Demystifying Cloistered Etcetera of SL Acquisition

Authors: Dr. Laxman Jogdand

Pages: 70-75

Abstract:

Among the myriad of espoused hypothetical convictions, none could withstand cropping importunity of instant access to English proficiency in India. Historical records with authentic certainty unveil the fact that all attempts embellished as methods, approaches, principles, techniques and so on proved to be experiments soon to be replaced by another of its kind. Psychological perspective initiated with the ‘school of experimental psychology’ founded by Wilhelm Wundt went on being rethought by multitude of psychologists and linguists to follow. English teachers have been being compelled into confusion in the concourse of seemingly conforming conceptual chaos effectuated by unending list of methodologies, otherwise entitled ‘theories’, ‘methods’, ‘approaches’, ‘techniques’, ‘strategies’, not to mention alternate innovative practices like ‘Community Language Learning’, ‘Collaborative Learning’, ‘Content Based Instruction’, ‘Task Based Language Teaching’, ‘Neurolinguistic Programming’ and so on. Interestingly enough, most of these claim to be the perfectly proportionate inquisitions about nature, structure and behavior of language on one hand and language acquisition on the other hand, despite having failed to achieve the desired outcomes. The present study meditates on the essentialities of understanding the nature of language and that of the language learning and learners psychology as dealt with by psychologists, linguists and ELT scholars so as to contemplate the possibilities of bifurcating conceptual confusions to the extent of neuropsychology to unveil the basic patterns of functioning of human brain and factors affecting it in relation to language learning projected against and/or as a corollary to language acquisition.