Psycholinguistics, from bilingualism to the last page.
Every topic from Contexts of Childhood Bilingualism through to topic 270, built from your official handouts. Each idea starts in plain English, then the key terms, then who said it — and the questions that keep coming back.
No section matches that search. Try a shorter word.
00 Start here — how to use this ▶
This covers your ENG511 final syllabus from Contexts of Childhood Bilingualism all the way to topic 270 — roughly 150 topics, rebuilt for a phone.
Psycholinguistics is not hard because the ideas are difficult. It is hard because there are a lot of names, a lot of terms, and a lot of very similar-sounding distinctions to keep apart.
So every topic here gives you:
- In plain words — the idea stripped of jargon. Read this first, always.
- Key term cards — marked with /slashes/, the way linguists write notation.
- Who said it — the theorist attached to each idea, because VU loves asking "who proposed…".
- Side-by-side cards — for the pairs that get confused (Broca vs Wernicke, instrumental vs integrative, and so on).
- Build your answer — tap through how to structure a long answer, one move at a time.
- Practice questions — tap an option, get told why.
What this paper actually rewards. Because the material is descriptive rather than mathematical, the exam leans on three things:
- Definitions — "Define X" or "X refers to ___".
- Attribution — which researcher proposed which idea.
- Distinctions — telling apart two things that sound alike.
Almost every mark in the objective section comes from one of those three. This guide is weighted accordingly.
A note on topic numbers
Your handouts number the topics in the body of the text, but that numbering drifts from the LMS list by one or two in places (the handouts also repeat "143" and "166" by mistake). I have followed the handout's own numbers where they are printed, and grouped everything by theme so you can find things by title rather than by number. If a number looks off by one against your LMS, trust the title.
Your study plan
| Time | Do this |
|---|---|
| 0:00–0:15 | Section 01 — the terminology and who's-who survival kit. Do not skip this. |
| 0:15–0:50 | Sections 02–05 — bilingualism and how children acquire language |
| 0:50–1:25 | Sections 06–08 — the brain: aphasia, lateralization, evolution |
| 1:25–2:00 | Sections 09–11 — Whorf, culture, and language disorders |
| 2:00–2:40 | Sections 12–15 — first and second language acquisition |
| 2:40–3:20 | Sections 16–19 — styles, strategies, affect, culture |
| 3:20–3:45 | Sections 20–22 — new directions, multilingual processing, reading |
| 3:45–4:00 | Sections 23–24 — glossary and the last-minute sheet |
Features worth using
- Search box — type "Broca", "Whorf", "motherese" to jump straight there.
- Aa — bigger text for phone reading. ☾ — dark mode.
- Mark studied at the end of each section; the progress bar tracks you.
- Contents at the bottom — jump anywhere.
Progress and settings save on your device. Close the page and come back — you keep your place.
01 Terminology & who's-who survival kit ▶
Before anything else: these are the words and names that appear on every single page of the rest of the course. Learn these fifteen minutes' worth and the other twenty-three sections become readable.
The abbreviations you will meet constantly
| Short form | Means | Plain sense |
|---|---|---|
| L1 | First language | Your mother tongue |
| L2 | Second language | A language learned after L1 |
| SLA | Second Language Acquisition | The whole field of studying how people learn an L2 |
| FLA | First Language Acquisition | How babies get their mother tongue |
| LAD | Language Acquisition Device | Chomsky's proposed inborn 'language organ' |
| UG | Universal Grammar | The grammar rules Chomsky says all humans are born with |
| CPH | Critical Period Hypothesis | The idea there's a window early in life for easy language learning |
| ESL | English as a Second Language | Learning English inside an English-speaking country |
| EFL | English as a Foreign Language | Learning English outside one (e.g. in Pakistan) |
| EIL | English as an International Language | English used globally as a shared language |
| SBI | Strategies-Based Instruction | Teaching learners how to learn, not just the language |
| WTC | Willingness to Communicate | How ready a learner is to actually open their mouth |
← swipe the table sideways →
Core terms — learn these first
Who's who — the names that carry the marks
The nativist. Language is innate; children are born with Universal Grammar and a LAD. Proposed parameter setting. Attacked Skinner's behaviourism in 1959. Also a discontinuity theorist on evolution.
The behaviourist. Language is learned by operant conditioning — stimulus, response, reinforcement. Wrote Verbal Behavior (1957), which Chomsky demolished.
Cognitive development comes first, and language grows out of it. Gave us the sensorimotor stage, object permanence, and the four-stage model of intellectual development.
Language and thought develop socially. Quoted in the course on how a bilingual child comes to see their language 'as one system among many'.
Language shapes thought — linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. Trained as a chemical engineer; worked in fire insurance; studied under Sapir.
Whorf's teacher. Suggested languages structure reality differently. The joint idea is called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis — a name neither of them ever used; it appeared after their deaths.
The language bioprogram hypothesis. Studied Hawaiian creoles; argued children have an innate backup grammar that fills in when input is impoverished.
The Critical Period Hypothesis. Argued there is a biological window for language, closing around puberty.
Pioneered work on cognitive constraints in word learning: whole object bias, taxonomic bias, mutual exclusivity bias.
Operating principles — children's preferred ways of taking in linguistic information.
Bilingualism and cognitive control. Used the Simon task to show bilinguals resist age-related decline in executive control.
Instrumental vs integrative motivation — the most-tested motivation distinction in the whole course.
World Englishes and the 'Indianization' of English. English now has many legitimate varieties, not one correct one.
The language mode continuum — how a bilingual's two languages are more or less activated depending on the situation.
The social cognition hypothesis of language evolution: bigger social groups → bigger brains → language as a bonding device replacing grooming.
If a question begins 'Who proposed…' or 'According to…', the answer is almost always one of the fifteen names above. Read this list twice.
Quick check
Which pair correctly matches the theorist to the idea?
Comprehension is best described as:
02 Childhood bilingualism ▶
Bilingualism means using two languages. The course asks two questions about it: how do children end up bilingual, and what does it do to their minds — help, harm, or neither?
Short answer: the old belief that it harms children was based on badly-run studies. Modern evidence says it helps, especially with attention and control.
Contexts of childhood bilingualism (topic 121)
The handouts stress that the meaning of bilingualism varies enormously from situation to situation. People become bilingual because:
- They live in a bilingual region
- Their home language differs from their school or business language
- Colonisation imposed another language
- They studied a language at school
- They grew up in a home with two languages
The child acquires two languages at the same time, usually from birth, typically because they are born into a bilingual community where bilingualism is simply expected.
A person (child or adult) acquires a second language after already acquiring a native language.
⭐ This is also called second-language acquisition.
Sequential bilingualism = second-language acquisition. That equivalence is stated explicitly in the handouts and makes an easy fill-in-the-blank or matching question.
Bilingual first-language acquisition (topic 122)
Popular beliefs about bilingual children are contradictory, and the handouts say so directly:
- Some people think young children pick up two languages effortlessly.
- Other parents and teachers fear it will slow development or make children mix and confuse their languages.
Both cannot be right. The research tries to settle it.
Much of what we know comes from early case studies based on diaries kept by parents. The handouts list two concerns with this method:
| Concern | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Cannot isolate causes | If a family moves when the child is 2 and the child's language changes then, you cannot know whether it would have changed anyway. |
| Parental objectivity | Parents may not be fully objective. Impressive utterances get recorded; errors get forgotten. |
Even so, a good deal can be gleaned from careful case studies, and they inspired the later experimental work.
Second language acquisition in children (topic 123)
Gass and Selinker (2001) note the boundaries of child second-language acquisition are somewhat arbitrary:
Cognitive consequences of bilingualism (topics 124–126)
Metalinguistic awareness (124)
A bilingual child learns that cat and el gato refer to the same animal — so they may better grasp that language is arbitrary.
More broadly: bilingual children may be generally more attentive to language than monolingual children.
Cognitive control (125)
- Step 1 — Name the researchers and the year
Start any answer on this topic by naming them. Marks are given for attribution.
Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan (2004) - Step 2 — Name the task and what it measures
The Simon task tests whether you can ignore irrelevant spatial information.
The Simon task — based on stimulus–response compatibility - Step 3 — Describe the method
Coloured stimuli appear on the left or right of a screen; each colour maps to a response key, also on one side.
Congruent trials: stimulus and key on the same side
Incongruent trials: opposite sides - Step 4 — State the normal finding
Everyone is faster on congruent trials. The gap between the two is called the Simon effect.
The Simon effect = the reaction-time difference
It is larger in older adults — attention control declines with age - Step 5 — State the bilingual finding
This is the point of the whole study.
Bilingualism → smaller Simon effects in middle-aged and older adults
The advantage was greater for older adults - Step 6 — Give the authors' explanation
Finish with why it happens. This is the analytical mark.
Using two languages means constantly suppressing one word in favour of another,
which trains cognitive control mechanisms.
Problem solving and creativity (126)
Otto Jespersen: mastering two languages 'certainly diminishes the child's power of learning other things'.
Many early psychologists concluded bilingualism damaged intellectual development and school performance.
- Failed to control for socioeconomic status — bilingual children usually came from poor backgrounds, so poverty, not bilingualism, may explain the results.
- Did not check that the 'bilinguals' were truly fluent in both languages.
- Some studies 'assessed' bilingualism through family names.
The family-names detail is exactly the sort of small, memorable absurdity VU turns into a question. Remember it.
Practice questions
When children acquire two languages at the same time, this is called:
Sequential bilingualism is also referred to as:
The Simon task, used by Bialystok et al. (2004), assesses:
According to Hakuta, early studies showing bilingualism caused cognitive impairment were flawed mainly because they:
Child second-language acquisition is generally taken to extend from about:
03 How language is acquired: environment & the critical period ▶
What does a child actually need in order to learn a language? The course answers this by splitting the causes into three groups — environment, cognition, and innate factors — and then examining each in turn.
Necessary vs sufficient conditions (topic 127)
One that must be present for language to develop normally.
One that, if present, guarantees language will develop normally.
The handouts' key point: it is rare for a complex behaviour to have a single sufficient condition. Most behaviours have multiple causes and several necessary conditions, none sufficient alone.
Feral and isolated children (topic 128)
- Step 1 — The discovery
Peasants spotted a naked boy running through the woods searching for potatoes and nuts; hunters captured him.
France, 1797. Named after Aveyron, the province where he was found. - Step 2 — Who studied him
Named the boy Victor and worked with him intensively.
Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, a young physician
(the case was described and analysed by Lane) - Step 3 — Victor's condition at capture
Other physicians thought him deaf and retarded; Itard disagreed and was optimistic.
About 12 or 13 years old, no speech, but normal hearing - Step 4 — The training
Itard used techniques resembling modern language training and behaviour modification — e.g. presenting milk and then the French word for it.
5 years of intensive work - Step 5 — The outcome
This is the crucial part for the exam. Victor could name objects presented to him but would not request them using their names — and he developed a gestural system that interfered with language.
