The Active Construction of a Grammar Theory & The Innateness Hypothesis in relation to FLA.

QUESTION: 

How does each of the following theories account for the process of first language acquisition?: a) The Active Construction of a Grammar Theory, b) The Innateness Hypothesis.

ANSWER:

a) The Active Construction of a Grammar Theory focuses on explaining FLA from the perspective of being, as human species, programmed to acquire and construct the linguistic features related to language. It also explains why we cannot come up with higher form structures before simpler and more basic constructions have been mastered.

b) The Innateness Hypothesis as exposed by Lenneberg claims that, as walking, developing our capacity to speak when children is innate to human beings -genetically if you wish- and as such (a naturally expected behavior)  it is expected to occur when children feel ready to do so.

Dead Poets Society - Favourite Scene

Talking about effective teaching, I'd like to share with you one of my favorite scenes from the 'Dead Poets Society' film (1989). On this scene we can see how Professor Keating (Robin Williams), an English Literature teacher, manages himself to teach one of, from most of students' perspective,the most boring contents in the syllabus: poetry and Shakespeare altogether. The trick seems to be spontaneous, adding a lot of humor to the lesson, making students participate actively, and, of course, proposing a task worthy of a lesson like this. Hope you can enjoy it as much as I did... and start looking at things in a different way.

Effective Teaching Implications

According to Alton-Lee’s ten point model for effective teaching (2003) and Gurney’s five key factors (2007), the most reiterative concepts related to effective teaching are enthusiastic teachers, learning encouragement, inclusive learning environments, promotion of metacognitive strategies and thoughtful student discourse and engaging constructively in goal-oriented assessment.
From the perspective of effective language teachers, Allen (1980) states that a love of the English language, critical faculty, the persistent urge to upgrade oneself, and the professional citizenship are concepts that call the attention of ELT professionals.
Then Brown (2000) groups good language teaching characteristics into four groups (technical knowledge, pedagogical skills, interpersonal skills and personal qualities) that present a number of characteristics to be acquainted with as teachers of English.
All the above gives a good deal of responsibility towards teaching. Rephrasing Reynolds and Yates, it is surprising that most of these components of effective teaching are not given much prominence in the professional training of teachers nowadays. These aspects involving effective teaching seem to be totally ignored by university departments of education teaching beginning teachers (Westwood, 2008). Now, how can educational programs at universities prepare ‘warm, concerned and flexible’ (Wilen et al., 2008) effective teachers? Qualities that are empathetic and human in nature and which the students themselves comment about teachers.
Related to students’ learning, effective teaching should include five areas in which skilled teachers display their expertise: presenting and explaining subject matter and ideas, questioning students during lesson time, giving feedback, strategy training and adapting or differentiating instruction, being this last one a very interesting area to discuss.
Adaptive instruction is defined as instruction geared to the characteristics and needs of individual students (differentiation). The teacher that ‘differentiates’ varies the method as necessary during the lesson, from teacher-directed to student-centered, according to students’ abilities and needs. She/he also monitors the work of some students more closely than others, accepts different quantities and qualities of bookwork, encourages peer assistance and selects or creates alternative resource materials.
Being realistic, this would be very difficult to implement and sustain over time. The pressure and extra work for the teacher to attempt this can be unbearable. However, teachers are required to recognize and respond ‘as far as it feasible’ to different aptitudes and learning needs in any group of students (Westwood, 2008) if effective teaching is expected to occur.