LANGUAGE - II (ENGLISH)

 LANGUAGE 2: ENGLISH

Development of four skills: Language learning is an active process that begins at birth and continues throughout life.  Students learn the language as they use it to communicate their thoughts,  feelings, and experiences,  establish relationships with family members and friends,  and strive to make sense and order of their world.  

According  to  HA  Gleason, “Language  is  one  of  the  most  important  and  characteristics forms  of  human  behaviour.”  Human behaviour is best to exhibit through one‘s native language.  It‘s, therefore, easier to learn or gaining mastery over one‘s native language. Learning a foreign language is a difficult task and controversial one.

LSRW (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and  Writing): LSRW, way of  Learning abilities are  Listening,  Speaking,  Reading,  and  Writing.  With regards to acquiring the  Learning abilities,  LSRW  way of  Learning skills are regularly gained by listening first followed by speaking,  reading and writing.  Hence, these abilities are frequently called the LSRW way of Learning.

Teaching in this manner,  will guarantee focus around all these four abilities and provides a  stage for the students to sharpen their capability to Learn more effectively.

Listening: A  perfect curriculum for learning would include content for all the previously mentioned four abilities.  However,  it is seen that most of the time the reading and writing skills are given more significance over the previous two abilities. In reality,  in the process of learning,  listening and speaking should take precedence over reading and writing.  The advantages of normally learning any subject/topic can be upgraded incredibly when the  LSRW  method is practised in the same sequence as listed. Listening is the primary learning skill.  It is what is known as a  responsive ability,  or a latent skill,  as it expects us to utilize our ears and our minds to understand;  as it is being told or addressed to us. It is the first of two normal learning skills. Listening is the capacity to precisely acquire and translate significance in the communication process. Listening is critical to very essential and the most useful and powerful skill needed for effectively understanding and correlating the essentials and fundamentals.  Without the ability to listen adequately, the understanding is essentially mistaken.  Subsequently, correlation separates out and the understanding wades out without much of a  stretch and the learner gets baffled. 

Speaking: Speaking is the communication medium of learning orally. To talk, we make sounds utilizing numerous pieces of our body, including the lungs, vocal tract, vocal lines, tongue, teeth and lips. Speaking is the second of the four learning skills. Speaking is normally the second expertise that we learn. Speaking or talking means to communicate, or expressing one‘s thoughts and feelings in a spoken language. In primary schools, elocution and recitation are the main sources to master phonetics, the sounds, the rhythm, and to an extent the intonation, modulation and variation in the way to be effective in conveying ideas and information. 

Reading: One of the primary things you find out about reading is that there are diverse reading strategies and the students ought to know about which procedure is most fit,  as required for the reading effort required by the content or by their educator/teacher. Preparing the students to know their reading methods and derive when best to apply them is, in reality, significant,  particularly under test conditions when opportunity limitations become possibly the most important factor and choices should be made relying upon time accessibility and the significance of the outcome that needs to be achieved. The four fundamental  kinds of  reading practices are as under:

1. Skimming:  Skimming is reading rapidly in order to get a  general overview of the material.

2. Scanning:  Scanning is reading rapidly in order to find specific facts.

3. Intensive:  The  meaning  of  intensive  reading  is  to  read  with  full  concentration and complete focus

4. Extensive:  Extensive reading involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general reading skills. 

Writing: Writing is the fourth language expertise we may gain in our learning. Similarly, as with speaking, it is gainful or dynamic expertise, as it expects us to utilize our hands and our minds to deliver the composed message, idea, thought or information that we would have spoken otherwise. Writing abilities might be improved by giving activities on a piece and exploratory writing. Students ought to be taught and urged to compose, arrange and organize their thoughts on a given subject or topic. The significance of sequencing their idea thought process ought to appear so as to acquire cohesiveness, completeness and accurateness in their writing.  

Element of Language: Language is the ability to produce and comprehend spoken and written words; linguistics is the study of language.