Naming ✔ Requesting ✘ Full language ✘
The Critical Period Hypothesis (topics 129–130)
Note the hedge the handouts use: the nature of these supposed neurological changes is not well understood, and despite much discussion there have been few empirical studies testing the hypothesis. Examiners like that critical framing.
The landmark study
Critical period effects in L2 learning (130) — the honest verdict
The handouts are careful here, and you should be too:
- The evidence has not provided unequivocal support for the CPH.
- The best we can say: young children generally learn L2 better than older children and adults, at least in the long run.
- The younger learners' advantage may be due to biological changes, environmental factors, cognitive changes, or some combination.
If a question asks you to evaluate the critical period hypothesis, the safe high-scoring answer is: the pattern is real but the explanation is unsettled. Do not claim the CPH is proven.
Motherese (topics 131–132)
Do not assume motherese causes language development. The handouts make two sceptical points that are prime exam material:
- Some of these properties also appear when adults speak to dogs and even to plants — and the effect on dogs and plants 'is not known'.
- Data on whether motherese actually assists acquisition is relatively scarce, and widely different opinions exist.
Practice questions
A condition that must be present for language to develop normally is called a:
Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, was worked with by:
Johnson and Newport (1989) studied native speakers of:
Adult-to-child language is known as:
Compared to adult-directed speech, motherese is generally:
04 Cognitive factors in acquisition ▶
Parents provide good language lessons — but a lesson only works if the learner has the equipment to use it. This section is about the thinking equipment children bring to the job.
Operating principles (topic 134)
Evidence for them: children in virtually all languages use fixed word order to create meanings — even in languages whose word order is actually quite free.
The circularity objection — know this criticism. The evidence for operating principles comes from children's language patterns, and then the principles are used to explain those same patterns. That is circular reasoning.
Independent evidence would help — ideally from cognitive domains other than language — but as written the principles are fairly specific to language. Slobin himself is noncommittal on whether they are language-specific (modular) or general cognitive processes.
Sensorimotor schemata (topic 135)
- Step 1 — State the developmental fact
Object permanence arrives near the end of the sensorimotor period, around age 2.
Before it: the child can only respond to what is present
After it: the child can respond to absent things - Step 2 — Derive the prediction
A child who has not yet got object permanence should talk only about what is in front of them.
Prediction: very young infants should use words referring to
concrete objects in the immediate environment, especially
ones they can easily manipulate - Step 3 — Check it against the evidence
The handouts confirm this.
✔ Early child language consists of a large number of
'here and now' words - Step 4 — Add the complication that earns the top mark
Do not stop at confirmation. The studies of sensorimotor schemata found something more subtle.
Cognitive processes do NOT emerge prior to language —
they emerge simultaneously with language.
Cognitive constraints on word learning (topics 136–137)
When someone points at a dog and says 'dog', the word could logically mean the tail, the colour brown, the animal, that particular dog, or the act of wagging. Children do not test every possibility — they would never learn fast enough.
So they must come equipped with expectations that narrow the options. These are called cognitive constraints or biases. There are three, all associated with Ellen Markman.
The handouts link this to three infant constraints on physical bodies: objects move as wholes, objects move independently of each other, and objects move on connected paths.
Impairments of language and cognition (topic 137)
Down syndrome generally supports a close language–cognition relationship: language delays tend to be proportionate to the severity of the cognitive disability.
But in certain individuals there are dissociations — significant discrepancies between the level of cognitive functioning and the level of linguistic functioning:
The child thinks well but their language lags badly behind.
The child produces fluent, complex language despite poor general cognition.
These dissociations are the evidence used against the claim that language is simply a by-product of general intelligence. If the two can come apart, they cannot be the same thing.
Practice questions
Operating principles were proposed by:
The main criticism of operating principles is that they are:
Object permanence is acquired at the end of which Piagetian period?
A child shown a truck and told 'truck' assumes the word refers to the whole vehicle rather than the tyres. This is:
A child who knows an object's name generally refuses to accept a second name for it. This is called:
Studies of sensorimotor schemata suggest that cognitive processes:
05 Innate factors: bioprogram, parameters, negative evidence ▶
This is the nativist case: children are born with some language knowledge already installed. The course builds it in three moves — creoles, parameters, and the negative-evidence problem — then gives the objection.
The language bioprogram hypothesis (topics 138–141)
Bickerton's definition: 'an auxiliary language that arises when speakers of several mutually unintelligible languages are in close contact'.
Typically arises when workers from diverse countries are brought in as cheap labour. They learn a simpler form of the dominant language — just enough to get by.
Spoken by the immigrant adults. Structurally impoverished.
What happens when the children of those immigrants acquire a pidgin as their native language.
Because access to native speakers is limited, the children receive the impoverished pidgin as their primary input — yet what comes out is far more sophisticated.
Spoken by the next generation. Structurally rich.
- Step 1 — Set the historical scene
The conditions for creoles existed repeatedly between 1500 and 1900, when European nations built labour-intensive agricultural economies on isolated, underpopulated tropical islands.
Hawaii: contact with Europeans from the 18th century, but the key
event was the 1876 revision of US tariff laws, bringing a large
influx of indentured workers to harvest sugar. - Step 2 — State why Hawaii was studiable
The timing let Bickerton study the development directly.
Hawaiian creole developed between 1900 and 1920 - Step 3 — Describe the input
This is the crucial contrast.
The children's input was impoverished — a bare pidgin - Step 4 — Describe the output
Name the three features. These are the marks.
The creole had:
• consistent word order
• complex sentences with relative clauses
• the definite/indefinite article distinction
Unlike pidgins, creoles resembled the structural rules of other languages. - Step 5 — Draw the conclusion
Rich output from poor input means something must have been supplied from inside.
Children have an innate grammar that, in the absence of proper
environmental input, serves as their language system:
the language bioprogram. - Step 6 — Handle the two counter-explanations
Bickerton anticipated both. Including these lifts a good answer to a very good one.
'They got it from English' → contact with plantation owners was
limited, and Hawaiian creole differed from English in several respects.
'They got it from their parents' native languages' → Hawaiian creole
was strikingly similar to creoles created by children in very different
language settings.
Parameter setting (topic 142)
The handouts frame the bioprogram as a specific instance of a general innate mechanism called parameter setting. Parameters play a key role in Universal Grammar (Chomsky, 1981).
Think of parameters as a set of switches on a machine you were born with. You are not building the machine — you are just flipping the switches to match the language you hear around you. That analogy will get you through any parameter question.
The subset principle (topic 143)
The issue of negative evidence (topic 143, second occurrence)
Evidence that a particular utterance is grammatical in the language being learned.
Children receive it whenever they hear an utterance that is not corrected or marked as inappropriate.
Evidence that a particular utterance is ungrammatical or inappropriate.
Children receive it when someone indicates that what was said is wrong.
- Step 1 — State Pinker's claim
Pinker (1990) argues it would be very difficult to acquire a language from positive evidence alone.
Positive evidence alone is not enough - Step 2 — Give the source of that claim
It rests partly on early computer simulation work.
Gold (1967) — computer simulation studies of language learning - Step 3 — Describe the simulation
The programme used linguistic evidence to build hypotheses about the language, much as a field linguist would.
A computer fed only positive evidence - Step 4 — State the result
This is the finding to quote.
It failed to acquire the language adequately - Step 5 — Explain why
The reasoning matters more than the result.
Positive evidence is consistent with a great number of different
grammars. Without knowing what is ungrammatical, you cannot
rule the wrong ones out. - Step 6 — Connect it back to nativism
Finish with the implication.
Children get little negative evidence, yet succeed anyway →
something must be supplied innately.
Objections to innate mechanisms (topic 144)
Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi and Plunkett (1996) challenge the nativist conclusion.
They agree the creole phenomena are interesting and show a robust drive to communicate — but argue this does not require a preformationist scenario (grammar emerging because it was innately specified).
Their line: if children have a robust drive plus processing tools, the rest 'may simply follow because it is the natural solution'.
Adults also have a robust drive to acquire language — yet adults acquire pidgins, not creoles.
So something beyond a robust drive is needed. According to Jackendoff and others, that something is an innate mechanism.
The adults-get-pidgins-children-get-creoles reply is the single most quotable line in this whole section. If you can deploy it, you have shown you understand the debate rather than just listing positions.
Practice questions
The language bioprogram hypothesis was proposed by:
A creole arises when:
According to Chomsky (1981), children are born knowing:
Which language is described in the handouts as allowing almost total scrambling of word order?
Gold (1967) found that a computer given only positive evidence:
Jackendoff's reply to Elman et al. points out that:
06 Aphasia and the language areas of the brain ▶
Guaranteed exam content. Broca vs Wernicke is the most tested distinction in the neurolinguistics half of this course. Learn the table below until you can reproduce it cold.
When part of the brain is damaged — usually by a stroke — language breaks down. Which part is damaged determines how it breaks down. That fact is the foundation of the whole field.
Two main patterns: one where speech comes out broken but meaning is largely intact, and one where speech flows beautifully but means nothing.
Broca's aphasia (topic 145)
Wernicke's aphasia (topic 146)
- Speech: effortful, non-fluent
- Grammar: agrammatic / telegraphic
- Content words kept, function words lost
- Comprehension: mildly to moderately impaired
- Awareness: patients are aware
- Location: left frontal region
- Speech: fluent, effortless
- Grammar: structurally intact
- But content is empty — jargon, neologisms, word salad
- Comprehension: severely impaired
- Awareness: patients are NOT aware
- Location: Wernicke's area (temporal)
Broca = Broken speech, meaning survives.
Wernicke = Word salad, meaning is lost.
And the awareness split: Broca's patients know and get frustrated; Wernicke's patients do not know anything is wrong.
Conduction aphasia (topic 146)
Other aphasias (topic 147)
- Step 1 — First site of damage
The pathway carrying sound into the left hemisphere is cut.
Damage to the auditory nerve, which sends messages to
the auditory centres in the left hemisphere - Step 2 — Second site of damage
The bridge between the hemispheres is also affected.
Loss of the parts of the corpus callosum that carry messages
from the right-hemisphere auditory region to the language areas
(particularly Wernicke's area) in the left hemisphere - Step 3 — The combined result
Both routes to the language regions are blocked.
Neither the left nor the right auditory centre can transmit
to the language regions — so patients hear words but
cannot comprehend them.
Geschwind's model of language processing (topic 148)
Three structures do the heavy lifting: Wernicke's extracts meaning, Broca's assembles morphemes, and the arcuate fasciculus is the cable joining them. If you remember only that, you can reconstruct all three pathways.
Experimental studies of aphasia (topic 149)
Broca's = a production deficit.
Wernicke's = a comprehension deficit.
The implicit assumption: Broca's patients have an intact underlying language representation — they conceptualise sentences normally but cannot translate them into speech.
- Many comprehension tests were extremely global and did not separate syntactic from semantic processes.
- Comprehension deficits are easier to disguise than production deficits.
Caramazza and Zurif (1976) tested Broca's, Wernicke's and conduction aphasics: patients heard a sentence and chose which of two pictures matched it.
