Quote:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn” --Alvin Toffler

On the internet I found this quote which belongs to Alvin Toffler, an American novelist and futurist.

I chose this quote because I think it is true and it really makes me think the very first time I came across it.

I fancy this quote given that It talks about attitudes rather than skills. Illiteracy is not what we call a lack of knowledge, but a lack of a positive attitude to always being learning, considering an accepting other people’s ideas.

In our lives, we always learn things and memorize concepts. Some learn less than others and some know much more from their experiences than we ever do. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that the less experienced ones can’t teach them things. Like Gary Colleman, I believe that people have different intelligences. In this way, some may be better at cooking than others but worse at soccer than them. A good combination of learning experiences which should be shared makes human relationships fruitful due to the feedback they receive from each other.

The illiterate people would be the ones who refuse to learn, unlearn and relearn when they have to.

By “learn” I grasped the attitude to go through other people experiences and get the best out of them. We can start with a base and continue to add more meaningful experiences the way as we go. However, we can’t feel satisfied with one single truth for each thing.

To exemplify my understanding of this quote, I’ll use an example of a teacher I know.

An old language teacher learns that the best way to teach his student how to speak in English is by having them learn long English grammar explanations. To memorize the rules of English grammar is the key to success in performing in this foreign tongue- he asserts. It is clear that this is just one truth. He learned it from his old lesson at university. It is intended to work – Some books he’s read indicates. However, nothing says this is the real truth.

“By unlearn” I understood the attitude to opening your mind towards new viewpoints. In the case of this teacher, is he capable of considering a truth which he ignored or always believe it never worked? How about grammar? His students never manage to speak well. Is this a problem? Do I teach well? - He wondered. Maybe memorizing extensive grammar rule explanations is not even closer to teaching students how to speak properly! He finally figured out that grammar was not the way with which he should teach languages. He untied his knots to search for new effective language teaching techniques. This truth that was supposed to be the only one that works was down.

It’s time to relearn. He questioned his knowledge just to make it more meaningful. Grammar wasn’t down after all -He thought. The teacher read extensively through the subject and thought over his own experiences from which he grasped that grammar is just a point that supports language learning but it is not the base on which the students are supposed to master the language.

If I want to be a good teacher, I should never make “undeniable” assumptions. I should learn to continue learning, to question what I know and remake what I knew. “To teach is to learn twice” Joseph Joubert once said. My students also have something to teach me!

My conclusions after doing this paper are:

• · Closed-minded people equal the current illiterate ones.
• · Lack of knowledge doesn’t mean illiteracy.
• · Ignorance isn’t the same as illiteracy.
• · Everyone is good at something, so we could learn from each other.
• · Nobody owns an undeniable truth.

1) Cognates, anglicisms and borrowed words.

Authentic language that could be use to help the student to gain confidence regarding the language the student is learning.

It’s of great use to employ vocabulary known by the student in the creation of authentic language for them to learn. We can select authentic material in which there are cognates Anglicism and borrowed word which the student could easily identify just by reading or listening to it.

In Spanish and English, there are many words that share similarities.

Automobile and Automovil / television and television / creature and criatura are cognate words.

Spray / mall / coffee break / Sofware / ticket are Anglicisms we usually use.

Futbol / stock / basquetbol / are borrowed words that have been adapted to Spanish but have a foreign origin.

Through these types of words we appeal to our students’ corpus linguae which they should activate so as to get aware that they already know some things about the language they learn.

It’s no use to simplify the language if it doesn’t really reflect the way a real native English speaker speaks it.

2) Semantic network analysis

The act of analyzing vocabulary put into different situations and contexts so that the student can infer, compare, extract or get the main idea of what it means.

How to use this technique?

Let’s teach our student what the word “top” means.

Box top / bottle top / from top to toe / a top model / a top ten tennis player /

Top secret / top command among others.

They student infers its meaning across the association of words. The word refers to the highest part of something which is atop something or at the peak of a career. Culturally, when we say that something is on the top, we say that it’s remarkable, important and admirable.

3) Slogans

It is a phrase or motto that companies use to promote their products. The slogans are of great use in language teaching because they’re inserted in the student’s every day context. They’re catchy to the student and easy to remember.

