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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan Outline

Integrated Instruction Plan Content Area: Reading Comprehension
Grade: Fourth grade
Lesson Theme: Reading of the Story: When I was in San Juan
Length of Plan: One week (Mon-Fri)
Objectives: During the reading of the tory the students will:
a)identify the definitions of the vocabulary words in context
b)analyze if their prediction
Standards of Excellence English Program Department of Education of Puerto Rico 4.3, 4.5

Components of Plan:
1. Content specific vocabulary:

rooster, travel, night, fort, parade, airport, historical, buildings, tourists, city Vocabulary introduced by using: pictures, drawings and games

2. Materials: Textbook: Story Town, flashcards of vocabulary words, pictures of places mentioned in the story, students’ journals, recorder, handouts of the summary of the story, radio, CD with Puerto Rican music
3. Strategies for developing higher order thinking skills:

 Before the reading: predict what will happen in the story just by looking at the pictures
 During the reading: Analyze if what they predicted was right
 After the reading: Make a summary of the events of the story; change the ending; answer: If you were one of the characters, would you do the same thing? Why?

4. Multicultural education strategies:

 Provide the opportunity to talk about diverse culture
 Explain what is culture (brain storming, definition)
 Name some elements of cultures: food, traditions and customs
 Talk about the importance of respecting others people culture and points of view

5. Learning strategies:

 Audio-Lingual Method
 Use recording to hear the story
 Silent reading
 Group reading
 Socialize discussion
6. Personal experience:

Ask the students to write in their journal if the lived an experienced related to one in the story

7. Procedures

Early Production

8. Parent support activities:

Make an interview to their parents (or grandparents) with some guided questions about places they might have visited:
1-What are some of their customs?
2-Which are some of their typical food?
3-Which type of music do they hear?
4-Name some of their traditions
5-Include pictures of that place

9. Evaluation:

Students’ journals, rapid response questions, debates about customs and traditions, descriptive paragraph about the story, drawings of a part of the story

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Constructivism Learning Theory

What is Constructivism?

• The term refers to the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves---each learner individually and, socially constructs meaning---as he or she learns.
• Constructivism views learning as a process in which the learner actively constructs or builds new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge or experience.
• Constructivist learning, therefore, is a very personal endeavor, whereby internalized concepts, rules, and general principles may consequently be applied in a practical real-world context.
• This is known as social constructivism.
• Social constructivists posit that knowledge is constructed when individuals engage socially in talk and activity about shared problems or tasks.
• Constructivism itself has many variations, such as active learning, discovery learning, and knowledge building.
• Regardless of the variety, constructivism promotes a student's free exploration within a given framework or structure.

Constructivist Theorists

Jean Piaget
• Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, (1896 –1980)
• Was a psychologist and philosopher, well known for his pedagogical studies.
• He is the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing.
• He inspired the transformation of European and American education, including both theory and practice, leading to a more ‘child-centered’ approach.
• Piaget's influence is stronger in early education and moral education.
• In conversations with Jean Piaget, he says: "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists" (Bringuier, 1980, p. 132).
• Piaget believed in two basic principles relating to moral education: that children develop moral ideas in stages and that children create their conceptions of the world.
• According to Piaget, "the child is someone who constructs his own moral world view, who forms ideas about right and wrong, and fair and unfair, that are not the direct product of adult teaching and that are often maintained in the face of adult wishes to the contrary" (Gallagher, 1978, p. 26).
• Piaget believed that children made moral judgments based on their own observations of the world.
• He also had a considerable effect in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence.
• His theory of cognitive development can be used as a tool in the early childhood classroom.
• According to Piaget, children developed best in a classroom with interaction.
Stages of Piaget’s Theory:
• Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2. Children experience the world through movement and senses (use five senses to explore the world). During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive the world from others' viewpoints.
• Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (magical thinking predominates, acquisition of motor skills). Egocentrism begins strongly and then weakens. Children cannot conserve or use logical thinking
• Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 12 (children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking). They are no longer egocentric.
• Formal operational stage: from age 12 onwards (development of abstract reasoning). Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind.


Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky
• Novermber 5,1896 – June 11, 1934
• He was a Soviet psychologist.
• Was also a highly prolific author: his major works span 6 volumes, written over roughly 10 years, from his Psychology of Art (1925) to Thought and Language [or Thinking and Speech] (1934).
• His work covered such diverse topics as the origin and the psychology of art, development of higher mental functions, philosophy of science and methodology of psychological research, the relation between learning and human development, concept formation, interrelation between language and thought development, play as a psychological phenomenon, the study of learning disabilities, and abnormal human development.
• Vygotsky introduced the notion of zone of proximal development, an innovative metaphor capable of describing not the actual, but the potential of human cognitive development.
• "Zone of proximal development" (ZPD) is Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone(because he is not mature enough) but that can be learned with guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children. The lower limit of ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently. The upper limit is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor.
• Vygotsky investigated child development and how this was guided by the role of culture and interpersonal communication.
• He observed how higher mental functions developed historically within particular cultural groups, as well as individually through social interactions with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents, but also other adults.
• Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of her/his culture, including speech patterns, written language, and other symbolic knowledge through which the child derives meaning and which affected a child's construction of her/his knowledge.
• This key premise of Vygotskian psychology is often referred to as cultural mediation.
• The specific knowledge gained by children through these interactions also represented the shared knowledge of a culture. This process is known as internalization.
• Internalization can be understood in one respect as “knowing how”.
• Perhaps Vygotsky's most important contribution concerns the inter-relationship of language development and thought.
• This concept, explored in Vygotsky's book Thought and Language, establishes the explicit and profound connection between speech (both silent inner speech and oral language), and the development of mental concepts and cognitive awareness.
• It should be noted that Vygotsky described inner speech as being qualitatively different from normal (external) speech.
• An infant learns the meaning of signs through interaction with its main care-givers, e.g., pointing, cries, and gurgles can express what is wanted. How verbal sounds can be used to conduct social interaction is learned through this activity, and the child begins to use, build, and develop this faculty, e.g., using names for objects, etc.
• Language starts as a tool external to the child used for social interaction.
• The child guides personal behavior by using this tool in a kind of self-talk or "thinking out loud." Initially, self-talk is very much a tool of social interaction and it tapers to negligible levels when the child is alone or with deaf children. Gradually self-talk is used more as a tool for self-directed and self-regulating behavior.
• Then, because speaking has been appropriated and internalized, self-talk is no longer present around the time the child starts school. Self-talk "develops along a rising not a declining, curve; it goes through an evolution, not an involution. In the end, it becomes inner speech" (Vygotsky, 1987, pg 57). Inner speech develops through its differentiation from social speech.

John Dewey
• October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952
• He was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been very influential to education and social reform.
• His educational theories were presented in My Pedagogic Creed (1897), The School and Society (1900), The Child and Curriculum (1902), Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Education (1938).
• Dewey was an educational reformer, who emphasized that the traditional teaching's concern with delivering knowledge needed to be balanced with a much greater concern with the students' actual experiences and active learning.
• At the same time, Dewey was alarmed by many of the "child-centered" excesses of educational-school pedagogues who claimed to be his followers. In How We Think, Dewey wrote:
“The older type of instruction tended to treat the teacher as a dictatorial ruler. The newer type sometimes treats the teacher as a negligible factor, almost as an evil, though a necessary one. In reality, the teacher is the intellectual leader of a social group, He is a leader, not in virtue of official position, but because of wider and deeper knowledge and matured experience. The supposition that the teacher must abdicate its leadership is merely silly.”
• Learning by doing
• Dewey was the most famous proponent of hands-on learning or experiential education, which is related to, but not synonymous with experiential learning. Dewey went on to influence many other influential experiential models and advocates.
• Many researchers credit him with the influence of Project Based Learning (PBL) which places students in the active role of researchers.
Before and After Constructivism
Traditional Classroom Constructivist Classroom
Curriculum begins with the parts of the whole. Curriculum emphasizes big concepts, beginning with the whole and expanding to include the parts.
Emphasizes basic skills. Process is as important as product
Strict adherence to fixed curriculum is highly valued. Pursuit of student questions and interests is valued.
Materials are primarily textbooks and workbooks Materials include primary sources of material and manipulative materials.
Learning is based on repetition. Learning is interactive, building on what the student already knows.
Teachers disseminate information to students; students are recipients of knowledge. Teachers have a dialogue with students, helping students construct their own knowledge.
Teacher's role is directive, rooted in authority. Teacher's role is interactive, rooted in negotiation.
Assessment is through testing, correct answers. Assessment includes student works, observations, and points of view, as well as tests.

Knowledge is seen as inert. Knowledge is seen as dynamic, ever changing with our experiences.

