"On Discourse, Communication, and (Some) Fundamental Concepts in SLA Research"
by Firth and Wagner
At the start of the article the authors lay out their argument that Second Language Acquisition would become more affective if it combined the social and cognitive aspects of the learner, which would open the field. I agree and believe that the environments of the learners do greatly play a large role in their learning experiences. The authors say that they want to "balance" theory and method to explore the social and cognitive environments of the speaker. I found that many times my days spent teaching would be greatly affected by what was happening in the students lives. Their home and social environments follow them and always shine through in their day to day activities, so why not recognize this and use it to help the learning process?
In the different subheadings of the article "Communication Strategies" are discussed. The idea that when we communicate and interact with the students we must praise good and bad outcomes. If we just focus on correcting the bad this could bring down the student and maybe discourage their learning experience. Also, the idea of "Input Modification Studies" is discussed, which are the studies of the ways non native speakers and native speakers understand each other. The discussion of a "normal" way of speaking exists is part of this section. They describe a native speaker as being a perfect speaker to some extent. I think this is a hard idea to digest. This part of the article also describes the ways in which non native speakers talk to native speakers and vice verse. As a native speaker I agree with these conclusions because I did learn to speak slower to my classes and try to make it as easy as possible for them to understand me. But I do wonder if this hinders the learner as they become better at the language? Does it make it more frustrating for a almost perfect non native speaker?
Overall, I do understand the authors arguments. I find what they are saying helpful in ways to expand SLA.
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