Eg: When the students watch television, they can read and listen to one of the many ads about Coca –Cola Company, or the delivery of a new fashion season under the slogan “impossible is nothing”. In this technique we’re considering the corpus linguae of the student that implicitly learns English lexicon which we teachers could take advantage of.

“Drink Coke” / Spring- summer season 2011 / Promoción back to school /

Axe for men / LG ideas for life / HP always innovating / Ipod touch /

How to use slogans?

We can ask our students to say what they understand from these slogans through inference. Every slogan is related to a product so the student associates the product with the phrase and gets the meaning from it.

We can encourage our students to create their own slogans using vocabulary to promote their products as if they were a company.

4) Rhyming.

It is the act of repeating identical or similar sounds at the end of the words. The student memorizes things easily if they rhyme because the pattern of the sound remains together in the student’s word association.

“Would you believe that a tot taught me the word “yummy”

In this sentence, tot and taught are pronounced likewise, so the student associate the sounds as a whole. In addition, the student learns that two words that are written in different ways are pronounced identically. For instance, they’re homophones.

Some teachers use rhyming in songs and poems. I remember one of my classmates that never forgot the colors due to a well composed song about the colors in English language. Even though I don’t remember the song, he sometimes sang the song to recall the information and then use it for whatever his purpose was.

6) Author’s quotes.

They are famous phrases that remarkable people have said.

Why is important to use someone else’s quotes?

They offer authentic language and could be used to teach values. .

“A teacher affects eternity; no one can tell where his influence stops” Herny Adams.

I think; therefore I exist. – Socrates.

In my personal opinion, everyone admires someone or follow what a remarkable person has done in his life. To understand what these people have said is a step forward in our way to understand them better, it encourages us to give a try in find out what it means.

We should be very careful with our selection of material for the student to use. What’s highly remarkable to use could not be as highly to our students. Select authors that the student may know and then work on it along with them. If your students believe to know a lot about the author, they will speak and add more information about him/her. For example: An Angeline Jolie’s quote against the African wars and the creation of illegal organizations that turn children into child soldiers.

7) Paraphrasing.

Use different words to express an idea which could be general or specific.

This car consumes a lot of gas.

This car uses up a lot of gas.

Have you ever considered how serious the situation is?

Have you ever thought over how serious the situation is?

As you may have seen, this is a great technique for teaching phrasal verbs. The student infers the meaning by comparing and analyzing the words underlined. It allows the teacher to introduce new vocabulary, too.

My car got stuck in middle of the road next to an oil station.

My automobile got stuck in the center of the road beside a gasoline station.

8) Anagrams

A word, phrase or sentence formed from another by rearranging its letters.

West / wets / stews

BY Nicole Amigo Lagos and Juan Jara Almuna.

WHAT IS MOTIVATION IN SLA?:

It is hard to define the concept of Motivation in SLA, since its meaning could vary in different cultures and individuals. It is very difficult to rely on many different definitions without having a specific concept Motivation. However, one of the most concrete definiton it is Gardner’s who states that “A specific L2 learning motivation is the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language” (Gardner, 1994, p.361). Also, there is another definition by Harmer which says that “... Motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something” (Harmer, 2004 p.51). Refering to these two different definitions that specify what the concept of motivation is, we can infer that motivation is some kind of force that leads the learner to accomplish a task in his/her life. Gardner also states that motivation consist of four aspects to follow, a goal, effortful behaviour, a desire to attain the goal and favourable attitudes toward the activity in question (Gardner, 1985, p.50).

THE MOTIVATED INDIVIDUAL:

A motivated individual is a person whose attitudes towards the target language are positive. This means when the learner of a second language expands effort to keep learning the language and has a consistant impulse of discovering and learning new material. Also, practicing and looking for ways where he/she will be able to make good use of the language. Another way of defining a motivated individual, is when the learner feels comfortable, enjoying the task of learning the target languange, the learner at a high level of motivation will probably feel satisfied about learning the language and expecting to have fun doing it.