Students work primarily alone. Students work primarily in groups.

Why constructivism?
• It prompt students to formulate their own questions. (inquiry)
• It allows multiple interpretations and expressions of learning (multiple intelligences)
• It encourage group work and the use of peers as resources (collaborative learning)




Principles of Learning
What are some guiding principles of constructivist thinking that we must keep in mind when we consider our role as educators?
1. Learning is an active process in which the learner uses sensory input and constructs meaning out of it. The more traditional formulation of this idea involves the terminology of the active learner (Dewey's term) stressing that the learner needs to do something.

2. People learn to learn as they learn: learning consists both of constructing meaning and constructing systems of meaning.

3. The crucial action of constructing meaning is mental: it happens in the mind. Physical actions, hands-on experience may be necessary for learning, especially for children, but it is not sufficient; we need to provide activities which engage the mind as well as the hands. (Dewey called this reflective activity.)

4. Learning involves language: the language we use influences learning. On the empirical level. researchers have noted that people talk to themselves as they learn. On a more general level. there is a collection of arguments, presented most forcefully by Vigotsky, that language and learning are inextricably intertwined.

5. Learning is a social activity (Vigotsky): our learning is intimately associated with our connection with other human beings, our teachers, our peers, our family as well as casual acquaintances, including the people before us or next to us at the exhibit.

6. Learning is contextual: we do not learn isolated facts and theories in some abstract ethereal land of the mind separate from the rest of our lives: we learn in relationship to what else we know, what we believe, our prejudices and our fears.

7. One needs knowledge to learn: it is not possible to assimilate new knowledge without having some structure developed from previous knowledge to build on. The more we know, the more we can learn. Therefore any effort to teach must be connected to the state of the learner, must provide a path into the subject for the learner based on that learner's previous knowledge.

8. It takes time to learn: learning is not instantaneous. For significant learning we need to revisit ideas, ponder them try them out, play with them and use them.

9. Motivation is a key component in learning. Not only is it the case that motivation helps learning, it is essential for learning. Unless we know "the reasons why", we may not be very involved in using the knowledge that may be instilled in us even by the most severe and direct teaching.





In a constructivist classroom the teacher…

 pose problems of emerging relevance to students.
 structure learning around primary concepts.
 seeks and values students' points of view.
 adapts instruction to address student suppositions.
 assess student learning in the context of teaching.
 serves as a guide or facilitator to his/her students
 develops a situation for students to explain
 selects a process for groupings of materials and students
 builds a bridge between what students already know and what the teachers want them to learn
 anticipate questions to ask and answer without giving away an explanation
 encourage students to exhibit a record of their thinking by sharing it with others, and
 solicit students' reflections about their learning.

In a constructivist classroom the students…

can construct additional knowledge by figuring out/analyzing:

• solutions to problems in your school or community
• math formulas to explain a problem, or pose a solution
• categorization method for some plants or animals in your area based on careful observation (perhaps a small collection, or homemade "museum")
• a plan for a scavenger hunt
• a treasure hunt (in which clues involve vocabulary from the topic)
• a collection of objects from nature
• the night sky, food chain, water cycle, or other science topic
• local, national, or international environmental concern
can construct additional knowledge by writing:
• poems
• short plays
• screen plays
• legal briefs
• song lyrics
• journals
• diaries
• memoirs
• travelogues
• interviews
• letters (or e-mail) to experts
• original advertisements
• new endings for stories or songs
• "what if..." thought experiments

can construct additional knowledge by making/inventing/designing/drawing:
• posters
• cartoons
• timelines
• models
• charts
• maps
• graphs
• board games
• concept maps
• multimedia presentations
can construct additional knowledge by performing/presenting:
• a play
• a concert
• role-play lecture (such as a well-known person from history)
• a dance based on literature or historical event
• collected songs about a topic from another era

