Language education - Wikipedia. Language education refers to the process and practice of acquiring a second or foreign language. It primarily is a branch of applied linguistics, however can be considered an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education: communicative competencies, proficiencies, cross- cultural experiences, and multiple literacies.[1]Increasing globalization has created a great need for people in the workforce who can communicate in multiple languages. Common languages are used in areas such as trade, tourism, international relations, technology, media, and science.
Many countries such as Korea (Kim Yeong- seo, 2. Japan (Kubota, 1. China (Kirkpatrick & Zhichang, 2. However, some countries such as India, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, and the Philippines use a second official language in their governments. According to GAO (2. China has recently been putting enormous importance on foreign language learning, especially the English language. History of foreign language education[edit]Ancient to medieval period[edit]The need to learn foreign languages is older than human history itself. For many centuries, Latin was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in much of Europe, but it was displaced for many purposes by French, Italian, and English by the end of the 1. John Amos Comenius was one of many people who tried to reverse this trend. He wrote a complete course for learning Latin, covering the entire school curriculum, culminating in his Opera Didactica Omnia, 1. In this work, Comenius also outlined his theory of language acquisition. He is one of the first theorists to write systematically about how languages are learned and about methods for teaching languages. He held that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience. Teaching must be oral. The schoolroom should have models of things, or else pictures of them. He published the world's first illustrated children's book, Orbis sensualium pictus. The study of Latin gradually diminished from the study of a living language to a mere subject in the school curriculum. Providing educators and students access to the highest quality practices and resources in reading and language arts instruction. ![]() This decline demanded a new justification for its study. It was then claimed that the study of Latin developed intellectual ability, and the study of Latin grammar became an end in and of itself."Grammar schools" from the 1. Classical Latin. Advanced students continued grammar study with the addition of rhetoric.[2]1. The study of modern languages did not become part of the curriculum of European schools until the 1. Based on the purely academic study of Latin, students of modern languages did much of the same exercises, studying grammatical rules and translating abstract sentences. Oral work was minimal, and students were instead required to memorize grammatical rules and apply these to decode written texts in the target language. This tradition- inspired method became known as the grammar- translation method.[2]1. Innovation in foreign language teaching began in the 1. It led to a number of different and sometimes conflicting methods, each claiming to be a major improvement over the previous or contemporary methods. The earliest applied linguists included Jean Manesca, Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff (1. Henry Sweet (1. 84. Otto Jespersen (1. Harold Palmer (1. They worked on setting language teaching principles and approaches based on linguistic and psychological theories, but they left many of the specific practical details for others to devise.[2]The history of foreign- language education in the 2. Very few students in U. S. universities who have a foreign language as a major attain "minimum professional proficiency". Even the "reading knowledge" required for a Ph. D degree is comparable only to what second- year language students read, and only very few researchers who are native English speakers can read and assess information written in languages other than English. Even a number of famous linguists are monolingual.[3]However, anecdotal evidence for successful second or foreign language learning is easy to find, leading to a discrepancy between these cases and the failure of most language programs. This tends to make the research of second language acquisition emotionally charged. Older methods and approaches such as the grammar translation method and the direct method are dismissed and even ridiculed, as newer methods and approaches are invented and promoted as the only and complete solution to the problem of the high failure rates of foreign language students. Most books on language teaching list the various methods that have been used in the past, often ending with the author's new method. These new methods are usually presented as coming only from the author's mind, as the authors generally give no credence to what was done before and do not explain how it relates to the new method. For example, descriptive linguists[who?] seem to claim unhesitatingly that there were no scientifically based language teaching methods before their work (which led to the audio- lingual method developed for the U. S. Army in World War II). However, there is significant evidence to the contrary. It is also often inferred or even stated that older methods were completely ineffective or have died out completely, though in reality even the oldest methods are still in use (e. Berlitz version of the direct method). Proponents of new methods have been so sure that their ideas are so new and so correct that they could not conceive that the older ones have enough validity to cause controversy. This was in turn caused by emphasis on new scientific advances, which has tended to blind researchers to precedents in older work.[3](p. 5)There have been two major branches in the field of language learning, the empirical and theoretical, and these have almost completely separate histories, with each gaining ground over the other at one time or another. Examples of researchers on the empiricist side are Jesperson, Palmer, and Leonard Bloomfield, who promote mimicry and memorization with pattern drills. These methods follow from the basic empiricist position that language acquisition results from habits formed by conditioning and drilling. In its most extreme form, language learning is seen as much the same as any other learning in any other species, human language being essentially the same as communication behaviors seen in other species. On the theoretical side are, for example, Francois Gouin, M. D. Berlitz, and Emile B. De Sauzé, whose rationalist theories of language acquisition dovetail with linguistic work done by Noam Chomsky and others. These have led to a wider variety of teaching methods, ranging from the grammar- translation method and Gouin's "series method" to the direct methods of Berlitz and De Sauzé. With these methods, students generate original and meaningful sentences to gain a functional knowledge of the rules of grammar. This follows from the rationalist position that man is born to think and that language use is a uniquely human trait impossible in other species. Given that human languages share many common traits, the idea is that humans share a universal grammar which is built into our brain structure. This allows us to create sentences that we have never heard before but that can still be immediately understood by anyone who understands the specific language being spoken. The rivalry between the two camps is intense, with little communication or cooperation between them.[3]2. Over time, language education has developed in schools and has become a part of the education curriculum around the world. In some countries, such as the United States, language education (also referred to as World Languages) has become a core subject along with main subjects such as English, Maths and Science.[4]In some countries, such as Australia, it is so common nowadays for a foreign language to be taught in schools that the subject of language education is referred to LOTE or Language Other Than English. In the majority of English- speaking education centers, French, Spanish and German are the most popular languages to study and learn. English As A Second Language is also available for students whose first language is not English and they are unable to speak it decently. Teaching foreign language in classrooms[edit]Language education may take place as a general school subject or in a specialized language school. There are many methods of teaching languages.
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