Cognition?
It is the various mental process used in thinking, remembering, perceiving, recognizing, classifying, etc. Also this chapter discusses 1) how people become aware of knowing L2 and 2) what information makes people know another language.
Summary
Information processing assumes that human cognitive architecture is made of representation and access, mental process is included by unconscious and conscious, and performance is variable due to limited attention and memory.
According to skill acquisition theory, gradual transformation of performance turns from controlled to automatic. Practice helps automatization of new knowledge and it makes knowledge easier to access without effort, but power of practice is variable over time. Automaticity is the last outcome of the gradual process of automatization. Robert DeKeyser (1997) is a good exemplary study of this theory.
Long-term memory is unlimited and about representation. It is made of explicit-declaration memory (recollection of fact or event) and implicit-procedural memory (skills). In the vocabulary study, it has a matter of degree of proceduralization(strength – implicit memory), total number of words known(size-explicit-declarative memory), and how well elaborated the vocabulary is (depth-both). In the L2 words consist of the content of the representation and the mechanism of access. Nonselectivity is that information encoded for both languages when the bilinguals recognize or produce vocabulary.
Working memory is of limited capacity and activation. We need it for a storage functions and a processing function. L2 working memory capacity is smaller that L1. To measure short-term memory (for storage), four memories and benchmarks are used: digit span recall tasks, word span tasks, non-word repetition span tasks, and sentence repetition tasks. Time passage, increasing confusion, and insufficient relevant knowledge, content, and serial position information are alternative conceptualizations in L1 memory researches. In reading span task in L1, subjects recall the last word and underlined words. In the L2 predictive validity of passive working memory measures was lower than that of active measures.
Attention has limited capacity, and is selective, voluntary, and controls access to consciousness. Incidental, implicit, and explicit in the L2 learning process and outcomes are considered. In terms of L2 learning without attention, detection (selective attention) makes it possible. However, Schmidt (1994, 2000) insisted that noticing (conscious attention) is need. Learning without intention is possible (L2 vocabulary learning while pleasure reading). Demonstrating that learning without awareness is not possible, because we can not figure out the zero awareness. In the lower-level associative learning, it is possible to learn without rules. However it does not lead to systematic rule knowledge. Both low-level associative learning and high-level learning can occur and interact.
Emergentism refers to a contemporary family of theories in cognitive science that have coalesced out if critical of information process. Emergentist family for explanations for L2 learning approaches tenets such as associative, probabilistic, rational, usage-based, grounded, and dynamic.
Reflection
If you are interested in vocabulary learning, this chapter would help you give background information to develop your research. I’m quite interested that incidental vocabulary learning is possible through pleasure reading. If this result can apply in my life, I do read every article without dictionary. I don’t know, but it’s worth studying.
In addition, it is not easy to understand the whole chapter as you read it once. To figure out an invisible mental process while learning, we need to know some unfamiliar terms. There is a tip. If you want to know each new term clearly, you read this chapter roughly first and then read carefully with examples. From my experience, I can approach the concept of cognition efficiently as I apply real life example and other instances which were provided in the chapter. But I think our own example is more helpful to set up the terms.
Discussion Questions
- What if L2 vocabulary learning is possible with no intention during reading, do you think pleasure reading is the best way to learn incidental vocabulary?
- If you think pleasure reading is the best way to learn incidental vocabulary, how can L2 reading textbook designers (or publishers, authors) maximize the pleasure of reading?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Thanks for the preview of Chapter 5 on Cognition, Rayoung. I know this is probably the most difficult chapter. I would really be grateful if there are any suggestions you may give me about concrete examples that may make the concepts more accessible to readers. And the same for other people in class. Help from any of you with knowing how to revise the chapter to make it a little bit easier to digest or a little bit more pleasant to read would be great.
What did you think of skill acquisition theory versus emergentism, do you have any gut feelings as to what approach seems more attractive to explain language learning?
Rayoung san,
Thank you so much for sharing such a detailed summary of the chapter and your useful reflection. While the cognition is always tough information for me, your pre-reading posting will help me understand the chapter better. I especially loved your “tip” for reading the chapter. It is a practical tip that our ESL/EFL learners should do when they read for the extensive reading. I will try to read this chapter with your tip :).
Pooh, definitely a very "cheem" (Hokkien/Taiwanese/Singlish for "deep", or "difficult") chapter! I spent more than twice the amount of time I'd planned to read it, and had to break it up into a few parts...the headache was splitting! Serious!
What I did was to read each section to get an overall idea, and then I mapped out the key ideas (sometimes in my own words). I thought this was rather slow and painful, although I also thought the annotations I'd made were pretty neat.
Next, I figured I was going to die/throw up (literally) before I could even reach the halfway mark (shows you there is only that much I can digest at any one time/sitting), so I decided to help myself to the back of the chapter and read the summary first! That was a great help, because it was so much easier to understand the main ideas/concepts stripped of most of the details. Now I could read much faster and process/retain more.
I think that's what I'll do if and when I come across a difficult piece again, start with the summary if there's any - but of course, you won't quite know if a piece is difficult until you've started reading it, and gained a headache. Bummer!
I'm off to finish the final installment - I hope to make it in one sitting/hour.
Panting...
But just before that - I don't find incidental vocab acquisition through reading for pleasure that novel. Another way I pick up vocab incidentally is to pay attention to what other people say/write, esp those I know have a comparable, if not greater, range of vocab as/than me.
I consciously choose to surround myself among these people. Alternatively, I read the dictionary for fun. I don't remember all the words I read/see at any one sitting, but I do get a lot of pleasure reading the dictionary and/or the encyclopedia (the latter beyond English vocab to technical jargon).
And of course, I do read on a fairly wide range of genres. Picking up the newspapers everyday helps me do that, all in one set of papers.
There you go, some tips for you!
Post a Comment