international consensus. In the meantime, a whole series of questions is still a problem, for example the question of the language sequence in (school and preschool) learning of foreign languages. It cannot yet be answered because there is a lack of sectoral work in this regard, for example in vocabulary and grammar.

A methodology including maths (mnemonic arranged exercise design) is also open , which is directed towards rhythmic, individual-oriented (all-day) lessons between instruction, co-construction and semi-autonomous learning. How can the learner transition from translingual to intralingual thinking behavior? Young learners in particular think of the target / foreign language (L2) from the perspective of their source or mother tongue (L1).

Whether a broadly effective improvement in learning behavior can ever be achieved through the influence of schools is seen as a scientific challenge in view of the variety of approaches to problem solving, i.e. processing styles. Neither programming nor individualization of the learner through measures on the part of the teacher appears to be possible on a large scale; strategy training does not reach all students because the learning program is immense. The constructivist approach therefore, it seems, lets the students act; the co-construction is a common behavior because an expert helps a novice: A rhythmization between instruction , co-construction and construction seems to be desirable.

Natural and institutional mono- and bilingual language acquisition

The importance of the SFLLF derives from the goal of secondary schools to create a bilingual and transcultural standard that is as broadly effective as possible (see Common European Framework of Reference ). This goal includes a corpus of oral and written text types to be defined for situations to be specified. The reception performance will be far higher than the production output. The guideline objective of general school education must be that a learner should be able to exceed the performance threshold (C1) of the frame of reference when he enters the fourth phase of his lifelong learning , i.e. working life (after childhood, school and training) in order to be able to integrate into L2 life. To this end, the previously well-known insufficient institutional performance framework must be increased.

The factor analysis of language teaching is based on the expectation that the teaching and learning behavior of the young learner can be improved with positive repercussions on his retention. In view of the existing framework conditions, it must be checked which goals can be achieved in the long term. The school-type-specific framework conditions must also be taken into account: The development from early childhood to school-based learning can be geared either to general high schools or comprehensive schools or to colleges and secondary schools. In the general education school system there is no vocational orientation. The vocational school system also needs its own consideration with regard to the teaching and learning paths and the teaching discourses.

Integrative approach to capturing learner and teacher characteristics

The SFLLF would like to focus on and weight the effects of the essential factors in (foreign) language acquisition before and in school. She keeps an eye on the learner as an individual and examines the central factors of his / her transitory learning of a foreign language under school conditions. To do this, she sifts through the results of the sciences that affect her. As an integrative, applied science, it tries to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

Are related sciences

as well as in the advanced learning phase

Pedagogy deals with social ideas about the education of citizens (see Wolfgang Klafki's concept of cultural education). Developmental neurobiology and psycholinguistics , in conjunction with various psychologies (developmental, differential, learning psychology), examine brain maturation, the age-appropriate increase in knowledge and the associated types of learning, in a broader sense the methodology and maths (in response to Wolfgang Klafki's categorical and formal education): Personalization , Enculturation and socialization are their interacting areas of responsibility in ontogenesis .

Developmental Psycholinguistics - Central Reference Science

The psycholinguistics as a key area of acquisition research has turned to four problem areas that are in an evolutionary epistemology and learning theory Embed:

  1. How does language develop in the individual?
  2. How has language developed in the human species compared to the ape, its closest relative?
  3. What changes does it bring about in the cerebral development of an individual?
  4. Are there differences between early childhood and later language acquisition that affect cerebral networking?

The latter question contributes to developmental neuropsychology, which is emerging as a branch of research: There is a change from implicit to more explicit types of learning. As a result, the conceptual working tool for understanding what goes on in the brain has yet to be created. Novice models , which do not yet exist, have to supplement expert models .

The sociocultural " epigenetic " language development in combination with a differential developmental psychology are first-rate reference sciences within a life span approach. In the more or less ordered brain, what happens to the learning material is decided, on the one hand between him and the learner (making it suitable), on the other hand between this and that ( assimilation ). The personal reconstruction of the subject matter shows what was understood by the learner and what was not.

Due to the special relationship between language and thinking (see linguistic mentality ), branches of research have been established that address the objective learning difficulties (and thus focal points of error) of other ethnic groups, such as Deutsch für Ausländer (DfA), Le Français - langue étrangère (FLE), Español para estranjeros (EPE). Your results offer important guidance for the creation of progressions that distribute the learning obstacles. The research on language loss reflects the forgetting that comes about through a lack of understanding and therefore retention.

