Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

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Box 9.1 Language in classroom L2 learning
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Teacher talk makes up around 70 per cent of classroom language.
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Language teaching classrooms are different from other classrooms because
language is not just the medium but also the content.
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Authentic speech may motivate and help communicative goals, if decoding
equates with codebreaking.
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Non-authentic speech may be specially tailored to students’ learning needs
if codebreaking is different from decoding.
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Teaching styles of interaction using IRF may interfere with ordinary commu-
nicative interaction.

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9.2 Language input and language learning
Language input and language learning 161
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How and why should language be simplified for use in the classroom?
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In what ways do you adapt your speech to children? To foreigners?
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When you were at school, did you think of your teachers as wise superior
beings or as helpful equals?
Focusing questions
baby talk, motherese, foreigner talk: forms of language specially designed for
listeners without full competence in a language
postfigurative: a culture in which people learn from older, wiser guardians of
knowledge
cofigurative: a culture in which people learn from their equals
prefigurative: a culture in which people learn from their juniors
Keywords
The language of the language teaching classroom is distinctive because its purpose
is to enable language learning to take place. All languages have special varieties for
talking to speakers who are believed not to speak very well. For example, ‘baby
talk’, or ‘motherese’, is used when talking to babies. These varieties have similar
characteristics in many languages: exaggerated changes of pitch, louder volume,
‘simpler’ grammar, special words such as those for ‘dog’: ‘bow-wow’ (English),
‘wan wan’ (Japanese) and ‘hawhaw’ (Moroccan Arabic).
Barbara Freed (1980) found that ‘foreigner talk’ addressed to non-native speak-
ers also had simple grammar and a high proportion of questions with ‘unmoved’
question words, for example ‘You will return to your country when?’ rather than
‘When will you return to your country?’ But the functions of language in for-
eigner talk were more directed at the exchange of information than at controlling
the person’s behaviour, as in baby talk. Most teachers rarely fall totally into this
style of speech. Nevertheless, experienced teachers use a distinct type of speech
and gesture when speaking to foreigners.
The fact that baby talk exists, however, does not prove that it has any effect 
on learning. In other words, baby talk and foreigner talk varieties of language
reflect what people believe less proficient speakers need – but their beliefs may be
wrong. Many child language researchers feel that acquiring the first language does
not depend on some special aspect of the language that the child hears. The
effects of baby talk on children’s first language development have so far been
impossible to prove. It may well be that its characteristics are beneficial, but this
is chiefly a matter of belief, given the many children who acquire the first lan-
guage despite far from optimal conditions. Some further aspects of input in lan-
guage learning are discussed in relation to the Universal Grammar (UG) model in
Chapter 12.

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