Patsy M. Lightbown Quotes.

1. "some linguists have also concluded that, while the innatist perspective provides a plausible explanation for first language acquisition, something else is required for second language acquisition, since it so often falls short of full success. From the cognitive psychology perspective, however, first and second language acquisition are seen as drawing on the same processes of perception, memory, categorization, and generalization. The difference lies in the circumstances of learning as well as in what the learners already know about language and how that prior knowledge shapes their perception of the new language."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

2. "Learners who are successful may indeed be highly motivated. But can we conclude that they became successful because of their motivation? It is also plausible that early success heightened their motivation, or that both success and motivation are due to their special aptitude for language learning or the favourable context in which they were learning."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

3. "a study by Marie Guilloteaux and Zoltán Dörnyei (2008) who explored the links between teachers’ motivational practice and students’ motivation for L2 learning. It was a large-scale study with 27 teachers and over 1,300 learners in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Korea. The teachers’ motivational strategies were described using a classroom observation scheme—the Motivation Orientation of Language Teaching (MOLT). MOLT identified 25 motivational practices used by the teachers that were relatively easy to define and to observe."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

4. "teachers typically gave students no more than a second or two before they directed the question to another student or answered the question themselves. They also tended to repeat or paraphrase the question several times rather than silently wait for the student to formulate a response. Although such rapid question/answer patterns are typical of audiolingual classes, they also occur in communicative instruction. Finding a balance between placing too much pressure on students to respond quickly and creating awkward silences seems to be a real challenge. Research has shown that when teachers are trained to give their students more time to respond to questions, not only do students produce more responses but their responses are also longer and more complex. Not surprisingly, this effect has been observed to be stronger with open/referential questions compared with closed/display questions (Long et al. 1985). In classrooms with students at different age levels and in different kinds of instruction, finding the right balance can lead to students providing fuller answers, expanding their ideas, and more successfully processing the material to be learned. Study 10: Time for learning languages in school"
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

5. "The studies reviewed above provide evidence to support the intuitions of teachers and learners that instruction based on the ‘Get it right from the beginning’ proposal has important limitations. Learners receiving audiolingual or grammar-translation instruction are often unable to communicate their messages and intentions effectively in a second language. Experience has also shown that primarily or exclusively structure-based approaches to teaching do not guarantee that learners develop high levels of accuracy and linguistic knowledge. In fact, it is often very difficult to determine what students know about the target language. The classroom emphasis on accuracy often leads learners to feel inhibited and reluctant to take chances in using their knowledge for communication. The results from these studies provide evidence that learners benefit from opportunities for communicative practice in contexts where the emphasis is on understanding and expressing meaning."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

6. "Classroom research has confirmed that students can make a great deal of progress through exposure to comprehensible input without direct instruction. Studies have also shown, however, that students may reach a point from which they fail to make further progress on some features of the second language unless they also have access to guided instruction."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

7. "1a What language do you speak best? Do you speak more than one language equally well? 1b When did you begin to learn this language (these languages)? 2     Which second or foreign language(s) have you learned with the most success? 3     Which second or foreign language(s) have you learned with the least success? 4     For the languages you mentioned in response to questions 2 and 3, answer the following questions in the appropriate columns:   Languages learned successfully Languages not learned successfully How old were you when you first tried to learn the language?                                                             Did you have a choice about learning this language or were you required to learn it?                                                           Do you currently speak this language regularly?                                                           Do you regularly read this language for information or enjoyment?                                                           How much of your learning experience with this language was in a foreign language classroom?                                                           If you no longer use this language on a daily basis, can you estimate how many years you spent learning or using it?                                                           Estimate how many hours of classroom instruction you had for this language.                                                           How much time have you spent living in a place where the language is spoken?                                                           Have you used the language to learn other subjects at school? At what level (elementary, secondary, university)?                                                           Do you have personal or emotional attachments to this language? For example, do you have peers or family members who speak this language?                                                           Do/did you enjoy studying the grammar of this language?                                                           Do/did you enjoy studying vocabulary in this language?                                                           Are/were you a successful student in other school subjects? Do you think of yourself as a person who likes to socialize? Do you think of yourself as a person who learns a new language easily? Photocopiable © Oxford University Press Table 3.1 Individual differences in language learning experience"
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

8. "Like first language learners, second language learners do not learn language simply through imitation and practice. They produce sentences that are not exactly like those they have heard. These new sentences appear to be based on internal cognitive processes and prior knowledge that interact with the language they hear around them. Both first and second language acquisition are best described as developing systems with their own evolving rules and patterns, not simply as imperfect versions of the target language."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

9. "We are currently working on a new series of books for teachers, the Oxford Key Concepts for the Language Classroom."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned

10. "Robert DeKeyser (1998), Richard Schmidt (2001) and others have suggested that learners must pay attention at first to any aspect of the language that they are trying to learn or produce. ‘Pay attention’ in this context is accepted to mean ‘using cognitive resources to process information’ but there is a limit to how much information a learner can pay attention to. Thus, learners at the earliest stages will tend to use most of their resources to understand the main words in a message. In that situation, they may not notice the grammatical morphemes attached to some of the words, especially those that do not substantially affect meaning. Gradually, through experience and practice, information that was new becomes easier to process, and learners become able to access it quickly and even automatically. This frees up cognitive processing resources to notice other aspects of the language that, in turn, gradually become automatic."
- Patsy M. Lightbown, How Languages are Learned