Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

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Box 12.2 Processing models
Key themes
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Language is processing at different levels.
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Learning involves practising to build up the proper weightings,
connections, and so on.
Teaching
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Uses exercises to build up appropriate strengths of response in students.
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The classroom should maximize practice by students.
12.3 The socio-educational model
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How crucial to success are the attitudes that the students bring to the 
classroom?
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What stereotype do you think your students have of the target culture?
Focusing questions

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Many would say that all the models described so far neglect the most important part
of language – its social aspect, Lang
4
. There are two versions of this. One is that L2
learning usually takes place in a social situation where people interact with each
other, whether in the classroom or outside. The second version is that L2 learning
takes place within a society and has a function within that society. This covers the
local and international goals of language teaching discussed in Chapter 11.
A complex view of L2 learning called the socio-educational model has been put
forward by Robert Gardner (1985, 2007) to explain how individual factors and gen-
eral features of society interact in L2 learning. Each of these factors is measured pre-
cisely through the research instrument he has developed called the AMTB
(Attitudes and Motivation Test Battery), part of which was presented in Chapter 8.
He has always seen the two main ingredients in the learners’ success as motiva-
tion and ability. Motivation consists of two chief factors: attitudes to the learning sit-
uation, that is, to the teacher and the course, and integrativeness, which is a complex
of factors about how the learner regards the culture reflected in the second lan-
guage. Put together with other factors, these elements yield the model seen in
Figure 12.1, which shows the process that leads to a successful or unsuccessful lan-
guage learning outcome.
The socio-educational model 223