• Grammar is a set of rules for generating logical communication. All languages have grammar, and native speakers of a language have internalized the rules of that language‘s grammar.
• Every language has a lexicon or the sum total of all the words in that language.
• Phonetics and phonemics are the studies of individual units of sound in languages.
• Morphology is the study of words and other meaningful units of language.
• The syntax is the study of sentences and phrases, and the rules of grammar that sentences obey.
• Semantics is the study of sentence meaning; pragmatics is the study of sentence meaning in context.
• Lexicon: The sum total of all words in a language.

Language is the ability to produce and comprehend both spoken and written (and in the case of sign language, sign) words. Understanding how language works means reaching across many branches of psychology—everything from basic neurological functioning to high-level cognitive processing. Language shapes our social interactions and brings order to our lives. Complex language is one of the defining factors that makes us human. Two of the concepts that make the language unique are grammar and lexicon. 

 Grammar: Because all language obeys a set of combinatory rules, we can communicate an infinite number of concepts. While every language has a different set of rules, all languages do obey rules. These rules are known as grammar. Speakers of a language have internalized the rules and exceptions for that language‘s grammar. There are rules for every level of language—word formation (for example, native speakers of English have internalized the general rule that -ed is the ending for past-tense verbs, so even when they encounter a brand-new verb, they automatically know how to put it into past tense); phrase formation (for example, knowing that when you use the verb ―buy, it needs a subject and an object (She buys is wrong, but ―She buys a gift is okay); and sentence formation. 

Lexicon: Every language has its rules, which act as a framework for meaningful communication. But what do people fill that framework up with? The answer is, of course, words. Every human language has a lexicon—the sum total of all of the words in that language.  By using grammatical rules to combine words into logical sentences, humans can convey an infinite number of concepts. 

Introduction to Linguistics: Language is such a special topic that there is an entire field, linguistics, devoted to its study. Linguistics views language in an objective way,  using the scientific method and rigorous research to form theories about how humans acquire, use, and sometimes abuse language. There are a few major branches of linguistics,  which it is useful to understand in order to learn about language from a psychological perspective. 

Phonetics and Phonology: Phonetics is the study of individual speech sounds;  phonology is the study of phonemes,  which are the speech sounds of an individual language.  These two heavily overlapping subfields cover all the sounds that humans can make,  as well as which sounds make up different languages.  A  phonologist could answer the question,  ―Why do BAT and TAB  have different meanings even though they are made of the same three sounds,  A, B and T?

Morphology: Morphology is the study of words and other meaningful units of languages like suffixes and prefixes. A morphologist would be interested in the relationship between words like ― dog and ― dogs or ― walk and ― walking, and how people figure out the differences between those words. 

Syntax: Syntax is the study of sentences and phrases, or how people put words into the right order so that they can communicate meaningfully. All languages have underlying rules of syntax, which, along with morphological rules, make up every language‘s grammar. An example of syntax coming into play in the language is ― Eugene walked the dog versus ― The dog walked Eugene. The order of words is not arbitrary — in order for the sentence to convey the intended meaning, the words must be in a certain order. 

Semantics and Pragmatics: Semantics, most generally, is about the meaning of sentences. Someone who studies semantics is interested in words and what real-world object or concept those words denote,  or point to. Pragmatics is an even broader field that studies how the context of a sentence contributes to meaning — for example, someone shouting  ― Fire! has a very different meaning if they are in charge of a  seven-gun salute than it does if they are sitting in a crowded movie theatre. 

The Structure of  Language:  All languages have underlying structural rules that make meaningful communication possible.

• The five main components of language are phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, syntax, and context. Along with grammar, semantics, and pragmatics, these components work together to create meaningful communication among individuals.
• A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that may cause a change of meaning within a language but that doesn‘t have meaning by itself.
• A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that provides a specific meaning to a string of letters (which is called a phoneme). There are two main types of morpheme: free morphemes and bound morphemes.
• A lexeme is the set of all the inflected forms of a single word. 
• The syntax is the set of rules by which a person constructs full sentences.
• Context is how everything within language works together to convey a particular meaning.  