Benefits of constructivism
Develops thinking skills.
• Problem solving teaches students to consider multiple perspectives on a given situation.
• This develops flexibility in thinking and reasoning skills, as students compare and contrast various possibilities in order to draw their conclusions.
• Students tap into their prior knowledge and experience as they attempt to solve a problem.
• Students also learn to make connections and associations by relating the subject matter to their own life experience.
• Students learn to support their conclusions with evidence and logical arguments.
• Students learn to synthesize several sources of information and references in order to draw conclusions and then evaluate these conclusions.
• Students learn to question ideas and knowledge through the process of comparing and contrasting alternative ideas and contexts.
• Students are encouraged to engage in individual reflection in order to organize and understand the world.
• Students experience insights as they think through a problem or inquiry activity, and draw inferences that allow them to go beyond the simple acquisition of facts and information by learning how to see implications and apply them to other situations.
Develops communication and social skills.
• Students must learn how to clearly articulate their ideas as well as to collaborate on tasks effectively by sharing the burden of group projects. Students must therefore exchange ideas and so must learn to "negotiate" with others and to evaluate their contributions in a socially acceptable manner. This is essential to success in the real world, since they will always be exposed to a variety of experiences in which they will have to navigate among others' ideas.
• Students learn how to communicate their ideas and findings with others. This becomes a self-assessment activity, whereby the students gain more insight into how well or poorly they actually understand the concepts at hand.
Encourages alternative methods of assessment.
• Traditional assessment is based on pen-and-paper tests whereby students demonstrate or reproduce knowledge in the form of short responses and multiple-choice selection, which often inspire little personal engagement. Constructivist assessment engages the students' initiative and personal investment through journals, research reports, physical models, and artistic representations. Engaging the creative instincts develops a student's ability to express knowledge through a variety of ways. The student is also more likely to retain and transfer the new knowledge to real life.
Helps students transfer skills to the real world.
• Students adapt learning to the real world, gaining problem-solving skills and ability to do a critical analysis of a given set of data. These skills enable the student to adapt to a constantly changing real-world environment. Thus, classroom learning does not result in (only) acquisition of a canon of absolute "truth"; it also results in a resource of personal knowledge.
Promotes intrinsic motivation to learn.
• Constructivism recognizes and validates the student's point of view, so that rather than being "wrong" or "right," the student reevaluates and readjusts his knowledge and understanding. Such an emphasis generates confidence and self esteem, which, in turn, motivate the student to tackle more complex problems and themes.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Movie: The Miracle Worker

Movie: The Miracle Worker


This is the story of Anne Sullivan's struggle to teach the blind, mute and deaf Helen Keller how to communicate. Her parents seek help from the Perkins Institute and they send this tutor to help her.

In this movie we can observe different learning theories and strategies which Sullivan used to help Helen to communicate. We can observe that Sullivan let her discover the world around by the sense of touch (Mayer-Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning). Helen touched her face and she imitated (Bandura-Social Learning) her face. Later she could distinguish that those different faces represented a different feeling. Sullivan thought sign language not only to her, but also to her parents, making them part of the process of learning. Even though, the parents had different visions of Helen’s education and, sometimes the blocked the process of teaching-learning, the teacher knew that their participation in the process was going to help her. She also thought her with a little boy (Vigotsky-Social Interaction). When Helen was with him she was less aggressive and more willing to learn.

In the movie is clearly shown that Sullivan gave direct instructions (BF Skinner-Behaviorism) and repeated it them whenever it was necessarily. Meanwhile Helen’s parents rewarded her even if she had a bad behavior, Sullivan only rewarded (Pavlov-Classical Conditioning) her when she had a good behavior or did a good job.

Sullivan was not only interested in teach Helen how to behave and follow instructions; she was also wanted to teach understanding, language, not just rules. At the end of the movie we could appreciate that that happened. Helen was able to understand language, she was able to communicate and be less aggressive. This can guide to a conclusion that, every child in a way or another can learn. Using a variety of theories, strategies and, techniques we can teach a student. There are no real limitations when somebody wants to achieve something.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Learning Theories

Movie: The Renaissance Man

This movie compares and contrast different learning theories like: behaviorism, which is also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do including acting, thinking and feeling can and should be regarded as behaviors. It also shows cognitivism, which has two major components, one methodological, the other theoretical. Methodologically, cognitivism adopts a positivist approach and the belief that psychology can be fully explained by the use of experiment, measurement and the scientific method. This is also largely a reductionist goal, with the belief that individual components of mental function can be identified and meaningfully understood. The second is the belief that cognition consists of discrete, internal mental states (representations or symbols) whose manipulation can be described in terms of rules or algorithms. For last this movie also presents the constructivism theory. Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world we live in. Each of us generates our own “rules” and “mental models,” which we use to make sense of our experiences. Learning, therefore, is simply the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences.