Implications for normal language processing (topic 150)
A major distinction in normal processing is comprehension vs production. If that is not merely conceptual but biologically based, we should find cases where one is impaired and the other spared. The initial descriptions of Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia support this — the handouts say the comprehension–production distinction appears beyond dispute.
Practice questions
Telegraphic, effortful speech with omitted function words is characteristic of:
Fluent but empty speech, with neologisms and a lack of awareness of errors, is characteristic of:
The hallmark deficit in conduction aphasia is in:
In Geschwind's model, meanings travel from Wernicke's area to Broca's area via the:
In Geschwind's model, which area assembles morphemes?
Wernicke's aphasics show a surprising sparing of comprehension for:
Pure word deafness involves damage to the auditory nerve and to parts of the:
07 Lateralization & split-brain research ▶
The two halves of your brain do different jobs. For most people, language lives on the left. This section is about how we know that, and when it becomes fixed during childhood.
Split-brain research (topic 151)
A consistent finding in aphasia research: language deficits are associated with damage to the LEFT hemisphere more often than the right.
- Step 1 — The animal precedent
We have long known that communication between the hemispheres can be disrupted by cutting the connecting fibres.
Severing the corpus callosum disrupts inter-hemispheric
communication - Step 2 — The animal method
Teach one side, test the other.
One hemisphere was taught a task, then the other hemisphere
was tested - Step 3 — The animal result
The information did not cross.
Little or no learning in the other hemisphere → little or no
transfer of information after severing - Step 4 — The goal in humans
State this if asked what split-brain research is for.
To determine what skills are lateralized to one or the
other side of the brain
Lateralization in normal brains (topic 152)
Each ear reports mainly to the opposite hemisphere. Right ear → left hemisphere → language. So a right-ear advantage for speech is exactly what left-hemisphere language dominance predicts. Work it out from the crossing rather than memorising it blind.
The visual field task used with split-brain patients is also used frequently with normal individuals.
Contributions of the right hemisphere (topic 153)
So far the left hemisphere looks talented and the right looks inept. But the right hemisphere has its own linguistic talents — and normal people use both.
The right hemisphere is better prepared than the left to appreciate the PRAGMATIC aspects of language — the social, contextual, between-the-lines part.
If asked what the right hemisphere contributes, the one-word answer is pragmatics — sarcasm, irony, conversational inference, the emotional and social layer of meaning.
Aphasia in children & hemispherectomy (topic 154)
Lenneberg based the critical period hypothesis primarily on studies of children recovering from brain damage, citing Basser (1962).
Speech is often delayed in rate but normal in pattern — children go through the normal stages, just more slowly.
Crucially: damage to the right hemisphere in the first two years produces as much disruption as damage to the left.
→ Lateralization is not yet fixed.
Different results entirely.
In children injured between 2 and 10 years, speech disturbances were considerably more common after left-hemisphere damage — injury to the left caused language disturbance nearly twice as often.
→ Lateralization is settling in.
Behavioural studies of developing lateralization (topic 155)
These give the clearest picture of the development of lateralization to date, and the trend is that it shows up earlier and earlier as methods improve:
| Study | Finding |
|---|---|
| Kimura (1963) | Children as young as 4 to 6 years produce adult-like right-ear advantages on the dichotic task |
| Springer & Deutsch (1998) | Children as young as 2 years show the typical right-ear advantage for speech |
| Bertoncini et al. (1989) | Even very young infants show right-ear advantages for speech, studied using the high-amplitude sucking procedure |
← swipe the table sideways →
Lateralization in other species (topic 156)
It was once thought laterality was exclusively human. We now have documented cases in other species.
The detail that makes this study convincing — and therefore examinable — is the control: macaques were lateralized for macaque calls specifically, while other species mostly were not. It is species-specific sounds that get lateralized, not sounds in general.
Practice questions
The dichotic listening technique was first used to examine ear and hemisphere differences by:
Kimura (1964) found that recall of verbally presented digits was superior in the:
The right hemisphere is better prepared than the left to appreciate which aspects of language?
Basser (1962) found that damage to the right hemisphere in the first two years of life produces:
Removal of the left hemisphere in adults leads to:
Petersen et al. (1978) demonstrated lateralization for species-specific vocalizations in:
08 The evolution of language ▶
Where did language come from? There are two camps: those who think it grew gradually out of something earlier, and those who think it appeared suddenly. Then there is a separate argument about whether it is mainly in the genes or mainly in the culture.
The two big theory families (topic 157)
Language is so complex that one cannot imagine it simply appearing from nothing in its final form.
Therefore it must have evolved from earlier pre-linguistic systems among our primate ancestors.
Held by the majority of linguistic scholars as of 2018.
Language is a unique trait that cannot be compared to anything found among non-humans.
Therefore it must have appeared fairly suddenly during human evolution.
Chomsky is the prominent proponent.
These are two separate questions. Continuity/discontinuity is about how it arrived; innate/cultural is about where it lives now. Do not merge them into one axis.
Positions within the continuity camp (topic 158)
A single chance mutation occurred in one individual around 100,000 years ago, installing the language faculty (a component of the mid-brain) in 'perfect' or 'near-perfect' form.
Avoids speculating about specific precursors in nonhuman primates. Stresses simply that the language faculty must have evolved in the usual gradual way.
Language evolved not from primate communication but from primate cognition, which is significantly more complex.
Chomsky's single chance mutation, one individual, 100,000 years ago is a strikingly specific claim. Specific claims make good MCQs. Remember the number.
Teaching language to nonhuman primates (topic 159)
The continuity debate (topic 160)
- Step 1 — The overall verdict
Start here in any answer on animal language.
Nonhuman primate communication — in the wild or the lab —
falls well short of the full range of human language. - Step 2 — What wild primates do have
Be fair to them first.
In the wild, primates display signals that have meaning. - Step 3 — First failure: the signals are the wrong kind
Human words are arbitrary; animal signals are not.
The signals tend to be iconic rather than arbitrary. - Step 4 — Second failure: no duality of patterning
This is the key technical point and the best mark in the answer.
Human language has duality of patterning — an infinite set of
messages built from a small set of meaningless elements.
Vervet monkey alarm calls are global signals that do not
consist of elements that can be combined and recombined. - Step 5 — Where the trained apes did better
Concede the strongest evidence on the other side.
Chimps and bonobos taught ASL are more impressive at the level
of SEMANTICS — but not across the full range of language.
Gesture and speech as evolutionary sequences (topic 161)
One thing seems clear: spoken language developed quite recently in our evolutionary history.
Brain size & the social cognition hypothesis (topic 162)
Brain size increased before vocal tract changes. That pins down the sequence but raises a question: why did brain size increase at all?
- Step 1 — Note that big brains are costly
Dunbar (1993, 1998) points out brains have costs as well as benefits.
It is harder to escape predators carrying a large brain.
'In the absence of any selection pressure, larger brains will
not evolve' (Dunbar, 1998, p. 93). - Step 2 — Propose the driver
So something must have pushed brain size up.
Dunbar suggests brain size increased in relation to GROUP SIZE. - Step 3 — Explain the mechanism
Bigger groups need a way to hold together.
As ancestors congregated in larger groups, the mechanisms of
group cohesion and regulation had to change.
With smaller groups, grooming served this function —
but grooming does not scale. - Step 4 — State the hypothesis
This is the name to give it.
The social cognition hypothesis: language evolved as a
BONDING DEVICE. - Step 5 — Give the causal chain
Write it as a chain; it is easier to remember and easier to mark.
Larger group sizes → larger brains (including brains better at
inferring the intentions of others) → language - Step 6 — State the conclusion
Finish with the punchline.
If this view is correct, social pressure is the driving force
behind the evolution of language.
Language is grooming that scales. You can only groom one ape at a time, but you can talk to several at once. That one sentence carries Dunbar's whole argument.
Practice questions
Theories holding that language evolved gradually from earlier pre-linguistic systems are called:
Chomsky proposes that the language faculty was installed by a single chance mutation about:
In the Hayes and Hayes study, the chimpanzee learned:
Premack (1971) taught logical concepts to a chimpanzee named Sarah using:
The property of building infinite messages from a small set of meaningless elements is called:
According to Dunbar's social cognition hypothesis, language evolved as a:
A crucial anatomical development for speech was the enlargement of the:
09 The Whorf hypothesis & testing it ▶
The single biggest topic block in this half of the course — roughly 20 topics. Guaranteed long question.
The claim: the language you speak shapes the way you think. Speakers of different languages see the world differently because their languages carve it up differently.
It is a beautiful idea. The evidence for the strong version is weak; the weak version gets modest support. Your job is to know the claim, the examples, and why it mostly fails.
Who Whorf was (topic 163)
Degree in chemical engineering from MIT. Worked all his life for an insurance company as a fire prevention engineer. Strong interest in science and religion — and religion led him to language. Initially self-taught in linguistics, later studied American Indian linguistics with Edward Sapir at Yale. Developed his position in articles from 1925 onward.
Sapir (1921) had earlier suggested that languages are diverse in the way they structure reality — but he had not fully developed the thesis that these differences might facilitate certain modes of thought. That development was Whorf's contribution.
🔴 The two halves of the hypothesis (topic 164)
A language determines certain non-linguistic cognitive processes.
That is: learning a language changes the way a person thinks.
The cognitive processes that are determined are different for different languages.
That is: speakers of different languages think in different ways.
Determinism = language Decides thought.
Relativity = it's Relative to which language you speak.
Determinism is the mechanism; relativity is the consequence.
Whorf's examples (topics 165–166)
They divide into lexical and grammatical. Whorf was more interested in the grammatical ones.
Lexical examples
Whorf's argument: all languages are highly differentiated in some domains and poorly in others, and greater differentiation relates to culturally significant concepts.
Grammatical examples
Testing the hypothesis (topics 166, 175)
- Step 1 — Define 'differences in language'
Two approaches. The first is the one most studies use.
(a) Compare a language that linguistically marks a conceptual
distinction with one that does not — presence vs absence of
explicit marking.
(b) Compare two languages that mark the same distinction in
different ways. - Step 2 — Define 'differences in thinking'
Obviously difficult — you cannot directly measure a worldview.
Whorf was interested in habitual thought.
Lucy (1992b): habitual thought = 'routine ways of attending to
objects and events, categorizing them, remembering them, and
perhaps even reflecting upon them'. - Step 3 — Distinguish it from the other kind
The contrast term matters.
Specialized thought = cognitive routines restricted to certain
subgroups within a culture.
