| Leon's
"SLA House" Theory of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) |
This diagram needs some explaining.
Vocabulary Explained:
Phonetics: the study of phonemes of a language. A
phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in any language. For
example: the long vowel "a" has two phonemes: eh + ee.
Phonology: the study of supra-segmental features of a
language, especially the prosodic features, such as pitch, pitch
movement, loudness, and length of the sounds.
Morphology: the study of morphemes of a language.
Morphemes are the smallest units of phonemes that have meaning.
For example: the word "dog" has only one morpheme, but the
word "dogmatic" has two morphemes: dogma + tic.
Lexis: the collection of words AND phrases that have many
words with ONE meaning in a language. For example: the phrase
"put up with" has ONE meaning: tolerate. Therefore,
"put up with" is ONE lexical item.
Organizational Competence: the ability to make
grammatically correct sentences and the ability to produce cohesive
compositions.
Pragmatics (Pragmatic Competence): the ability to use
the appropriate language in the appropriate time and place, and to the
appropriate audience. For example, you don't say "Shut
up!" to your father, unless you want a beating.
My Theory Explained:
It is my belief that one must have a good foundation in the phonetics,
phonology AND lexis of the language before being able to HEAR them when spoken
by native speakers. AND, it is my belief that in order to be able
to have oral competence of a language, one must first listen to it.
Likewise, it is my belief that in order to be able to READ a text,
one must first have a strong foundation in the written morphology and
written lexis of the language. AND, it is my belief that in order
to be able to have written competence, one must be able to read.
Studies have shown that listening can influence writing and reading
can influence speaking.
The teaching of phonetics, phonology, morphology, and lexis should be
done bottom-up until one has mastered a basic set of the above.
A basic set might look like this:
| phonemes |
just enough to "hear" the day's lesson |
| prosodic features |
just enough to "hear" the day's lesson |
| morphemes |
a few |
| lexis |
just enough to understand the content of the day's
lesson |
New phonemes and prosodic features, as well as new morphemes and
lexis can be taught in later lessons as they appear in the authentic
compositions presented by the teacher.
After a brief tutorial on the content in the table above, the teacher
presents an authentic composition produced by natives of the target
language. This is top-down. Through the top-down
method, students can induce the grammatical structure of the language.
After the lesson, the teacher explains in the mother tongue about any
possible pragmatics involved in the content of the lesson.
Note: grammar is not taught bottom-up, but there may be times
when consciousness-raising (C-R) is desirable.
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