The author of a study on successful language learning (Naiman et al, 1978) specifies that the effective L2 learner should have a positive task orientation, ego involvement, need for achievement, high aspirations, goal orientation, perseverance, tolerance and ambiguity.

TYPES OF MOTIVATION

As it is told before in this paper, there are different definitions for motivation in SLA, they practically refer to the same concept but in different words. There are also different types of factors which slightly differ depending on the perspectives of the authors. We will take for example two different types of motivation, which according to Gardner and Lambert (1972) is likely to be the two most important under the concept of motivation:

• Instrumental Motivation: Involves perception of purely practical value in learning the L2, such as increasing occupational or business opportunities, enhancing prestige and power, accessing scientific and technical information, or just passing a course in school (Introducing Second Language Acquisition).

Example: A professional designer in Chile who’s just finished university and is willing to find a good job. He would probably find different kinds of offerings to start working, but, there is one special for him, that will pay him very well and his/her economical situation will change enormously. However, there is one condition to be accepted on the job, the designer they were looking for, must have good English qualities. After analizing this example, we can consider that learning English (as L2 in this case), will be conducted by Instrumental Motivation, since the willing of having a good job and a good economical sitiuation will impluse the learner to acquire an L2.

• Integrative Motivation: Is based on interest in learning L2 because of a desire to learn about or associate with people who use it (e.g. romantic reasons), or because an intention to participate or integrate in the L2 using speech community; in any case, emotions or affective factors are dominant (Saville - Troike, 2005)

Example: On the other hand, we have Integrative Motivation, which is has nothing to do with learning a language for business, prestige, nor power. It has to do with learning a language to belong in a group or community, let’s take for example, the case of a foreign student at an early age (14) from Chile, who comes to live in the United States because his/her parents wanted to live there. The feeling of belonging to this new culture, and become part of this community, will motivate the student to learn English as a second language.

The concept also implies an internal level of motivation influenced many times by the educational context. Example: “Pedro is a great fan of Harry Potter movies. He likes that saga so much and has read the book in Spanish, now he wants to do the same but in English. In his school, he’s been congratulated many times for his excellent marks in the English subject. In time, he might have more attitudes towards learning and will become a higher level speaker with certain proficiency in the L2. The utilitarian used is given in the fact of trying to read a whole book from cover to cover in the English language.

Enrique and his friends love Play station 3 and every evening they meet to play action games in multiplayer mode, all the options are in English, so they are encouraged to look up some words in the dictionary to know what the options refer about. In time, they already know what the options and game features mean, so they just play and enjoy themselves. At school, the teacher achieved to teach them the present simple tense which the game characters constantly use in their dialogues.

INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION

If we see, both of these types of motivation have their own characteristics and patterns. It all depends on the different variables and situations learners go through in order to learn the second language. On the other hand, we have Integrative Motivation, which is has nothing to do with learning a language for business, prestige, nor power. It has to do with learning a language to belong in a group or community, let’s take for example, the case of a foreign student at an early age (14) from Chile, who comes to live in the United States because his/her parents wanted to live there. The feeling of belonging to this new culture, and become part of this community, will motivate the student to learn English as a second language.

Integrative Motivation in schools is very important, because children learning an L2 must become part of the school environment with the help of pedagogical practices. This type of motivaton can be developed or increased inside classrooms through different ways. First, teachers must motivate students into lessons by varying the activities, tasks, and materials that will make students have fun. Another way of increasing motivation is having students work with peers in groups inside the classroom in order to use co-operative rather than competitive goals. This will help students to increase their personality and their motivation as well.

Analyzing the global concept of education, Gardner states that the quality of the programs, the interest, the enthusiasm and the class atmosphere will much influence the level of student’s motivation in the language subject as explained above.