When the student enters school, the student's learning changes fundamentally: They are introduced methodically and exemplarily to sectoral world knowledge and systematically familiarized with (self / group) learning techniques . A discussion that can now be called cognitive is initiated.

To date, there is a lack of differential novice models that examine different populations in their respective learning ages: Deficient bilinguals of different origins are to be viewed differently than school learners or immersive L2 learning in an L2 life context. In so-called natural learning, knowledge usually grows up randomly in a respective socio-cultural context. In school, on the other hand, knowledge is imparted in a controlled, methodical and systematic manner. Social and cultural needs are taken into account when sectoral world knowledge is structured, filtered and adapted to the possibilities of the learner.

However, when it comes to language proficiency surveys in the fourth year of life and before school entry, there are worrying tendencies in some populations of society, in large part among immigrants, which make integration more difficult. On the other hand, mobility in Europe requires decision-makers with linguistic and situational power. The school system is heavily burdened by this gap in needs: On the one hand, it should prevent school failure, on the other hand, it should prepare top performers.

See also: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ("Language shapes thought")

On the way to a dynamic, holistic bilingual beginner's model of language development

Differential models of beginners of different ages (e.g. from the age of 2 or 14), which do not yet exist, must therefore only supplement the expert models to be found, connectionist in the current paradigm, from “bottom to top”. AI programs have so far been of little help for this modeling, because they are reductively so-called "cognitively" set on a symbolic or propositional basis, while in childhood implicit learning predominates, which suggests completely different behavior (types of learning).

The chemoelectrics of the body have a completely different effect on cell structure, cell management and cell cooperation during the development and expansion of brain areas than digitalized computer programs represent. Under the influence of heat and magnetic fields, rhythms of high dynamics arise, which lack symbolic box models. They are related to the psyche that has not yet been worked out (see stress ; reward ). This dynamic is also reflected - albeit brokenly - in the process of building up and dismantling language learning. As a result, the conceptual working tool for understanding what goes on in the brain must be changed.

Designation: SFLLF (inst) instead of subject didactics / methodology

In view of the common designation in previous research, the terms foreign language didactics and subject didactics as university terms for this branch of research - applied to foreign language teaching in schools  - prove to be problematic: The word foreign language didactics implies pedagogical measures for all living languages ​​of instruction; Subject didactics, as a university policy term, assigns a “didactics” teaching of the subject matter to a subject (in contrast to methodology as a procedure), that is, it is understood as a filter for school issues.

With its didactics, the school-based FLLF seeks to record over the course of time which topics are to be dealt with in the respective subject so that the student can understand the foreign culture in its own historical developments in his professional phase and afterwards. This includes intercultural developments (e.g. the Franco-German relationship).

There is a field methodology (for example: European foreign languages) and in parts a field didactics (for example: text formation, situational text use) for a foreign language family; however, the divergences between closely related languages ​​are already far greater than their convergences , which is why a subject-to-subject assignment makes sense. The subject didactics / methodology, on the other hand, turns - which has not yet been implemented consistently - towards the divergences and communication channels on the respective language levels ( phonetics , intonation , semantosyntax , syntax , pragmatics ).

Autonomy of institutional language acquisition

Why was the SFLLF label chosen? School-based (foreign) language acquisition research as methodology / maths and didactics distinguishes itself from other "subject didactics" in that language acquisition both depicts a process (learning process) and at the same time creates - initially oral - text products. Language learning and thematic results are therefore intertwined, i. H. the possibilities of expression in the L1 and L2 (inst) are completely different: in the upper school, for example, many a pupil is annoyed who cannot implement his ideas with his existing linguistic means. The increase in learning results from the adoption of behavior and knowledge from the socio-cultural , each own, environment. There are - but not enough - results available about the learning progress made through parental communication with the child, depending on the respective communication style . The question of the effect of the L1 quality on that of the L2 (nat, inst) is still open.

In the school institution - taking into account the needs of society - sectoral thematic “knowledge” is functionally expanded.

General educational target: L2 threshold competence (C1)

The majority of language learners - at least from a neuronal perspective - can be regarded as bilingual. Native speakers can have grown up with a dialect and - for professional reasons - must be led to the high-level language norm. Foreigners can speak a dialect at home and also in their local language, which makes it difficult for them. Still others speak their mother tongue as a high level language and learn a foreign language.

What are the effects on them in the learning process and on the neuronal level? A distinction must be made between man and woman, learner type and learning style . This means that the learning outcomes differ - sometimes significantly.

