The beginning - 1st post

Organic language acquisition

the journey into psycholinguistics

most language education can be divided into three categories: structural, functional and interactive.

The organic approach doesn't draw lines and distinguish between these. Instead it works with methods, techniques and understandings of language which yield high results. It might draw from these approaches but relies mainly on one thing.... learner autonomy. When the learner is responsible for their own learning, acquisition is faster.

At this point we need to define a few primary concepts.

1- most view language as being comprised of language skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening) and language systems (grammar, vocabulary, phonology, discourse). Institutions educate people in all of these areas, spending precious time doing activities and explaining things which do not necessarily benefit anyone (that is they do not yield significant results). The organic approach focusses on discourse (real life language) but offers up a system of identifying structures from the language therein. It sees all other 7 areas of language studies as off shoots of this (as all the others are perceived as skills developed over time which aren't essential to language acquisition).

2 – an important part of the methodology of learning anything is understanding how the brain retains information. This is a three part concept: motivation, memory and material (the 3 'M's). Each is significant with regards to information retention. If you aren't interested, it wont work (motivation). If you cant recall the information, it won't work (memory). And finally if you are practising artificially constructed exercises, you are using time which could be spent learning more important language items (material). Material also relates to where you get your input: books, films, etc.

3 – the learner must train a variety of cognitive skills into themselves, things which develop through trail and error. These include (but are not defined by) : the ability to identify collocations (naturally occurring groups of words), the ability to predict/ infer meaning of an item (or group of items) from a context, the ability to distinguish between more general items (walk) and more specific items ( a type of walking such as march), the ability to memorise multi-layered items at will, to a high level of accuracy, in a short space of time. These are but a few of the skills which are cultivated by using appropriate methods and techniques.

4 – knowledge about the learning process supersedes knowledge about the material. That is not to say that knowledge of the material is wasted, but if someone knows the history of a word, it doesn't guarentee they know how to use, nor does it mean they are successful when trying to recall it to use it in a situation.

With most learners managing to get to an 'advanced' level in 1-2 years, I will attempt to test out the organic theory of language acquisition by setting a goal of gaining proficiency (complete fluency) within a year. ( although I'd like to obtain an advanced level by the end of 6 months).