The evidence, domain by domain (topics 176–180)
| Domain | Key researchers | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Colour terms (176–177) | Berlin & Kay (1969) | The number of colour terms varies a lot between languages, but there is an underlying order. Every language has a small number of basic colour terms — one morpheme only (blue, not blue-green), not contained within another colour. Verdict: supports the WEAK version. |
| Number terms (178) | — | Compares Asian languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) with English. The issue is not whether they name numbers but how. English is complex: 11 and 12 are unrelated to 1 and 2; 13–19 put the unit before the ten. This may influence children's conceptualization of number and ultimately mathematics achievement. |
| Object terms (179) | Gopnik & Choi (1990); Gopnik (2001) | Conceptual categories related to object names are constructed at the time we learn language, not before. Studied Korean-speaking children, whose language uses fewer nouns. |
| Spatial terms (180) | Bowerman & Choi (2001) | Arrive at an INTERACTIONIST view: early word meanings are neither simple labels for existing concepts (the cognitive view) nor constructed entirely because language demands it (Whorf). They result from the interaction of cognitive development and the semantic categories of the input language. Substantial similarities across languages in the order of acquisition. |
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The colour domain is the one that supports Whorf — but only the weak version of linguistic relativity. The spatial domain gives you the interactionist compromise. Those two verdicts are the most examinable conclusions in this whole block.
Grammatical influences on cognition (topics 181–185)
H. Bloom (1981) conducted interesting but controversial studies on Chinese vs English speakers' counterfactual reasoning.
| Study | Languages | Prediction / finding |
|---|---|---|
| Marking of form (183) Carroll & Casagrande (1958) | Navaho vs English | In Navaho the verb for handling an object varies with the object's shape — long flexible (string), long rigid (stick), flat flexible (cloth). Prediction: Navaho children would discriminate object forms earlier. Tested with an object triads test. |
| Objects and substances (184) | English vs Japanese | English splits count nouns (candle/candles, countable) from mass nouns (air, water, mud — no plural, not directly countable; need 'two buckets of mud'). In Japanese, all inanimate nouns are treated alike. |
| Gender (185) | English vs Spanish | English marks gender only in singular personal pronouns (he, she, it). Spanish marks it extensively: -o for males (hermano, gato), -a for females (hermana, gata) — and also on nouns with no semantic basis: key, grapes, table are feminine; plane, telephone, bucket are masculine. |
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Criticisms & final observations (topics 167, 186)
The shared Sapir–Whorf position: both agreed it is our culture that determines our language, which in turn determines how we categorize our thoughts about the world.
Practice questions
Linguistic determinism refers to the notion that:
Whorf worked professionally as a:
According to Alford (1980), the term 'Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis':
Berlin and Kay (1969) found that basic colour terms:
Bowerman and Choi (2001) arrived at which view of early word meanings?
Carroll and Casagrande (1958) compared English with which language, using an object triads test?
In Japanese, unlike English, all inanimate nouns are:
10 Four theories of language & culture — and why they fail ▶
This is the most predictable long question in the entire course. Four numbered theories, each with proponents and a numbered list of inadequacies. It is practically pre-written for an examiner.
Four increasingly ambitious claims about what language does to thought — and the handouts systematically demolish all four, then offer a fifth position as the correct one.
The pattern is always the same: state the theory → name what its proponents claim → list the inadequacies. Learn the shape and you can answer any version of the question.
Theory 1: Speech is essential for thought (topic 169)
The claim: we must learn how to speak aloud, otherwise we cannot develop thinking.
Theory 2: Language is essential for thought (topic 170)
The claim: we must learn language — how to produce or understand speech — otherwise we cannot develop thinking.
Theory 3: Language shapes our perception of nature (topic 171)
The claim: learning a language determines or influences how we perceive the physical world — visually, auditorily and so on.
Proponent's position: one's knowledge of vocabulary or syntax influences one's perception and understanding of nature.
The faulty translations point about Chinese counterfactuals is the sharpest single criticism in this section — it says a famous Whorfian result was simply a methodological error. Use it.
Theory 4: Language shapes our cultural world view (topic 172)
The claim: learning a language determines or influences how we understand our culture and the world.
The multilingual-as-whole-person argument appears as an inadequacy of Theories 2, 3 and 4. If you remember one counter-argument, remember that one — it does triple duty.
Erroneous beliefs underlying all four theories (topic 173)
✅ The best theory: thought is independent of language (topic 174)
- Step 1 — Thought comes first, from the senses
The thought system develops as the child experiences the world.
Input stimuli — visual, auditory, tactile — representing objects,
events and situations are experienced by the child. - Step 2 — Say what develops
Be specific about the content of early thought.
Ideas of objects, relations of objects, states and actions
of objects - Step 3 — State the crucial ordering claim
This is the heart of the theory.
Until thought is sufficiently developed, words uttered in the
presence of the child are NOT meaningfully processed. - Step 4 — Explain when language can start
Two conditions must both be met.
When thought is sufficiently developed AND language input is
experienced in coordination with objects, events and situations —
then language can begin to be learned. - Step 5 — Conclude
State the position in one line.
Thought is independent of, and prior to, language.
Language is learned onto an already-developing thought system.
Practice questions
Which is NOT one of the inadequacies of the theory that speech is essential for thought?
The claim that Chinese speakers cannot think hypothetically was shown to result from:
The example of a family where the mother is Buddhist, the father Christian and the son Muslim is used to show:
According to the handouts, the most serious deficiency in the theorizing of Whorf, Sapir and others is that:
Modern linguistic research has found that primitive languages:
In the best theory offered by the handouts, until thought is sufficiently developed, words spoken near the child are:
11 Language disorders & dyslexia ▶
Two families of disorder here. Aphasia is acquired — you had language, then brain damage took it. Dyslexia is usually developmental — present from a young age. The exam wants you to keep the three types of dyslexia apart.
Disorders of syntax (topic 187)
Syntactic deficits are common in language disorders and have always been at the focus of research. Interest first focused on Broca's aphasia — an acquired disorder caused by strokes affecting left frontal brain regions.
Aphasia — the formal definition (topic 188)
Most common cause: a cerebral vascular accident (CVA) — a stroke.
Also traumatic head injury: road accidents, gunshot wounds.
Does not get worse over time.
Arises from brain tumour, some infections, or progressive conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
The language disturbance increases as the disease progresses.
Reading and writing disorders (topic 189)
Reading disorders occur when a person has trouble with any part of the reading process. Reading and language-based learning disabilities are commonly called dyslexia. They are present from a young age and usually result from specific differences in the way the brain processes language.
A statement the handouts make explicitly, and therefore a likely True/False: reading disorders are NOT a type of intellectual and developmental disorder, and are NOT a sign of lower intelligence or unwillingness to learn.
🔴 The three dyslexias — keep these apart (topics 190–192)
| Type | Core problem | Diagnostic signature |
|---|---|---|
| Surface dyslexia | Cannot recognise a word as a whole and retrieve its pronunciation from memory. Relies instead on pronunciation rules. | Reads non-words fluently (e.g. 'yatchet') but struggles with irregular real words. Damage to the left parietal or temporal lobe. (Marshall & Newcombe 1973; McCarthy & Warrington 1990) |
| Phonological dyslexia | Cannot break language into individual sounds (phonemic awareness) and match them to written symbols. | Difficulty sounding out unfamiliar words; does poorly on non-word reading. Also called dysphonetic dyslexia. Most kids with reading issues have some degree of this. |
| Deep dyslexia | Cannot properly match the visual word to the word's meaning. | SEMANTIC reading errors (semantic paralexias) when reading aloud — 'view' → 'scene', 'bird' → 'canary'. These semantic errors are the major distinguishing feature. |
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Surface reads the surface (letters) fine but cannot recognise whole words — so fake words are easy, weird real words are hard.
Phonological fails at phonemes — sounding out.
Deep fails at deep meaning — and swaps in a related word.
Dyslexia — general definition (topic 191)
Practice questions
Language changes associated with normal aging are:
The most common cause of aphasia is:
A patient who reads non-words like 'yatchet' fluently but struggles with irregular real words has:
Reading 'bird' aloud as 'canary' is an example of:
Phonological dyslexia is also sometimes referred to as:
Individuals with dyslexia typically have:
12 First language acquisition: theories & issues ▶
How does a baby get its mother tongue? Three big answers — behaviourist (Skinner: habit), nativist (Chomsky: born with it), cognitive (Piaget: thinking comes first). Everything else in this section is commentary on that three-way fight.
The historical curiosity (topic 193)
Challenges to the approaches (topic 194)
- Step 1 — The book
Skinner set out the behaviourist account of language.
Skinner, Verbal Behavior (1957) - Step 2 — The attack
The most famous review in the history of linguistics.
Chomsky (1959) penned a highly critical review - Step 3 — The defence
Do not stop at Chomsky — the handouts name the reply.
Kenneth MacCorquodale (1970) published a reply defending
Skinner's point of view. 'And so the controversy raged on.' - Step 4 — The compromise position
Some psychologists proposed modified theories.
Mediation theory: meaning is accounted for by the claim that a
linguistic stimulus (word or sentence) elicits a 'mediating' response
that is self-stimulating. - Step 5 — Name it and note the irony
This last point is the one that earns the extra mark.
Charles Osgood (1953, 1957) called this a 'representational
mediation process' — covert and invisible, acting within the learner.
⭐ The irony: mediation theory tried to explain abstraction with a
notion that 'reeked of mentalism' — a cardinal sin for a
dyed-in-the-wool behaviourist.
Issues in first language acquisition (topics 195–197)
One's underlying knowledge of a system, event or fact.
It is the non-observable ability to do or perform something.
The overtly observable and concrete manifestation or realization of competence.
The actual doing: walking, singing, dancing, speaking.
The myth the handouts explicitly call out. Some foreign language teaching materials claim:
- comprehension (listening, reading) = competence
- production (speaking, writing) = performance
This is not the case. Production is more directly observable, but comprehension is as much performance as production is — a 'wilful act', to use Saussure's term. Both comprehension and production can be aspects of both competence and performance.
Why the innateness hypothesis was needed: it resolved a contradiction. The behavioural view says language is a set of habits acquired by conditioning — but conditioning is much too slow and inefficient to account for acquiring something as complex as language.
Language and thought (197)
Cognitive development is at the very centre of the human organism.
Language is dependent upon and springs from cognitive development.
(Contrasted with the behavioural view that cognition is 'too mentalistic to be studied by the scientific method'.)
Emphasised the influence running the other way: the influence of language on cognitive development.
Singled out sources of language influence on thinking.
The other factors listed under this topic: imitation, practice and frequency, input, and discourse.
Insights applied to language teaching (topic 198)
Issues revisited (topic 203)
| Issue | Position |
|---|---|
| Issue One: meeting the criteria for a scientific theory | Chomsky's innateness position seems to meet the criteria. It covers aspects of other theories, possesses the properties of a scientific theory, and has claims for contents. Chomsky believes both body and mind exist; the elements needed for theory-making are body, behaviour and mind. (Compare epiphenomenalism, which treats mind as a side effect of action.) |
| Issue Two: the child's logical thinking | Piaget attributes it to his third stage, the concrete operational period (roughly ages 7 to 11), labelled 'preparation for an achievement of concrete operations'. |
| Issue Three: the origins of language | Chomsky is a nativist — the ability to acquire language is innate and children are programmed to learn it. Pre-programming explains both the speed with which children learn and the similarity of acquisition across cultures. (Contrasted with Vygotsky.) |
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Order of acquisition (topic 204)
The critical contrast:
- First-language learners — research has largely confirmed the fixed universal order.
