Test Funiber

Master & Diploma in Teaching English as a Second Language Entrance Exam Name: Mariana Zúñiga I.

Date: 17-10-2011

Read the following text and answer the questions below: ‘Acquisition’ In order to study how learner acquire a second language, a clear, operational definition of what is meant by the term ‘acquisition’ is needed. Unfortunately, researchers have been unable to agree on such a definition. ‘Acquisition’ can mean several things. First, some researchers (for example, Krashen 1981) distinguish between ‘acquisition’ and ‘learning’. The former refers to the subconscious process of ‘picking up’ a language through exposure and the latter to the conscious process of studying it . According to this view, it is possible for learners to ‘acquire’ or to ‘learn’ rules independently and at separate times. Although such a distinction can have a strong face validity –particularly for teachers- it is problematic, not least because of the difficulty of demonstrating whether the knowledge learners possess is of the ‘acquired’ or ‘learnt’ kind. That is why many books use the terms ‘acquisition ‘ and ‘learning’ interchangeably. Second, researchers disagree about what kind of performance they think provides the best evidence of acquisition. We have already noted that some researchers work with production data, some study learners’ intuitions about the L2, while others access learners’ introspection. Also, some researchers (for example, Bickerton 1981) consider a feature has been acquired when it appears for the first time, while others (for example, Dully and Burt 1980) require the learner to use it to some predetermined criterion level of accuracy, usually 90 per cent. Thus, a distinction can be made between acquisition as ‘emergence’ or ‘onset’ and acquisition as ‘accurate use’. Clearly ‘acquisition can mean several very different things. This makes it very difficult to compare the results of one study with those of another. Conflicting results can be obtained depending on whether the data used consist of learners’ productions, introspections, or intuitions, or whether emergence or accuracy serves as the criterion of acquisition. Taken from: ‘The Study of Second Language Acquisition’, Rod Ellis – OUP

1. What do you understand by ‘Second Language acquisition’? Second Language acquisition, refers to the subconscious process of ‘picking up’ a language through exposure. It also refers to what learners do; it does not refer to practices in language teaching. 2. How do you think learners acquire a second language? In the first instance it is believed that the natural method is right for students to acquire a second language, but today it is important to note that teachers should have access to a variety of designs and methodological techniques to teach a second language in a variety of contexts, it is also necessary to understand that every student is unique and that "using a cautious approach, progressive, eclectic, you can build a theory based on principles of learning and teaching a second language."

II.

Critical Reading - Read the extracts in the box and: 1. Summarise in your own words what the writer is saying. 2. State whether you agree or disagree in principle. 3. In the light of your own experience as a teacher or learner, add further criticisms, positive or negative, of the writer’s point of view. Extract 1 The important point is that the study of grammar as such is neither necessary nor sufficient for learning to use a language. (from L. Newmark ‘How to interfere with Language learning’ in Brumfit, CJ. The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching, OUP) Extract 2 The language teachers’ view of what constitutes knowledge of a language is... a knowledge of the syntactic structure of sentences... The assumption that the language teacher appears to make is that once this basis is provided, then the learner will have no difficulty in dealing with the actual use of language... There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that his assumption is of very doubtful validity indeed. (from H.G. Widdowson, ‘Directions in the teaching of discourse’ in Brumfit, C.J. The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching, OUP) Taken from: ‘A Course in Language Teaching’, Penny Ur- CUP

Summary Extracts 1 and 2. 1. Summarise in your own words what the writer is saying. In my opinion, I think the writer is correct as it relates to acquisition and learning, The acquisition of a language does naturally, according to how you assimilate the information. Instead learning is very different because you have to study and carry out with certain rules and conditions to perfect a new language.

2. State whether you agree or disagree in principle. I agree with the writer, because the “acquisition” is very different to “learning” , I believe that acquisition means getting information in a natural way, while if you learn a new language, of course you should have a clearly information about it, then you have to search and investigate in different ways to talk in correct way.

3. In the light of your own experience as a teacher or learner, add further criticisms, positive or negative, of the writer’s point of view. I would start talking as a learner, because when we are students, unfortunately we do not know anything about grammar rules to learn a language.

If I explain it as a teacher, I think we are obligated to teach our students a new language correctly, using the appropriate methodology and they feel a lot of motivation to learn many new things about a language.

III.

In a well-organised essay, describe what impact you hope your enrolment in this Diploma and Master Programme will have on your professional development. (What is your motivation for enrolling in this Programme? What can you bring to the Programme? What do you hope to take from it?) – Give specific examples. (150 words- 30 minutes) Being aware that “acquisition” and “learning” are different, I would like to improve my knowledge of English to teach my students in better way and I think the teachers must be constantly changing, and facing great challenges we have daily in our lives. In this occasion I have chosen this Institution, because I know that I´ll learn in correct way the teaching learning English process. So, I´ll improve my English vocabulary, my grammar rules and I will teach in the appropriate way to my students. I hope I can fulfill my dream and I can later do something good for our society, especially for our Ecuadorian Students.