PERSPECTIVES ON SCHOOL RELATED LINGUISTIC AND LEARNING RESEARCH (SLTLR)
SLTLinvestigates the individual learning process of language students in the public school system. It identifies differences and similarities of common teaching and learning habits. Considered are the general education topics French and Spanish in high schools, primary schools and kindergartens with respect to their structure. The professional demand profiles of language lessons and subjectsin the light of the learning prerequisites are not considered, because they are a very complex research theme of their own (vs. European competence requirements).
The human learning of languages show several perspectives: one universal, namely the border to the closest relatives in the evolution, the monkey (brain development, habits), a population difference (e.g. male, female, sociocultural, -stylistic, age dependent) that also actualizes the question of talent of language learning, as well as an individual, namely the personal dynamic learning process (subjective theory) that separates her or him from other learners by endogenous and exogenous differences. It is tempting to consider a life perspective connected to the maturation of the brain: with increasing maturation of the brain the probably implicit learning manners of the childhood develop to more cognitive during youth. It emerges a psycho-cognitive development perspective that emphasizes behavior and thought styles in the treatment of verbal texts within a semiotic context.
The area of prerequisites of young students can be described as a development psychological “standard model” that was filtered from patholinguistic knowledge. It only roughly shows the neuronal network, since a detailed description with all its variations cannot be made. The foundations have been created; they will be preliminary presented in a final publication (approximately in 2017). Linguistic-textual skills influence the verbal intelligence through two aspects, namely talent and learning. The mental learning processes of the sexes between the extremes subtractive (vicious circle) and almost compensative bilinguality (virtous circle) depend on the different use and stress of hemispheric areas and mind. Knowledge about the neurobiological development imply that it is possible to employ the idea of a personal “brain sculpture”: it states that learning processes and contents have an influence on the neuronal embedding and network building. There are many variable factors. Among these mentioned are the memory, which consists of several factors, as well as temper and character with influence on behavior like self-confidence, self judgement, control preparedness, self-discipline, endurance and interaction withdifficulties. For this purpose the author has presented a functional model of “I functions” inspired by S. Freud that concerns the strengths and weaknesses of a person.
The socio-cultural area of prerequisites at home and at school also comprise demands from society and family (e.g. language maintenance, normalization, themes, texts) as well as an educational setting, which in Germany is influenced by federal educational politics and also by world opinions. Expectable standard demands depend on citizen and work virtues like attentiveness learning, thought learning and self-control. In their teaching plans the German Bundesländer include inter and intra subject demands. These demands are “normalized” with respect to the subsidiary principle of the European Union: institutional frameworks such as time schedules and number of educational hours per week are coordinated to obtain equivalency. They have to be considered critically, because they are organisatory created and impose on the national competence so that contents and quality stages cannot be regarded. Above this the OECD is interfering with its opinions.
To optimize the organization of foreign language learning in the future it is necessary to consider more educational hours and longer learn phases, roughly block phases or longer learn phases with repetitions in the actual land, because the central point of the reflections of the SLTL are the improvement possibilities of the production to benefit from knowledge under natural conditions. Furthermore the use of language und texts is connected to the public norm requirements. With respect to this goal the correction of errors in the learning process is a central benchmark since it has an influence on the entire performance spectrum.
The area of mediation comprises the analysis of the factors conditions at home, boundary conditions at school, performance of the pupils, the teaching and learning materials as well as self-reflection of the teachers about their work. These analyses are included in the so-called education plan that forms the foundation of the professional behavior. This functional way of regard must be separated from the extra work done by the pupils e.g. at home under supervision by themselves or their parents. The school itself makes recommendations to the parents and pupils about the learning process and its difficulties as well as life learning. Pre-school bilingual learning is something else as the one at school, since it has other framework conditions and is differently conducted.
The SLTLE is interdisciplinary because the student must be regarded as a whole person, not only as a cognitive function in the sense of artificial “intelligence”. The author has addressed this question elsewhere (see in germanSSLLF in Wikipedia).
Another imperative part of the professionality of students and teachers is the after-work with its conclusions from the educational procedure. There are educational, the behavior of the teacher with respect to reflections to problem solving quality as well as measures to keep the learned information in the memory (roughly: cyclic repetitions).
The students have biorythms. Their learning days often has a variety of subjects, so that – also to avoid monotony – area didactic emphasize and teaching phases (full day, weekly partition, block formation) have to be considered.
The subject specific methodology, here French and Spanish, among others deals with the divergences that exist between languages and, thus, make them more difficult to remember. When students in a L1 context, here Germany, learn a L2 that excludes the foreign language from their mother tongue knowledge, learning errors will occur. They differ from language to language. They affect the teaching order between the foreign languages in a school. The methodology also, previously under the name “integrated language and other subject education as civilization and literature”, nowadays increasingly named language and other subject education, nowadays with cultural differences (homeland knowledge, social subjects, natural science subjects and sports).
During the last forty years computers and internet increasingly changed the learning process in such a way that it is necessary to consider the advantages and disadvantages of this medium. What is the pedagogical benefit for the brain of a continuous use, what accomplish Ipads, Whiteboards, internet, learning platforms and so on more than conventional ways? Unfortunately this reflection goes short, since the governments have dictated this issue with their economical politics.
After establishing the general research goals by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (1983 for the first time) the author has laid the foundations for this integrative research field (Sketch in german2000, s. list of publications). In the scientific discussion the single areas are, roughly, apt for consensus.
The needs are evident: it will be necessary to liberate the SLTL from the ideological corset of the education politics since education/culture belong to the fundaments of society in the same way as health. Culture is no arbitrary subject of negotiation, but – if regarding the evolution – a dynamic possibility for optimization in times of peace. In the highly complex modern society the school has an increasingly responsible task to add important knowledge to future learning phases in the life of the pupils. What this knowledge is will most likely remain a topic of intense debate. Basically it seems uncontroversial what a good school is, namely a school that is able to prepare its pupils for their future in a solid way. Solid knowledge of foreign languages increase the mobility and facilitates understanding of the historically developed national differences. The use of a language, mother tongue or foreign, is not a habitus but part of person and personality with in a common-language community. To achieve real contact with people in another country rather than superficial mini-contacts it is imperative to stress oral and written production competence to a level that makes studies in the foreign country possible. In the meantime this traditional goal has been given up in the high school.
The treatment of subjects (themes) – a highly controversial education theory problem between pragmatics (especially use in economics), culture (esthetics) and values – is an above the area specific text formation capability lying but closely related problematics that creates didactics and methods of its own (transversal subjects from civilization history, and literature, core pool, modules).
The author concentrates on development specific subjects regarding the personalization of the pupils, with the view that the interest of the learners increases when the topic of learning is of importance to them.
The development of a pool of different texts that has been sketched in the German education didactics since the 1960:ies, however, remains a controversial task for the future.