Every language is different. In English, an adjective comes before a noun (red house), whereas in Spanish, the adjective comes after (casa house, roja red). In German, you can put noun after noun together to form giant compound words; in Chinese, the pitch of your voice determines the meaning of your words; in American Sign Language, you can convey full, grammatical sentences with tense and aspect by moving your hands and face. But all languages have structural underpinnings that make them logical for the people who speak and understand them.  Five major components of the structure of language are phonemes, morphemes, lexemes, syntax, and context. These pieces all work together to create meaningful communication among individuals.  

Phonemes: A phoneme is the basic unit of phonology. It is the smallest unit of sound that may cause a change of meaning within a language, but that doesn‘t have meaning by itself. For example, in the words ‘bake’ and ‘brake’, only one phoneme has been altered, but a change in meaning has been triggered. The phoneme /r/ has no meaning on its own, but by appearing in the word it has completely changed the word’s meaning!  Phonemes correspond to the sounds of the alphabet, although there is not always a one-to-one relationship between a letter and a phoneme (the sound made when you say the word). For example, the word ‘dog’ has three phonemes: /d/, /o/, and / g /. However, the word ‘shape’, despite having five letters, has only three phonemes: /sh/, /long-a/, and /p/. The English language has approximately 45 different phonemes, which correspond to letters or combinations of letters. Through the process of segmentation, a phoneme can have a particular pronunciation in one word and a slightly different pronunciation in another.  

Morphemes: Morphemes, the basic unit of morphology, are the smallest meaningful unit of language. Thus, a morpheme is a series of phonemes that has a special meaning. If a morpheme is altered in any way,  the entire meaning of the word can be changed. Some morphemes are individual words (such as ‘eat’ or ‘water’).  These are known as free morphemes  because they can exist on their own.  Other  morphemes  are  prefixes, suffixes,  or  other  linguistic  pieces  that  aren’t  full  words  on  their  own  but  do  affect meaning  (such  as    the ‘s’  at  the  end  of ‘cats’  or  the ‘re’ at  the  beginning  of ‘redo’.) Because these morphemes must be attached to another word to have meaning,  they are called bound morphemes. 

Within the category of bound morphemes, there are two additional subtypes: derivational and inflectional. Derivational morphemes change the meaning or part of the speech of a word when they are used together. For example, the word ‘sad’ changes from an adjective to a noun when ‘ness’ (sadness) is added to it. ‘Action’ changes in meaning when the morpheme ‘re’ is added to it,  creating the word ‘reaction’. Inflectional morphemes modify either the tense of a  verb or the number value of a noun;  for example when you add an ‘s’ to ‘cat’, the number of cats changes from one to more than one. 

Lexemes: Lexemes are the set of inflected forms taken by a single word.  For example, members of the lexeme RUN include ‘run’ (the uninflected form), ‘running’  (inflected form), and ‘ran’.  This lexeme excludes ‘runner’  (a derived term — it has a derivational morpheme attached). 

Syntax: Syntax is a set of rules for constructing full sentences out of words and phrases. Every language has a different set of syntactic rules, but all languages have some form of syntax. In English, the smallest form of a sentence is a noun phrase (which might just be a noun or a pronoun) and a verb phrase (which may be a single verb). Adjectives and adverbs can be added to the sentence to provide further meaning.  Word order matters in  English,  although in some languages, the order is of less importance.  For example, the English sentences ‘The baby ate the carrot’ and ‘The carrot ate the baby’ do not mean the same thing, even though they contain the exact same words.  

Context: Context is how everything within language works together to convey a particular meaning. Context includes tone of voice, body language, and the words being used. Depending on how a person says something, holds his or her body or emphasizes certain points of a sentence, a variety of different messages can be conveyed. For example,  the word  ‘awesome’,  when said with a  big smile,  means the person is excited about a situation. ‘Awesome’, said with crossed arms, rolled eyes, and a sarcastic tone means the person is not thrilled with the situation. 