- Second-language learners — the order is much LESS consistent, and it is not clear why.
Practice questions
Chomsky's highly critical review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior appeared in:
The 'representational mediation process' was proposed by:
Which statement about comprehension is correct?
The innateness hypothesis was proposed partly because conditioning is:
According to Piaget, language:
Order of acquisition is fixed and universal for:
During the silent period, many learners are actually engaging in:
13 Children vs adults in second-language learning ▶
A near-certain long question. The handouts take a clear, slightly surprising position — learn it, because the obvious answer is the wrong one.
Everyone 'knows' children learn languages better than adults. The handouts say this is a myth.
Their position: it is not that children learn better — it is that children and adults learn DIFFERENTLY. Understand the differences, adjust the method, and anyone can learn a second language at any age.
The comparison problem (topic 199)
The handouts warn that the comparison is easily oversimplified. It is illogical to compare a child's FIRST language acquisition with an adult's SECOND language acquisition — that draws analogies across two dimensions at once (L1 vs L2, and child vs adult). It is much more logical to compare like with like.
🔴 The six reasons the myth persists (topic 205)
| Factor | What is actually going on |
|---|---|
| Processing differences | Dr Paul Thompson (UCLA) used MRI imaging and animation technology. Children use the 'deep motor area' — responsible for processes not consciously thought about, like brushing your teeth or getting dressed. For children, language processing is unconscious; for adults it is not. |
| Proficiency differences | Children have a smaller vocabulary and need less of a language to communicate their needs. Adults have a much larger vocabulary and communicate in more complex ways — so it takes them longer to reach effective communication. It only looks like children are faster. |
| Pronunciation | This one is genuinely true: the younger a child starts, the better their pronunciation. Adults have more difficulty with accent and so sound less competent — which fuels the myth. |
| Aging and learning ability | A misconception. People do not lose their ability to learn as they age. The only real challenges are weakening vision and hearing — particularly hearing loss, which affects traditional classroom learning. A healthy older adult is perfectly capable of learning a second language. |
| Learning methods | Because they use different parts of their brains, they should be taught differently. Children: exposure at home and school, singing songs, reading books, repetition. Older learners, especially with sensory difficulties, may struggle in a traditional classroom. |
| Motivation | Not relevant in natural settings. A 1- or 2-year-old needs no motivation — given input, the child learns automatically, even in negative circumstances. But a child of 4 or 5 may need motivation, since by then the child may be aware of the choice. |
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If asked 'do children learn second languages better than adults?', do not simply answer yes. The handouts' position is: children have a genuine advantage in PRONUNCIATION only; everything else is explained by different processing, different proficiency standards, and different methods. Say that and you have the top answer.
Attitude (topic 205)
A negative attitude towards the target language, its speakers, or other class members may affect determination and persistence. The same negative attitude could impair memory functioning and detract from focusing on the target language. (Gardner & Lambert 1972; Oller et al. 1977, 1978; Chihara & Oller 1978; Gardner 1985.)
Neurobiological considerations (topic 200)
Anthropological evidence (topic 201)
- Step 1 — Concede the general pattern
Be honest about the base rate first.
Some adults have acquired an authentic accent after puberty —
but such individuals are 'few and far between'. - Step 2 — Introduce the counter-evidence
Name the anthropologist and who she was responding to.
Jane Hill (1970) responded to Scovel's (1969) study by citing
anthropological research on non-Western societies. - Step 3 — State what that research showed
This is the payload.
Adults can, in the normal course of their lives, acquire second
languages PERFECTLY. - Step 4 — Give the specific case
Name it for the extra mark.
Sorenson (1967) studied the Tukano culture of South America.
Cognitive considerations — Piaget's stages
But add the caution. Singleton and Ryan (2004, pp. 156–159) raise objections to connecting Piagetian stages with critical period arguments — 'not the least of which was the vagueness and lack of empirical support'. Including this caveat is what separates a good answer from a top one.
Interference between L1 and L2 (topic 202)
- Step 1 — The starting assumption learners make
Blum-Kulka & Levenston, cited in Bhela (1999).
Learners begin by assuming word-for-word translation equivalence —
that every L1 word has one translation in L2. - Step 2 — What learners then do
Under pressure to produce, they fall back on what they know.
When writing or speaking the target language, they rely on their
first language structures. - Step 3 — The condition for errors
The key 'if'.
If the structures are different, a lot of errors occur. - Step 4 — Name the phenomenon
Give it its technical name.
This indicates INTERFERENCE of the first language on the second.
Age and instructional variables (topic 212)
| Researcher | Claim about the age boundary |
|---|---|
| Lenneberg | The critical period for language acquisition begins around the age of two. |
| Scovel | If L2 learning begins after age 12, learners can never 'pass themselves off' as native speakers. |
| Pre-mid-1990s research | Those learning L2 after puberty retain a foreign accent; those before puberty do not. |
| Neuromuscular account | Pronunciation and intonation are easier to acquire in childhood because of neuromuscular mechanisms only active until about age 12. |
| Long | Goes further — native competence in morphology and syntax requires exposure before age 15. |
| The counter-evidence | These assertions are contradicted by empirical studies on older beginners who have reached very high levels of competence. |
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Practice questions
According to the handouts, the main reason children appear to learn second languages faster is:
Dr Paul Thompson's MRI research found that children process a new language using the:
In which single area do the handouts accept that children have a genuine advantage?
Jane Hill (1970) cited anthropological research showing that adults:
Which Piagetian stage is most critical for arguments about age effects in language acquisition?
According to Long, native competence in morphology and syntax requires exposure before age:
14 Psychological & social factors in L2 learning ▶
Two sets of forces act on a language learner: what is going on inside their head (psychological) and what is going on around them (social). This section covers both, plus the three social situations in which learning happens.
🔴 The three basic psychological factors (topics 207–208)
Why a language cannot be learned entirely by explication: although parts can be, it is impossible for the whole language, because not all of the rules of any one language have been discovered and written down. You cannot explain what nobody knows yet.
Three factors, easy to hold: E–I–M — Explication (being told), Induction (working it out), Memory (holding on to it). One is teacher-driven, one is learner-driven, one is capacity.
Social situations for L2 learning (topic 209)
Is there a critical age for L2? (topic 210)
The handouts' answer for syntax is clear: a very great number of adults do in fact learn the syntax of other languages perfectly. There are people who speak second languages so well that on the basis of grammar alone — not pronunciation — they would be judged native.
Note the careful split: grammar yes, pronunciation is a separate question. That distinction is exactly what the handouts flag, and it is exactly what an examiner wants to see you notice.
Learner characteristics (topic 211)
Social factors (topic 206)
Language attitudes
Attitudes in the learner, the peer group, the school, the neighbourhood and society at large can have an enormous effect — both positive and negative.
The nuance worth a mark: in general, positive attitudes enhance learning and negative attitudes impede it — however, if learners have a strong reason for learning, a negative attitude can have a POSITIVE effect. Do not state the rule without this exception.
Age as a social factor
Gender
In stable sociolinguistic stratification, men use a higher frequency of NONSTANDARD forms than women.
In the majority of linguistic changes, women use a higher frequency of the INCOMING forms than men.
Practice questions
The process whereby the rules of a second language are explained to a learner in their first language is called:
A language cannot be learned entirely by explication because:
According to the summary in topic 208, the ability of induction:
Which three learner characteristics have consistently been found consequential for language learning?
In stable sociolinguistic stratification, men use a higher frequency of:
A negative attitude towards the target language:
15 Schools of thought & the history of language teaching ▶
Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. The handouts open with that line, and it drives the whole section: your understanding of how learners learn determines your philosophy, your teaching style, your approach, methods and classroom techniques.
Believe like Skinner that learning is operant conditioning through paced reinforcement, and you will teach that way. Believe L2 learning is deductive rather than inductive, and you will choose different methods.
🔴 The three schools of thought (topic 214)
| School | Era | Key figures | Core position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Structural Linguistics & Behavioral Psychology | 1940s–1950s | Leonard Bloomfield, Edward Sapir, Charles Hockett, Charles Fries | Prided itself on rigorous scientific observation. Only 'publicly observable responses' could be investigated. The linguist's task was to describe human languages and identify their structural characteristics. |
| Generative Linguistics & Cognitive Psychology | 1960s | Noam Chomsky and followers | Human language cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observable stimuli and responses or volumes of raw field data. Interested not only in describing language (descriptive adequacy) but in reaching EXPLANATORY adequacy. |
| Constructivism | Last part of the 20th century | Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky | 'Hardly a new school of thought' — the names are not new to language studies. But it emerged as the prevailing paradigm only late in the 20th century and is now almost an orthodoxy. Its refreshing characteristic: integration of linguistic, psychological and sociological paradigms. |
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Describe → Explain → Integrate. Structuralism described. Generativism wanted to explain. Constructivism integrated across disciplines. Three verbs, three schools, in chronological order.
Nineteen centuries of language teaching (topic 215)
Language teaching in the twentieth century (topic 216)
Against that backdrop, the last century gives 'a rather refreshingly interesting picture of varied interpretations of the "best" way to teach a foreign language.'
The phrase the handouts use for this cycling of fashions — 'changing winds and shifting sands' — reappears in topic 223. If you see it in a question, it is about the history of teaching methods.
Language learning strategies as a preview (topic 213)
| Strategy type | What these learners do |
|---|---|
| Memory strategy | Depend on memorizing ability; create a word-meaning map (mental linkages) to enter information into long-term memory and retrieve it. Retrieval via sounds (rhyming), images (mental pictures), combinations (the keyword method), body movement (total physical response), mechanical means (flashcards), or location (a page or blackboard). Do grammar exercises; build a word bank from reading and TV. |
| Cognitive strategy | Analyse and reason. Form internal mental codes and revise them. Internalize the language in direct ways: reasoning, analysis, note-taking, summarizing, synthesizing, outlining, practicing in naturalistic settings, practicing structures and sounds formally. Replicate how characters in dramas pronounce and use words; write emails in the L2; read magazines and newspapers. |
| Comprehension strategy | Guess unknown words when listening and reading; replace words they do not know with longer phrases or other known words when speaking and writing, to overcome gaps. Use context; read the whole passage to infer meaning; look for nonverbal cues in conversation. |
| Metacognitive strategy | Plan, arrange, focus and evaluate their own learning process. Identify and monitor their own style preferences and needs: gathering and organizing materials, arranging a study space and schedule, monitoring mistakes, evaluating task success and strategy success. Observe how the teacher and they themselves speak; practise in front of a mirror; cross-check pronunciation; do word games. |
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Metacognitive = thinking about your own thinking. 'Meta' means above/about. It is the only one of the four that is about managing learning rather than doing learning.
Practice questions
Which school of thought held that only 'publicly observable responses' could be subject to investigation?