DETRACTORS TO THE RELEVANCE OF INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION

Even though the theory of an integrative motivation is said to be the most important factor in SLA, there have been some theorists such as “Lukmani who ,through several investigations,” concluded that among Indian women learning English in Bombay instrumental motivation was stronger driving force to master the language than integrative motivation” (Lukmani, 1972). In addition, Genesse (1978) in Quebec, Canada revealed that instrumentally oriented English school students that were learning French as a first language scored better than their integratively motivated classmates. In time, the relevance of Integrative motivation that Gardner so much defends in his studies has been questioned even more. Nikolov (1999, p 33) states that “It is important to find out if integrative motivation is limited to bilingual and bicultural contexts and what role instrumental motivation plays” This basically supposes that factors such as unfamiliarity with the culture, the country where the the language is spoken and also the impossibility to encounter native speakers to learn and get data from, could question the effectiveness of the integrative motivation in SLA. “Social, cultural and psychological distances are also involved” (Larisa Nikitina, p5) in the process of learning (or acquiring) a language.

If we set some examples in our Chilean context, a Chilean school boy (whose L1 is Spanish) has little or no possibilities to acquire a language with integrative motivation if the teacher is not fluent in the target language and just utter a couple of words in class. Maybe the student wants to imitate their peer’s mispronounced lyrics of an English song. Despite the fact that the student is integratively motivated by the social context, it’s very hard to assume and confirm that student will get far this way without authentic social contact which should be provided by a good teacher.

KRASHEN’S AFFECTIVE FILTER AND INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION

Krashen claims that affective variables including motivation play a facilitating role in language acquisition. How can we get motivated according to this widely known linguist? What would be the consequences of a learning task without motivation?

According to Stephen Krashen, “a student becomes more motivated through free based learning; free web surfing and free book reading (Krashen 1987, 2001, 2007) for him, the process of learning should be given in a natural environment. This means that a student shouldn’t be pushed to speak, their silent period must be respected and the teacher must consider the effect of their fear, anxiety and the self confidence which they have at the time of daring to speak (among other feelings) When the affective filter is high, the student is more likely to become hesitated and afraid, therefore: their performance in the L2 could be impeded. On the other hand, when the affective filter is low, the student could do a very good job at performing the L2 language.

Contextualizing this hypothesis to our chilean reality and always considering our experiences at high school and VISE I & II, we could say that the affective filter hypothesis could be broken into three main parts which are:

Fear: A typical Chilean student may feel embarrassed when mispronouncing a word. For instance, a teacher could fail to try to teach this subject without understanding those students’ needs before the mere fact of them feeling sure. In many cases, their performance could be totally stopped by fear of their own peer’s laughter (rather than their teacher’s criticism) this explains the important of their peer’s acceptance at school. Thus, the integrative motivation is easily notorious.

As future teachers we think that avoiding fear is the first step to generate integrative motivation. How can we do this? By creating environment that favors easily language acquisition. This means: All the students should participate in the learning process, we mustn’t exclude the ones that don’t want to speak (In this case, we need to be conscious of the level of student’s proficiency before doing an exercise. We can’t make them have a fluent conversation if they barely know a couple of words.

Anxiety: Cambridge dictionary defines the concept as “an uncomfortable feeling of nervousness or worry about something that is happening or might happen in the future” (Cambridge dictionary, 2010). Integrative motivation is very necessary to establish an environment of total self-confidence in our students, so it’s probable that the student dare to speak the target language with their peers and teachers when they feel eager to do so and feel “understood” by the ones he’s speaking to. If a teacher is constantly identifying your mistakes and referring to them as if they were something negative, or maybe he doesn’t give motivational speech when necessary. They student will always fall into his fear and will feel very anxious given that he/she could be afraid to fail. In some cases, anxiety is almost unavoidable: however, as we’ve lived through that concept in our experiences as English pedagogy students, the more successful teachers are the ones who talk about one‘s skills, give appropriate motivational speech and correct one’s mistakes in a good way. Basically, the teacher should be supportive of a student. When we think the teacher is on one’s side, everything seems to be much better.

Krashen Claims that “students who are highly motivated, and are well-liked are more likely to have less levels of anxiety” (Krashen, 1987) Thus: their affective filter will be open to being interesting in finding new information, instead of being emotionally blocked which would avoid accepting input from the environment.