Main Characteristics of language:

1. Language is verbal, vocal: Language is an organization of sounds, of vocal symbols – the sounds produced from the mouth with the help of various organs of speech to convey some meaningful message.  It also means that speech is primary to writing. There are several languages because they are spoken. Music and singing also employ vocal sounds, but they are not languages. Language is systematic verbal symbolism; it makes use of verbal elements such as sound,  words and phrases,  which are arranged in certain ways to make sentences. Language is vocal in as much as it is made up of sounds that can be produced by the organs of speech. 

2. Language is a means of communication: Language is the most powerful, convenient and permanent means and form of communication. Non-linguistics symbols such  as expressive gestures signals of various kinds, traffic lights, road-signs, flags, emblems and many more such things as well as shorthand, mores and other codes, the deaf and dumb and braille alphabets, the symbols of mathematics and logic, etc. are also means of communication, yet they are not so flexible, comprehensive, perfect and extensive as language is. Language is the best means of self-expression. It is through the language that humans express their thoughts,  desires,  emotions and feelings;  it is through it that they store knowledge, transmit messages,  knowledge and experience from one person to another,  from one generation to another.  

3. Language is a social phenomenon:  It is through it that humans interact. It is language again that yokes the present, the past and the future together. Language is a set of conventional communicative signals used by humans for communication in a community. Language in this sense is a possession of a social group, comprising an indispensable set of rules which permits its members to relate to each other; it is a social institution. Language exists in society;  it is a means of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations. It is a member of society that a human being acquires a language. We learn not born with an instinct to learn a particular language –  English, Hindi, Russian, Bangla, Chinese, Tamil, or French. We learn a  language as members of the society using that language, or because we want to understand that society or,  to be understood by that speech community.  If a language is not used in any society it dies out. A language is thus a social event. It can be described only if we know all about the people who are involved in it,  their personalities,  their beliefs,  attitudes,  knowledge of the world,  relationship to each other,  their social status,  what activity they are engaged in what they are talking about,  what has gone before linguistically and non-linguistically, what happens after, what they are and host of other facts about them and the situation they are placed in. 

4. Language is arbitrary: By the arbitrariness of language, we mean that there is no inherent or logical relation or similarity between any given feature of language and its meaning. That is entirely arbitrary, that there is no direct, necessary connection between the nature of things or ideas the language deals with, and the linguistics units are combinations by which these things or ideas are expressed. There is no reason why the four-legged domestic animal should be called Dog in  English, Kutta in Hindi, Kukkur in Sanskrit, Kutta in Telugu, Kukur in Bangla, Chien in French, Hund in German, Kalb in Arabic and so on. That those particular words that imitate the sounds of their referents, for example - buzz, hiss, hum, bang in English and Kal-Kal in Hindi, may seem to invalidate this statement, but such words are comparatively few in different languages,  and the accuracy of the limitation depends on the sounds available in the language. Furthermore, these are a variation in different languages of the world and have no uniformity. 

5. Language is non-instinctive, conventional: No language was created in a day out of a mutually agreed-upon formula by a group of humans. Language is the outcome of evolution and convention. Each generation transmits this convention on to the next, Like all human institutions languages also change and die, grow and expand.  Every language then is a conventional community, It is non-instinctive because it is acquired by human beings.  Nobody gets a  language an innate ability to acquire language. Animals inherit their system of communication by heredity, humans do not. 

6. Language is symbolic: The symbolism of language is a  necessary consequence of the feature of arbitrariness discussed above.  A  symbol stands for something else;  it is something that serves as a substitute.  Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols.  For concepts, things ideas, objects etc., we have sounds and words as symbols.  The language uses words essentially as symbols and not as signs  (e.g in  Maths)  for the concepts represented by them. 