Generative linguists sought to move beyond descriptive adequacy towards:
The refreshing characteristic of constructivism, according to the handouts, is its:
Kelly's (1969) survey of language teaching found:
Twentieth-century language teaching is described as perhaps beginning with:
A learner who plans their schedule, monitors their own mistakes and evaluates their strategies is using a:
16 Learning styles ▶
A learning style is your habitual way of taking in and processing information. The exam wants three things from this block: the definition, the named style dimensions, and the list of style types.
What a learning style is (topics 217, 220)
Sarasin's claim, quoted in the handouts: 'teaching cannot be successful without knowledge of learning styles and a commitment to matching them with teaching styles and strategies.'
Field independence (topic 217)
Field INdependent = you can pull the item OUT of its background. Field dependent = you see the whole scene and struggle to isolate the parts. The monkey picture is the image to hold on to.
Ambiguity tolerance (topic 219)
Relatively open-minded in accepting ideologies, events and facts that contradict their own views.
More content than others to entertain and even internalize contradictory propositions.
More closed-minded and dogmatic.
Tend to reject items that are contradictory.
The definition: the degree to which you are cognitively willing to tolerate ideas and propositions that run counter to your own belief system or structure of knowledge.
Reflectivity and impulsivity (topic 219)
Makes a quick or gambling guess at the answer to a problem.
Makes a slower, more calculated decision.
Note from topic 238: impulsivity was described as a style that could have POSITIVE effects on language success. Do not assume reflective is always better — the handouts explicitly do not.
Visual, auditory and kinesthetic styles (topic 221)
| Style | Preference |
|---|---|
| Visual | Prefer reading and studying charts, drawings and other graphic information |
| Auditory | Prefer listening to lectures and audiotapes |
| Kinesthetic | Prefer demonstrations and physical activity involving bodily movement |
Important qualifier: most successful learners utilize both/all — these are preferences, not exclusive categories.
The full list of classroom styles (topic 218)
Perceptual learning style (topic 222)
The variables determining language learning success (Sharp, 2004): age, gender, motivation, intelligence, anxiety level, learning strategies and language learning styles. The pedagogical point: in a class of various styles, teachers must identify, respect and work on the diversity of learners' differences. This was proven true according to Spolsky's general model of second language learning (1989).
Practice questions
The ability to perceive a relevant item within a field of distracting items is called:
A learner who is content to entertain and even internalize contradictory propositions is:
David Ewing (1977) related reflectivity and impulsivity to which pair of styles?
Physical or kinesthetic learners represent about what proportion of the population?
The haptic learning style is a combination of:
According to the handouts, the claim that learning styles are stable traits in adults is:
17 Learning & communication strategies ▶
The compensatory strategies list (topic 227) is the most likely 'list' question in this half of the course. Ten named strategies, each with an example. Learn them.
A style is how you naturally are. A strategy is what you deliberately do. This block covers both, plus how teachers can train learners to use them.
The three A's (topics 223–224)
🔴 Learning vs communication strategies (topic 225)
Deal with the RECEPTIVE domain:
- intake
- memory
- storage
- recall
How you take language in.
Pertain to the employment of verbal or nonverbal mechanisms for the PRODUCTIVE communication of information.
How you get meaning out when your resources fall short.
Tarone (1983) aptly noted that in real linguistic interaction it is difficult to distinguish the two, since comprehension and production can occur almost simultaneously. The handouts describe the dichotomy as 'slippery'. Mention this and you show you understand rather than just memorised.
Avoidance strategies (topic 226)
🔴 Compensatory strategies (topic 227)
| Strategy | Definition | Example from the handouts |
|---|---|---|
| Circumlocution | Describing or exemplifying the target object or action | 'the thing you open bottles with' for corkscrew |
| Approximation | Using an alternative term expressing the meaning as closely as possible | 'ship' for sailboat |
| Use of all-purpose words | Extending a general, empty lexical item to contexts where specific words are lacking | overuse of thing, stuff, what-do-you-call-it, thingie |
| Word coinage | Creating a non-existing L2 word based on a supposed rule | 'vegetarian' invented from a supposed rule |
| Prefabricated patterns | Using memorized stock phrases, usually for 'survival' purposes, where the morphological components are not known to the learner | 'Where is the ______?' or 'Comment allez-vous?' |
| Nonlinguistic signals | Mime, gesture, facial expression, or sound imitation | pointing, acting it out |
| Literal translation | Translating a lexical item, idiom, compound word or structure literally from L1 to L2 | word-for-word rendering |
| Foreignizing | Using an L1 word adjusted to L2 phonology and/or morphology | adding an L2 suffix to an L1 word |
| Code-switching | Using an L1 word with L1 pronunciation (or an L3 word with L3 pronunciation) while speaking L2 | dropping an Urdu word, pronounced as Urdu, into English |
| Appeal for help | Asking for aid from the interlocutor — directly or indirectly | Direct: 'What do you call…?' Indirect: rising intonation, pause, eye contact, puzzled expression |
← swipe the table sideways →
Foreignizing vs code-switching — the one pair people confuse.
Foreignizing: you take the L1 word and dress it up in L2 sounds/endings.
Code-switching: you drop the L1 word in completely unchanged, L1 pronunciation and all.
Strategies-based instruction (topic 228)
Identifying styles and strategies (topic 229)
Students' awareness of learning styles (topic 230)
The students perform most regulation activities themselves.
The students let their learning process be regulated by teachers or books — or there is a lack of regulation altogether.
Incorporating SBI into the classroom (topics 231–232)
Through checklists and the methods above, teachers can become aware of students' tendencies and then offer informal, unplanned advice on beneficial in-class and extra-class strategies. Teachers act as facilitators of strategic action through tips, pointers, and even anecdotes about 'how I learned… when I was in your shoes.'
Chamot (2004): primarily concerned with
- developing students' awareness of the strategy used
- teachers' modelling of strategic thinking
- students' practice with new strategies
- students' self-evaluation
Students work through materials and activities designed to elicit the use of specific strategies — but students are NOT informed of the name, purpose or value of the strategy.
Contrasted with direct and integrated instruction.
The research verdict (topic 234): language learners need instruction in HOW to use strategies efficiently as a way to improve learning and performance.
Beyond the classroom (topic 233)
Practice questions
Learning strategies deal with the receptive domain of intake, memory, storage and recall, while communication strategies pertain to:
Saying 'the thing you open bottles with' instead of 'corkscrew' is:
Using an L1 word with L1 pronunciation while speaking L2 is called:
Cohen (1998) prefers the term 'SSBI' in order to emphasise:
Oxford's (1995) Style Analysis Survey is an example of a:
According to the handouts, which learners perform better academically?
In uninformed strategy instruction, students:
18 Affective factors in second language acquisition ▶
Motivation types are the single most reliably tested item in this block. Instrumental vs integrative (Gardner & Lambert) and intrinsic vs extrinsic — know both pairs cold, and do not confuse them with each other.
Affect means emotion or feeling. The affective domain is the emotional side of human behaviour, set against the cognitive side. This section is about how feelings — confidence, fear, motivation, personality — shape whether you actually learn a language.
The affective domain (topic 235)
Self-esteem (topic 235)
Attribution theory & self-efficacy (topic 236)
The four classic attributions are ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck. Two are internal (ability, effort), two are external (difficulty, luck). Learners who attribute failure to effort keep trying; those who attribute it to ability give up.
Willingness to communicate (topic 237)
Inhibition and risk taking (topic 238)
- Step 1 — Start with the good language learner
Rubin and Thompson (1982) identified their prominent characteristics.
The ability to make intelligent guesses - Step 2 — Add the style finding
This is counter-intuitive and therefore examinable.
Impulsivity was described as a style that could have
POSITIVE effects on language success - Step 3 — Add the negative finding
The other side of the same coin.
Inhibitions — building defences around our egos — can be
a detriment - Step 4 — Draw the conclusion
Put the three together.
Risk taking is an important characteristic of successful
L2 learning. Learners have to be able to gamble a bit,
to be willing to try things out.
Anxiety (topic 239)
Empathy (topic 239)
The human being is a social animal, and the chief mechanism for maintaining the bonds of society is language. Some approaches to language teaching fail to achieve communicativity by overlooking the social nature of language — or by oversimplifying it, failing to recognise the complexity of the language–society relation.
Extroversion (topic 240)
The terms are often misunderstood because of a tendency to stereotype extroversion.
- We picture the extrovert as a gregarious, 'life of the party' person.
- We picture the introvert as quiet and reserved, tending toward reclusiveness.
Western society values the stereotypical extrovert — and nowhere is this more evident than in the classroom. That bias is the point the handouts are making. Do not assume extroverts are better language learners.
🔴 Theories of motivation (topic 241)
| Perspective | How motivation is understood |
|---|---|
| Behavioral | Motivation is seen 'in very matter-of-fact terms': quite simply the ANTICIPATION OF REWARD. Driven to acquire positive reinforcement, and driven by previous experiences of reward, we act to achieve further reinforcement. Skinner, Pavlov and Thorndike. |
| Cognitive | Motivation as driven by internal decision-making and the learner's own construal of the task. |
| Constructivist | Motivation as socially situated and constructed in interaction. |
🔴 Instrumental vs integrative orientation (topic 242)
Acquiring a language as a MEANS for attaining instrumental goals:
- furthering a career
- reading technical material
- translation
The language is a TOOL.
Describes learners who wish to INTEGRATE themselves into the culture of the target language group.
The language is a DOORWAY into a community.
🔴 Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation (topic 243)
Activities for which there is no apparent reward except the activity itself.
People engage for their own sake, not because it leads to an extrinsic reward.
Aimed at bringing about internally rewarding consequences — feelings of competence and self-determination.
Fueled by the anticipation of a reward from OUTSIDE and BEYOND the self.
Typical extrinsic rewards: money, prizes, grades, and certain kinds of positive feedback.
The two pairs answer different questions.
- Instrumental/integrative asks: what do you want the language FOR? (a job, or a community)
- Intrinsic/extrinsic asks: where does the reward COME FROM? (inside you, or outside you)
A four-option MCQ will often mix one item from each pair. Read carefully.
Personality types & measurement (topics 245–246)
Topic 244 — The neurobiology of affect — appears as a heading in the handouts with no developed content. If it comes up, treat it as the biological underpinning of the affective factors above.
Practice questions
Learning a language in order to further a career or read technical material is:
Motivation fueled by the anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self is:
Attribution theory is based on the seminal work of:
The need for phatic communion was noted by:
Willingness to communicate (WTC) is defined by MacIntyre et al. as:
According to Rubin and Thompson (1982), a prominent characteristic of good language learners is:
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator borrows its types from:
19 Culture, stereotypes & world Englishes ▶
Language does not float free of the people who speak it. This block covers what culture is, how generalizations turn into stereotypes, the four stages of culture shock, and why there is no longer one 'correct' English.
Culture: definitions and theories (topic 247)
The crucial critical point: we perceive reality within the context of our own culture — a reality that we have 'created', and therefore not necessarily a reality that is empirically defined.
The quotation to use: the meaningful universe in which each human being exists is not a universal reality, but 'a category of reality' consisting of selectively organized features considered significant by the society in which he lives.