Self – confidence: The Cambridge university dictionary defines this concept as “the quality of being certain of your abilities (Cambridge dictionary, 2010). This is a building which a good teacher should build from its bases to its top. Every brick you put into this building should be carefully placed. In a Chilean 8^th year grade, we could observe that the students that are most likely to perform well in the target language are the ones who enjoy English classes and have fun in a good way.

If a teacher encourages the student to feel motivated and create a collaborative student’s environment, the teacher makes the experience enjoyable and the integrative motivation emerges.

In Vygotsky’s view, the collaborative interaction as a part of a social system within the classroom takes place when the students that know more about the target language help their other peers to learn it.

CONCLUSION

Appealing to what we’ve learned, we know that everyone learns at their own rhythm and some people love a language because of the ones who speak it. Meeting friends, interesting people, artists, actors and writers means learning a language is strictly a social matter whose members should feel interested in approaching first, so that they can succeed in its L2 language learning. Concepts such as distance and interaction are very influential in the way that a learner acquire a language, yet integrative motivation, the innermost desire to be integrated into a human group and thus to be accepted, plays a fundamental role which is capable of taking down even the toughest boundary. However, integrative motivation could be generated or being deprived from the student if Krashen’s affective filter is high. The whole process of learning involves fear, anxiety and self –confidence. With an appropriate methodology, a teacher who has created a natural environment wherein the students participate, respect themselves and have a great time learning a language achieves his teaching goals with a greater probability to succeed.

We found it important to compare the information with the ones that other theories say about language learning. Some detractors pointed out through several investigations, that an effective learning of language with instrumental purposes can work, too. So it wouldn’t be a bad idea to combine both theories according to the context we’re involved with. Everyone is different, so learning skills and possibilities are “as deep as the sea”.

It’s been very interesting to apply most of our examples to Chilean students of English. In our particular culture where students are so different from the American and European ones whose cultures permit a bicultural context, the differences in learning are quite noticeable in terms of accessing to language information, however; Chilean students like everyone on earth need social acceptance, respect, patience towards them and plenty of determination. That’s the key to acquiring a second language.

By Nicole Amigo Lagos y Juan Jara

REFERENCES

· Ami Brualdi, (n.d) Multi intelligence: Gardner’s theory.

· Robert C. Gardner, 2002, Integrative motivation and second language acquisition.

· Robert C. Gardner, 1988, Bilingualism, multiculturalism and second language learning-

· Tanja Lins, 2005, Motivation and second language learning (advanced seminar)

· Muriel Saville – Troike, (2005) Introducing Second Language Acquisition.

· Susan M. Gass and Larry Selinker, (.nd), Second Language Acquisition, an Introductory Course. Third Edition.

· A-M Masgoret and R.C Gardner (n.d), Attitudes, Motivation, and Second Language Learning: A Meta-analysis of Studies Conducted by Gardner and Associates.

· Maria Luisa Garcia Bermejo and Maria Guadalupe Villarroel Guevara, (n.d) Attitudes and motivation in SLA among Hispanics in New York city, Universidad complutense de Madrid and Instituto tecnológico de estudios superiores de Monterrey, Méjico.

· Qiu Fei , (n.d) Motivation: An influential factor in L2 acquisition? Extracted on July 11^{th, 2010} from: http://zxyy.xhedu.sh.cn/cms/data/html/doc/2005-10/28/24697/index.html

· Wiser earth, (2010, January), Stephen Krashen. Extracted on July 11^th, 2010 from http://es.wiserearth.org/article/a89c0e105a87c6f7c2c6f8adec1c055b

· Nikitina, Larisa, and Furuoka, Fumitaka, (2005) Integrative Motivation in a Foreign Language Classroom: A Study on the Nature of Motivation of the Russian Language Learners in Universiti Malaysia Sabah.Jurnal Kinabalu, Jurnal Perniagaan & Sains Sosial, 11 . pp. 23-34. ISSN 1394-4517

· Lingtechlinguistics, (2009, February 15) Motivation and Learning theories for SLA through Chomsky, Bandura, Vygotsky, Krashen, and Gardner. Extracted on July 11^th, 2010 from: http://lingtechguistics.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/motivation-and-learning-theories-for-sla-through-chomsky-bandura-vygotsky-krashen-and-gardner/