We can see these learning theories through the entire movie. The students are in the army, they are used only to follow instructions. Then the teacher decided to let them pick something they wanted to write and something they wanted to write. That is where constructivism is shown. They were interested and motivated of what the teacher was reading and that interest engaged them into the reading process. During that learning process we could see some learning techniques like group work, role play, communicative language theory, presentation, practice and production (PPP). It was shown the audio-lingual method, because the students were talking and listening to understand language. As a result, after all these methods and techniques the students were able to apply what they learned in different situations. They felt engaged with the course. The teacher demonstrated them that he cared about the students.

As a conclusion I think that, the best way to keep engaged students into learning language is, loving ourselves the language, loving reading in order to motivate them to love and engaged them into learning language too.

Characteristics of Good Language Learners

Most researchers have rejected the notion of a single profile of the “good language learner” because over the years research studies have shown that there can be striking differences among equally successful language learners (Macaro, 2001). Rather than limiting the description of the good language learner to one that is prescriptive and ignores learner differences, the more recent and inclusive view is that there are various ways that language learners can be successful. For the most part, these learners are strategic in their learning. But, not necessarily all students use the same strategies.

Research on strategies for effective language learning has focused on the identification, description, and classification of strategies; their frequency of use and the learner’s success at using them; differences in language proficiency level, age, gender, and cultural background that might affect their successful use of strategies; and the impact of language strategy training on student performance in language learning and language use.

Whether the strategies that a given learner selects are successful depends on many factors, including:
• Nature of the language task
• Characteristics of the learner such as learning-style preferences
• Language-learning aptitude
• Prior experience with learning other foreign languages
• Motivation to learn this language, cultural background, age, and personality characteristics
• Language being learned
• Learner’s level of language proficiency

No single set of strategies will be appropriate for all learners or for all tasks. Students need to learn how to apply strategies according to what actually works for them. This is where we as language teachers come in: to explicitly teach learners to be more aware of their learning-style and language strategy preferences.

How to know if our students or we are good language learners? Here are some guidelines or strategies we could use to motivate ourselves and most of all to motivate our students to be good language learners in order to achieve our goal.

Below we can find fourteen characteristics of a good language learner written by Rubin and Thompson (1982).

1. Good language learners find their own way and take charge of their learning. They determine the methods that are best for them as individual learners. They learn form others and experiment with different methods.
2. Good language learners organize their study of the language, and they organize information about the language they study.
3. Good language learners are creative. They understand that language is creative. They experiment with the language and play with grammar, words, and sounds.
4. Good language learners make their own opportunities for practicing the language inside and outside of the classroom.
5. Good language learners learn to live with uncertainty by focusing on the meaning of what they can understand, by not getting flustered, and by continuing to talk or listen without necessarily understanding every word.
6. Good language learners use mnemonics and other memory strategies to recall what they are learning.
7. Good language learners make errors work for them and not against them.
8. Good language learners use linguistic knowledge, including knowledge of their first language, in learning a second language.
9. Good language learners use contextual clues to aid their comprehension of the language. They maximize use of all potential contexts around the language attended to for enhancing comprehension.
10. Good language learners learn to make intelligent guesses.
11. Good language learners learn chunks of language as wholes and formalized routines to help them perform beyond their competence. For example, they may learn idioms, proverbs, or other phrases knowing what the whole phrase means without necessarily understanding each individual part.
12. Good language learners learn certain tricks that keep conversations going.
13. Good language learners learn certain production techniques that also fill in the gaps in their own competence.
14. Good language learners learn different styles of speech or writing to learn to vary their language according to the formality of the situation.

Obviously the question we now want to ask ourselves or to our students is: How do I (they) match up as a language learner to this list of characteristics?

1. Questionnaire for a good language learner
Below is a very simple questionnaire to help you think about what you do as a learner. Circle the answer that describes how you approach language learning.
A: always O: often S: sometimes R: rarely N: never
The good language learner finds a style of learning that suits him/her
1.1 try to get something out of every A O S R N
learning situation even if I don't like
it.
2.I choose learning situations that are A O S R N
suited to my way of learning.

Good language learners are actively involved in the language learning process
3.Besides language class, I plan A O S R N
activities that give me a chance to
use and learn the language.
4.I choose activities because I am A O S R N
already familiar with the ideas.
5.I can figure out my special A O S R N
problems.
6.I try to do something about my A O S R N
special problems.
7.I do things I don't usually do to gain A 0 S R N
more information about my foreign
language.