Stereotypes or generalizations (topic 248)
A broad statement about a group — a way of organising cultural information.
Useful, provisional, allows exceptions.
⭐ Generalizations BECOME stereotypes when ALL members of a group are categorized as having the SAME characteristics.
Can be linked to any type of cultural membership: nationality, religion, gender, race, or age.
These lists are presented as examples of faulty thinking, not as facts. If a question quotes one, the correct response is to identify it as a stereotype produced by a culture-bound worldview.
Second culture acquisition & social distance (topic 249)
The stage number is the examinable bit. Excitement first, shock second. You arrive delighted, and only then does the difference start to hurt.
Teaching intercultural competence (topic 250)
While most learners find positive benefits in cross-cultural living or learning, a number experience psychological blocks and other inhibiting effects of the second culture.
Language policy and language politics (topic 251)
The way language and linguistic differences between peoples are dealt with in the POLITICAL ARENA.
Manifests as government recognition and how language is treated in official capacities.
Examples: the legal status of a language as official in a country or state — meaning official documents are published in it but not in others; and the treatment of evidence in a court of law.
A deliberate policy designed to favour or discourage the use of a particular language or set of languages.
Historically: nations used policy most often to promote ONE official language at the expense of others.
Now: many countries have policies designed to protect and promote regional and ethnic languages whose viability is threatened.
World Englishes (topic 251)
This is directly relevant to your own situation as a Pakistani learner of English — and examiners like answers that make that connection. Pakistani English is a world English in exactly Kachru's sense.
ESL and EFL (topic 252)
Learning English WITHIN a culture where English is spoken natively.
Clear case: an Arabic speaker learning English in the United States or the United Kingdom.
Learning English outside such a culture.
The blurring: the spread of EIL has 'muddied the formerly clear waters'. The distinction is not easily identified where English is already an accepted and widely used language for education and government — even though it is not spoken natively.
Pakistan is exactly the hard case. English is widely used in education and government, but it is not a native language. That is precisely why the handouts say the ESL/EFL line has become difficult to draw.
Practice questions
Generalizations become stereotypes when:
Culture shock is which of the four stages of culture acquisition?
During culture shock, individuals typically:
Stevick (1976b) cautioned that learners can feel alienation from:
According to Kachru, learning English in India does not really involve taking on a new culture because:
Language policy has historically been used most often to:
20 New directions in psycholinguistics ▶
Where the field is heading. The common thread across all of these: a move away from studying the isolated individual mind and towards complexity, context and interaction.
New directions in language learning psychology (topic 253)
Mirror neurons and language (topic 254)
🔴 The two ironies — this is what the topic is really about.
- Mirror neurons were first discovered in the MONKEY brain — yet monkeys are generally not credited with theory of mind, metaphor, language, or autism.
- Their role in imitation is contentious. Mirror neurons have never been recorded directly in humans; brain-imaging only points to an equivalent system, activated when people imitate action (Nishitani & Hari 2000, 2002; Rizzolatti & Craighero 2004). Yet monkeys appear incapable of imitation (Visalberghi & Fragaszy 1990, 2002) — suggesting the mirror system did not evolve to mediate imitation.
If asked about mirror neurons, the marks are in the scepticism, not the hype.
Complex systems theory (topic 255)
The handouts note that despite increasing interest, there is at present NO SINGLE AUTHORITATIVE DEFINITION of what the theory encompasses. Saying so is worth a mark.
No central control is the key phrase. A flock of birds makes a beautiful shape with no bird in charge. Language learning, on this view, is like that — order emerging from many small interactions, not from a controller.
Neurolinguistic computational models (topic 256)
On an anatomical level, the brain is rich in structure.
There are at least 54 separate processing areas in visual cortex (Van Essen et al., 1990).
It is NOT clear whether these areas function as ENCAPSULATED MODULES or rather as INTERACTIVE PIECES of functional networks.
Module-level structured models attempt to localize processing in particular neural modules.
Language learning strategy research (topic 257)
- Step 1 — The original definition
Start any answer here.
Rubin (1975, p. 43): learning strategies are 'the techniques or
devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge' - Step 2 — Others join in
The field expanded over the next decade.
Stern (1975); Naiman, Frohlich, Stern & Todesco (1978) - Step 3 — The complaint, ten years on
Growth did not bring agreement.
O'Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Kupper & Russo (1985)
lamented the lack of consensus regarding a definition, which they
felt was IMPEDING PROGRESS with research. - Step 4 — The current direction
Where the topic title points.
New research engages with the COMPLEXITY of strategy use
rather than seeking one tidy definition.
Interactivity and alignment (topic 258)
Relating psycholinguistics and applied linguistics (topic 259)
To clarify psycholinguistics' role in applied linguistics (AL), we need to look at only part of that vast field. The acquisition and use of a second language is the appropriate chunk — its core is 'essentially psycholinguistic in nature'. The psycholinguistic interest lies in the processing mechanisms involved in using more than one language.
Practice questions
Research approaches in language learning psychology have shifted from an overwhelming dependence on:
Mirror neurons were first discovered in:
Complex systems theory describes phenomena that emerge:
Rubin (1975) defined learning strategies as:
Van Essen et al. (1990) identified how many separate processing areas in visual cortex?
21 Multilingual processing ▶
What actually happens inside a bilingual's head? Are the two languages stored separately or together? How does the brain know which one to use? And are they ever both switched off?
The short answer to the last question: no. Even in a supposedly monolingual setting, the other language keeps playing a role.
The structure of the bilingual lexicon (topic 260)
The basic process is the SAME as with monolinguals. Bilingual children tend to learn the languages as two monolinguals.
The growth of both lexicons matches the growth of a monolingual lexicon.
Older children transfer more than younger children.
Vocabulary size is positively related to exposure time in that language — until a certain amount of vocabulary is reached.
Lexical development is DIFFERENT.
The beginning step is TRANSLATION — learning the definitions. This differs from L1, where semantic and formal entities were input together.
Accessing a new L2 word activates the basic-language word with the same meaning — the learner is still thinking in the basic language and representing it in L2 by translation.
- Step 1 — The starting point
Everything routes through L1.
New L2 word → activates the basic language word with the same
meaning → learner translates - Step 2 — What accumulates
Knowledge builds up in the new language itself.
More semantic and syntactic knowledge is learned for the L2 - Step 3 — The gradual shift
The dependency loosens.
The new language becomes gradually independent of the
basic language - Step 4 — The intermediate stage
Translation drops out.
Learners begin to access the language without translation,
using semantic knowledge for that language - Step 5 — Completion
The endpoint, and the phrase to use.
With more exposure, development completes when they can access
and use the language from the CONCEPT — which can be said to be
THINKING IN THAT LANGUAGE DIRECTLY.
Language choice in production and perception (topic 261)
🔴 The language mode (topic 262)
The finding that makes this topic examinable: several experimental studies have shown that even in a supposedly MONOLINGUAL setting, the other language CONTINUES TO PLAY A ROLE — demonstrated in experiments using monolingual and bilingual presentation of stimuli. The languages are never fully switched off.
Language processing and language testing (topic 263)
Listed in the handouts as future developments and needs — the connection between how language is actually processed and how we test it. If it appears, treat it as arguing that language tests should reflect real processing mechanisms, not just knowledge of rules.
Socio-psychological factors in language processing (topic 264)
The closing argument of this whole block, and a genuinely good one: it is tempting to view the language production system as a pure language-producing machine — but that is far too simple.
The necessary qualification: not every single word is weighed this way in speaking — that would cause too much loss of speed. How these socially-motivated mechanisms operate is far from clear, but understanding them is vital for understanding language use in language learners specifically.
Practice questions
For sequential L2 learners, the beginning step of learning words is:
Grosjean defines language mode as:
Experimental studies show that in a supposedly monolingual setting, the other language:
According to the handouts, lexical access and phonological encoding:
For bilingual children, the ability to learn one language:
22 Writing systems & the teaching of reading ▶
The last block of the syllabus — and it ends on a genuine controversy (whole-word vs phonics) plus a four-phase programme and a numbered list of advantages. All three are highly examinable.
Writing systems and speech (topic 265)
Finnish and Spanish — use the Roman alphabet to represent the phonemes of their spoken languages.
Korean and Japanese — use their own native scripts (Hangul and Kana) to represent the syllables of their spoken languages.
ENGLISH. The correspondence of written symbol to sound is not high.
Sound-based orthographies with high correspondence are easier to read than English.
The complication with Japanese, which the handouts flag: Japanese also mixes Chinese-type characters (kanji) into its writing system — even though those characters could be written in the syllabic Kana forms.
The study of writing (topic 266)
🔴 Whole-word vs phonics (topics 267–268)
What reading IS: a process that converts written forms → SPEECH forms → then meaning.
The essence of reading is the ability to DECODE reading materials into speech. Once speech is obtained, meaning will follow.
Method: early and systematic phonics instruction, starting with mastery of a set of letters and sounds that comprise words.
Ehri 1991; Gough & Juel 1991; Perfetti 1991; Adams 1994; Foorman et al. 1998; National Reading Panel Report 2000.
What reading IS: teaching should focus on MEANING and COMMUNICATION, not on speech.
The essential task is the RECOVERY OF MEANING. Whether a reader can say or write the words is INCIDENTAL to the reading process.
Reading is a form of communication whose goal is the reception of information through written forms.
Huey 1908; Gates 1928; Goodman 1973; F. Smith 1982.
Phonics instruction in detail (topic 268)
| The five ways of teaching phonics | What it does |
|---|---|
| Analogy phonics | Helps students connect unknown words to familiar words |
| Analytic phonics | Helps by analyzing letter–sound relationships, in order to prevent isolating sounds while reading |
| Embedded phonics | Embeds phonic skills into reading text |
| Phonics through spelling | Involves selecting letters for phonemes |
| Synthetic phonics | Converting letters to sounds and blending them to make the word sound |
← swipe the table sideways →
The exam-safe position: phonics gets you decoding; whole-word gets you meaning; fluent readers end up doing whole-word anyway; and phonics alone is incomplete. That balanced answer beats picking a side.
🔴 A universal four-phase reading programme (topic 269)
- PHASE 1 — Word Familiarization
The purpose is to acquaint children with the shapes of written words and to make them aware that different spoken words have different written manifestations.
Goal: awareness that spoken words look different in writing - PHASE 2 — Word Identification
The child learns which particular written words go with which particular spoken words or objects.
⭐ The difference from Phase 1: this one requires the use of
LONG-TERM MEMORY - PHASE 3 — Phrase and Sentence Identification
Similar to Phase 2 but with larger linguistic units.
Goal: for the child to read the largest basic linguistic unit —
the SENTENCE - PHASE 4 — Paragraphs, Stories and Book Reading
The paragraph is the largest meaningful written linguistic unit. It consists of a sequence of two or more related sentences.
A sequence of paragraphs can make a story
🔴 Advantages of early reading (topic 270)
Practice questions
Which languages are given as examples of HIGH correspondence between written symbol and sound?