Some conclusions can be drawn from this reality with regard to learning processes and neural networks : The variety of mental processes is great: Women and men have different brain structures in parts, as do young and old learners, for example because they belong to different learning types and use learning styles . In this light one has to ask oneself what kind of integration work school can actually do if it “shapes” the “consciousness” of the student. Sociocultural factors and brain formation, as well as brain maturation, for example, remain outside the functional education of the teacher. Decisions are usually made spontaneously: This is a normal occurrence as an expression of the emotion-cognitive balance. It is part of the responsibility education to analyze and weight influencing and disruptive factors step by step with increasing age.

The didactic decision in favor of general education - mainly due to time constraints - is for foreign language teaching: integrated language and material work. The main interrelated themes of the SLLF are a functionally communicative grammar in the transition from sentence to text, within the framework of the national culture the processing (formation and analysis) of texts in an anthropologically understood regional studies and the respective literature as well as so-called transversal themes, which from the Education ministers' conference were proposed such as peace education, Europe, environmental education and values ​​education.

Standards of text formation within the communicative competence (inst)

The diversity of sociocultural populations has led to a decades-long discussion about the accessibility of school requirements in the name of equal opportunities . The tension between social cultural and professional requirement needs and socio-culturally very different response to this in the family that has educational administration some proper, but so far taken in the broad effect unsatisfactory decisions: language assessment , raising the standard of education in pre-school education, parent counseling , but not forward the school education from the age of three as in France or Spain. In the meantime, based on intelligence tests, standards have also been developed for the school sector. Standards are useful if they are able to represent guide values ​​that only some over / or. can be fallen below. So far they still appear to be very fuzzy. It can be assumed that, according to Gaussian normal distribution, there will always be a percentage of students who do not achieve the goals of the standards (for which populations?) (Approx. ± 20 percent).

All sorts of professional institutions have expressed their goals about the performance profile they want to hire. They are included in the survey of so-called key qualifications, including central parts of communicative competence .

Oral or written use of text as a central subject of school learning

As a result of the mental effects of the implicit learning types on learning behavior, dialogue with its various functions predominates in childhood. The child is already receptively introduced to monological written texts through reading , but the writing of types of text is only practiced in school.

When entering school, the student's learning changes as a result of brain maturation: Explicit learning types are now used. Therefore, he is now increasingly introduced cognitively into sectoral world knowledge as an example, introduced to language observation with the aim of language maintenance, and systematically made familiar with (self / group) learning techniques.

With the written form comes the respect of the language norm as well as a change in the lexicon and syntax. The production of texts is a complicated task because different levels have to be coordinated and coordinated.

Text creation - subject of proportionally contrasting area didactics or methodology

The text surface is produced internationally in a similar, if not identical, way. Linguistic and textual mastery, on the other hand, requires - if it is to be recognized by native-speaker readers - a linguistic-mental masterise that normal L2 learners who start late do not achieve, even after university. A small proportion of “rules” can be approached in a contrasting manner, but the learner only achieves the situational flexibility of the speaking style after a longer stay in the target country.

Professionalization of the teacher: factor analysis of lessons

The key question of the methodology of the institutional , especially late-beginning second language acquisition is to what extent it is possible to improve the learner's retention through methodical measures and mathematical arrangement of the exercises, after all, at the end of school, one has to realize that the loss of what has been learned is great . A certain skepticism arises from the fact that, in order to understand the processes in the learner's brain, many factors have to be weighted in the mental processing and consequently also in the formation of the brain areas. These show considerable differences in some cases: men and women have a partially different structure of the brain (for example: callosum and the connection between the limbic system and the right hemisphere). In addition, there are different levels of learning ease and, as a result, interests as a result of talents. Learning styles arise through the interplay of cognition and emotionality and bring about the most varied degrees and variants of spontaneity in decision-making in the thinking style , even if, with age, a development towards cautious pace in the procedure can be determined.

The focus of the lesson analysis of a teacher in the second, school-based learning phase, who wants to check the prerequisites for his or her actions, is therefore the so-called methodological analysis, in which the characteristics of the learner are compared with those of the learning material and the communication path in planning and revision. In the general education system, the learning material is specified in state curricula . The so-called didactic analysis deals with the learning-promoting and inhibiting factors of the learning material and the learning group analysis with the learner requirements, such as gender, age, learning type, learning style, previous knowledge, etc. The aim is to promote retention.

See also

literature

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