Good language learners try to figure out how the language works.
8. I pay special attention to A O S R N
pronunciation.
9. I pay special attention to grammar. A O S R N
10. I pay special attention to vocabulary. A O S R N



Good language learners know that language is used to communicate
11.I try to develop good techniques to A O S R N
practice listening, speaking, reading
and writing.
12.I try to develop good techniques to A O S R N
improve my pronunciation, grammar
and vocabulary.

Good language learners are like good detectives
13.I am like a detective. I look for clues A O S R N
that will help me understand how
language works.
14.When I don't know, I guess. A O S R N
15.I ask people to correct me if I make A O S R N
a mistake.
16.I compare what I say with what A O S R N
others say to see if I'm using correct
language.
17.I think about what I've learned. A O S R N

Good language learners learn to think in the language
18. I try to think in my target language. A O S R N

Good language learners try to overcome their feelings of frustration and lack of confidence

19. I overcome my feelings of frustration A O S R N
and lack of confidence.
20. I can laugh at my mistakes. A O S R N

2. Another way of deciding whether you have the characteristics of a good language
learner is by using the list of adjectives below.

􀁺 self aware
􀁺 inquisitive
􀁺 tolerant
􀁺 self critical
􀁺 realistic
􀁺 willing to experiment
􀁺 actively involved
􀁺 organized


After answering and analyzing these two questionnaires I can assure I am a good language learner. Now we, as teachers should motivate our students into being good language learners too. We have the responsibility to guide, motivate and help them to be better language learners. We should offer them all the tools and techniques we know in order to help them become owners of their own learning.

These questionnaires help us motivate ourselves and our students to be good language learners. Using them they can realize how are they doing and what they can improve. But, most important of all is to understand and respect the variety of learning styles in order to help and guide our students in a better understanding of the language.




References:

Rubin and Thompson; (1982); 14 Characteristics of a good language learner; http://www 4.ncsu.edu/~dfstephe/14characteristics.html

Mougel; Language Learning Strategies; pp 31-33; http://www.carla.umn.edu/maxsa/ samples/ig_goodlanglearner.pdf

Language learning vs. Language acquisition

The capacity to acquire and use language is a key aspect that distinguishes humans from other organisms. While many forms of animal communication exist, they have a limited range of non-syntactically structured vocabulary tokens that lack cross cultural variation between groups. Now, how do humans learn or acquire language? What does learning a language means? What does acquire a language means? Both are processes humans use to know a language, but are they the same? How do they work?

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with speech or manual as in sign. Language acquisition usually refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, rather than second language acquisition that deals with acquisition in both children (Plato) and adults of additional languages.

Second language acquisition or second language learning is the process by which people learn a second language in addition to their native language. "Second language acquisition" refers to what the learner does; it does not refer to what the teacher does. Second language acquisition research studies the psychology and sociology of the learning process. Sometimes the terms "acquisition" and "learning" are not treated as synonyms and are instead used to refer to the subconscious and conscious aspects of this process respectively.

The linguist Stephen Krashen differentiates in his theory two processes that happen when we “learn” a second language and calls them second language acquisition and second language learning. Acquisition is similar to the subconscious process that children already undergo when they acquire their first language. By contrast, second language learning is the conscious process of learning, for example, grammar rules. It leads to a conscious knowledge of the learned system.
Language learning focuses on developing the ability to communicate in a second language. Second language learning (SLL) is the term used by the linguist Stephen Krashen to refer to the process by which people consciously learn a second language. Krashen calls the subconscious process involved in learning a second language second language acquisition.

Reference:
Krashen; (1981); Second Laguage Acquisition and Second Language Learning; http://www.sdkrashen.com/SL_Acquisition_and_Learning/index.html

Definitons of Concepts for LLC in ESL

1- Language is a systematic means of communicating by the use of sounds or conventional symbols.

2-Cognition is the psychological result of perception learning and reasoning. It is the scientific term for the process of "thought" to knowing.

3-Mind is that which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason. It has to be with intention and judgement.

4-The brain is that part of the central nervous system that includes all the higher nervous centers, enclosed within the skull; continuous with the spinard cord.

5-Thought is related to idea: the content of cognition; the main thing you are thinking about. It is also considered an opinion: a personal belief or judgment that is not founded on proof or certainty. Thinking is the process of using your mind to consider something carefully.

6- A theory is a well-substantiated and organized explanation of some aspect of the natural world. It can be contrasted with the concept of hypothesis which is a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena.

7- Learning is the process of acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information.