In Peirce's classification of signs, pictograms are:
The Inca quipu were:
According to the Phonics/Decoding approach, reading converts written forms to:
Which fact do even Phonics/Decoding proponents admit?
Which phase of the four-phase reading programme first requires long-term memory?
Phonics instruction is described as not a complete reading programme because it lacks:
23 Master glossary & who-said-what ▶
Everything named in the syllabus, in two lists: terms and people. If you have twenty minutes left, read this section and Section 24.
🔴 Who said what — the attribution list
| Person | Associated with |
|---|---|
| Chomsky | Universal Grammar; LAD; parameter setting; innateness hypothesis; 1959 review of Skinner; discontinuity theory of evolution (single mutation, one individual, ~100,000 years ago); all languages of similar complexity (1967a) |
| Skinner | Behaviourism; Verbal Behavior (1957); operant conditioning; motivation as anticipation of reward |
| MacCorquodale (1970) | Defended Skinner against Chomsky's review |
| Osgood (1953, 1957) | Mediation theory; the 'representational mediation process' |
| Piaget | Cognitive Theory (1929); sensorimotor period; object permanence; four stages; language springs from cognitive development |
| Vygotsky | Social basis of language and thought; the bilingual sees language 'as one system among many' |
| Bruner (1966) | Influence of language on cognitive development (opposite direction to Piaget) |
| Slobin | Operating principles |
| Markman (& Wachtel) | Whole object bias, taxonomic bias, mutual exclusivity bias; the 'claw for hammer' study |
| Bickerton | Language bioprogram hypothesis; pidgins and creoles; Hawaiian creole 1900–1920 |
| Berwick & Weinberg (1984) | The subset principle |
| Gold (1967) | Computer simulation: positive evidence alone is insufficient |
| Pinker | Negative evidence argument (1990); gradual evolution without specific primate precursors |
| Elman, Bates et al. (1996) | Objections to innate mechanisms ('robust drive', anti-preformationist) |
| Jackendoff | Reply: adults have the drive too, yet get pidgins not creoles |
| Lenneberg | Critical Period Hypothesis; critical period begins around age 2 |
| Johnson & Newport (1989) | Landmark CPH study — Korean and Chinese immigrants, arrival ages 3–39 |
| Basser (1962) | Childhood brain damage before vs after speech onset |
| Itard / Lane | Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron (found 1797) |
| Broadbent (1954) / Kimura (1961, 1963, 1964) | Dichotic listening — developed for attention / applied to hemispheres; right-ear advantage for verbal material |
| Geschwind | Model of language processing: Wernicke's → arcuate fasciculus → Broca's |
| Caramazza & Zurif (1976) | Comprehension in Broca's, Wernicke's and conduction aphasics (two-picture task) |
| Kaplan, Brownell et al. (1990) | Right hemisphere and pragmatics — interpreting literally true vs false utterances |
| Petersen et al. (1978) | Lateralization in Japanese macaques |
| Nottebohm (1970) | Birdsong lateralization |
| Dunbar (1993, 1998) | Social cognition hypothesis; language as a bonding device replacing grooming |
| Premack (1971) | Sarah the chimpanzee; tokens with symbols |
| Hayes & Hayes (1952) | Chimp taught speech — two words in two years |
| Whorf / Sapir | Linguistic determinism & relativity; snow, Hopi, Wintu, Navaho examples |
| Berlin & Kay (1969) | Basic colour terms; underlying order across languages |
| Brown (1958) | Codability; Wintu 'continuing grasp of the evidence' |
| Carroll & Casagrande (1958) | Navaho vs English; object triads test; grammatical marking of form |
| Bowerman & Choi (2001) | Interactionist view of spatial terms |
| Gopnik & Choi (1990) | Korean object terms |
| H. Bloom (1981) | Chinese vs English counterfactual reasoning |
| Lucy (1992b) | Definition of habitual thought |
| Penn (1972) / Alford (1980) | Criticisms: the hypothesis is stated inconsistently / the name appeared after their deaths |
| Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan (2004) | Simon task; bilingualism and cognitive control |
| Hakuta | Critique of early bilingualism studies (socioeconomic status, family names) |
| Grosjean | Language mode continuum |
| Kachru | World Englishes; 'Indianization' of English |
| Gardner & Lambert (1972) | Instrumental vs integrative motivation |
| Weiner (1986, 1992, 2000) | Attribution theory |
| MacIntyre et al. (2002) | Willingness to communicate (WTC) |
| Spielberger (1983) | Definition of anxiety |
| Malinowski (1923) | Phatic communion |
| Myers (1962) / Jung (1923) | Myers-Briggs Type Indicator / the underlying 'types' |
| Rubin (1975) | First definition of learning strategies |
| Rubin & Thompson (1982) | Good language learners make intelligent guesses |
| Corder (1978) | The two macro strategies (risk-taking vs avoidance) |
| Tarone (1983) | Learning vs communication strategies are hard to separate |
| Cohen (1998) | SSBI — styles and strategies-based instruction |
| Oxford (1995) | Style Analysis Survey |
| Ewing (1977) | Systematic vs intuitive styles |
| Stevick (1976b) | Alienation in second-culture learning |
| Mesulam (2001) | Criteria for primary progressive aphasia |
| Marshall & Newcombe (1973) | Surface dyslexia |
| Kelly (1969) | Survey of 25 centuries of language teaching |
| Gouin (1880) | Series Method |
| Sharp (2004) / Spolsky (1989) | Variables in learning success / general model of L2 learning |
| Chambers & Trudgill (1980) | Age, peer pressure and accent acquisition |
| Jane Hill (1970) / Sorenson (1967) / Scovel (1969) | Anthropological evidence adults can learn L2 perfectly / Tukano culture / the study Hill was answering |
| Van Essen et al. (1990) | 54 processing areas in visual cortex |
← swipe the table sideways →
Definitions in one line each
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Simultaneous bilingualism | Acquiring two languages at the same time |
| Sequential bilingualism | Acquiring L2 after L1 — = second-language acquisition |
| Metalinguistic awareness | Thinking about language as an object; grasping arbitrariness |
| Cognitive control | Selectively attending to some stimuli and ignoring others |
| Necessary condition | Must be present for the outcome |
| Sufficient condition | If present, guarantees the outcome |
| Feral children | Children raised in the wild |
| Critical Period Hypothesis | A window early in life for easy language acquisition, closing near puberty |
| Motherese | Adult-to-child speech: shorter, more concrete, more directive, more intonationally exaggerated |
| Operating principles | Children's preferred ways of taking in information (Slobin) |
| Object permanence | Objects continue to exist when not perceived |
| Whole object bias | A new label names the whole object, not a part |
| Taxonomic bias | A label names a category, not an individual |
| Mutual exclusivity bias | One object, one name — reject a second label |
| Pidgin | Auxiliary language among speakers of mutually unintelligible languages |
| Creole | What children make when they acquire a pidgin natively |
| Parameters | Switches, set on or off per language, within Universal Grammar |
| Subset principle | Languages as subsets of one another (English ⊂ Russian ⊂ Warlpiri) |
| Positive / negative evidence | Evidence that an utterance is grammatical / ungrammatical |
| Broca's aphasia | Effortful, telegraphic, agrammatic speech; content words kept |
| Wernicke's aphasia | Fluent but empty speech; jargon, neologisms, no awareness |
| Conduction aphasia | Hallmark deficit in repetition; paraphasic errors |
| Pure word deafness | Cannot comprehend auditory language; visual language intact |
| Corpus callosum | The fibre band joining the two hemispheres |
| Arcuate fasciculus | Connects Wernicke's area to Broca's area |
| Dichotic listening | Different stimuli to the two ears simultaneously |
| Hemispherectomy | Surgical removal of one cerebral hemisphere |
| Duality of patterning | Infinite messages from a small set of meaningless elements |
| Linguistic determinism | Language determines non-linguistic cognitive processes |
| Linguistic relativity | Those processes differ across languages |
| Differentiation | The number of words in a given domain |
| Codability | The length of a verbal expression |
| Counterfactual reasoning | Reasoning about what is contrary to fact |
| Habitual thought | Routine ways of attending to, categorizing and remembering things |
| Competence / performance | Underlying knowledge / observable doing |
| Order of acquisition | Fixed universal order for L1; much less consistent for L2 |
| Silent period | Early L2 stage of 'language shock' with private speech |
| Interference | L1 structures intruding on L2 production |
| Explication | Rules explained to the learner in L1 |
| Induction | Learning rules by self-discovery |
| Field independence | Perceiving a relevant item within a distracting field |
| Ambiguity tolerance | Willingness to entertain contradictory propositions |
| Haptic style | Tactile + kinesthetic combined |
| Learning strategies | Receptive: intake, memory, storage, recall |
| Communication strategies | Productive: verbal/nonverbal mechanisms to convey meaning |
| Circumlocution | Describing the target object ('the thing you open bottles with') |
| Approximation | A near-miss real word ('ship' for 'sailboat') |
| Foreignizing | An L1 word adjusted to L2 phonology/morphology |
| Code-switching | An L1 word used unchanged, with L1 pronunciation |
| SBI / SSBI | Strategies- (and styles-) based instruction |
| Affective domain | The emotional side of behaviour |
| Self-efficacy | Belief in your own capability to perform an activity |
| Phatic communion | Defining oneself and finding acceptance through expression |
| WTC | Predisposition toward or away from communicating, given the choice |
| Instrumental / integrative | Language as a tool / language as entry to a culture |
| Intrinsic / extrinsic | Reward from the activity itself / reward from outside the self |
| Stereotype | A generalization applied to all members of a group |
| Culture shock | Stage 2 of four; cultural differences intrude on self and security |
| Language politics / policy | Language in the political arena / deliberate favouring or discouraging |
| World Englishes | Legitimate local varieties of English (Kachru) |
| ESL / EFL | English learned inside / outside an English-speaking culture |
| Complex systems theory | Emergence without central control |
| Language mode | State of activation of a bilingual's languages at a given moment |
| Pictogram | A picture representing an object by direct physical resemblance; an icon |
| Phonics / whole-word | Decode written → speech → meaning / recover meaning directly |
← swipe the table sideways →
24 Last-minute sheet — read this before you walk in ▶
Read only this in the final 15 minutes. Nothing else.
Exam tactics
- Do the objective questions first. They are most of the marks and the fastest.
- For 'define X', give the definition and one example. The example is often a separate mark.
- For 'discuss/evaluate', always end with the criticism — the handouts criticise almost every theory they present, and examiners expect you to.
- Name the researcher whenever you can. Attribution is cheap marks.
- If a question asks about a numbered list, write the list. Do not write a paragraph.
- Where a distinction exists (Broca/Wernicke, instrumental/integrative), define BOTH sides even if only one is asked about — it shows you know the contrast.
- Never say a theory is simply 'true' or 'proven'. The safest formula in this subject: the pattern is real, the explanation is contested.
You have the whole syllabus here. If you know the operator-level distinctions in the first card, Broca vs Wernicke, the four theories and their inadequacies, and the two motivation pairs, you have covered a large share of what this paper will ask. Good luck.