7. Language is systematic: Although the language is symbolic,  yet its symbols are arranged in a  particular system. All languages have their system of arrangements.  Though symbols in each human language are finite,  they can be arranged infinity;  that is to say,  we can produce an infinite set of sentences by a finite set of symbols. Every language is a system of systems. All languages have a phonological and grammatical system.  We have morphological and syntactic systems,  and within these two sub-systems,  we have several other systems such as those of plural,  of mood,  of aspect, of tense,  etc. By ― systematic we also mean the following: 

The speakers of language use only certain combinations.  Thus although the sounds  ‘b’  and  ‘z’  occur in  English.  There is no word in English that begins with ‘bz’.  Similarly,  we can say that  ‘the beautiful girl chased the brown dog’  is a  sentence in English,  but  ‘the edfulauti girl chased the brown dog’  is not.  Thus we conclude that all languages,  though linear in their visual manifestation,  have a  dual system of sound and meaning.  In other words,  Language is the systematic composition or arrangement of linguistic which correlate words and meaning.  Each language,  therefore,  can be described as a  special system,  suitable for conveying the message within its own framework of structure and meaning and having very little direct physical relation to the meanings or acts which it involves.  It should also be remembered that language is meaningful. 

8. Language is unique, creative, complex and modifiable: Language is a unique phenomenon of the earth. Other planets do not seem to have any language, although this fact may be invalidated if we happen to discover a talking generation on any other planet. But so far there is no evidence of the presence of language on the moon. Each language is unique in its own sense. By this, we do not mean that language do not have any similarities or universals. Despite their common features and language universals,  each language has its peculiarities and distinct features. 

9. Language is human and structurally complex: Language has creativity and productivity. The structural elements of human language can be combined to produce new utterances, which neither the speaker nor his hearers may ever have made or heard before any listener, yet which both sides understand without difficulty, language changes according to the needs of society. Old English is different from modern English. No species other than humans have been endowed with language. Animals cannot acquire human language because of its complex structure and its physical inadequacies.  Animals do not have the type of brain which the human beings possess and their articulatory organs are also very much different from those of human beings. Furthermore,  any system of animals communication does not make use of the quality of features,  that is,  of concurrent systems of sound and meaning.  Human language is open-ended, extendable and modifiable whereas animal language is not. 

The preliminary concept of language functions: The preliminary concept of language functions is the understanding of a language.

• A language function refers to the active use of language for various purposes. It also explains why something is said or written.   
• The preliminary concept of language functions is the understanding of a language. This is done through the identification of the basic words that constitute the language.  Then the syntax of the words used in sentences is to be learnt.  
• Grammatical knowledge is a must as it helps in the usage of sentences in various forms.

Learning and Acquisition: Learning is an active process of appropriation  (making one's own)  of knowledge, abilities and skills in order to enhance the personal or collective control potential (competence)  of shaping reality in a given context or situation.

Stages of Learning: There are 5 stages of learning or levels of learning:

• Unconscious incompetence.
• Conscious incompetence.
• Conscious competence.
• Unconscious competence.
• Conscious unconscious competence. 

As a learner moves through the 5 stages, they develop increasing levels of competence and skill. The 5 Stages of Learning:

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence: This stage is a state of ignorance. Unconscious incompetence is the stage of learning where the learner knows nothing. They are both incompetent and do not know that they are incompetent at the topic. This is because the learners don’t know what they don’t know.  We might also call Examples:

1. Students just starting school who don’t realize the importance of schooling. They say ― why do we have to learn this useless stuff?

2. Consumers who are currently unaware that they need a product. Marketing departments have to find a way to educate consumers about why they need something before they will purchase it.

Emotions at this Stage: At this stage, the learner may feel:

• Frustrated that they need to learn the topic.
• Confused about the relevance of the topic to them.

Role of the Educator: In stage 1, the role of the educator is to help the student learn why the topic is worth studying. It is a good idea to spark interest and motivation to learn at this stage. 

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence: At the conscious incompetence stage, the learner becomes aware of their own inabilities. This can be a motivating stage because the learner knows that there’s something they need to learn and they want to go about learning it. However, the learner may also go through some frustration at this stage because they are trying to achieve a skill or level of knowledge that they cannot yet reach. The learner is aware of their own inadequacy. Example - A student who seeks out a coach or trainer because they know that they have a lot to learn, and cannot learn it alone.

Emotions at this Stage:

• Frustration at their incompetence at a task they’d like to learn.
• Motivation to learn.
• Unsure about how to go about learning the topic.

Role of the Educator: In stage 2, the educator works hard to help the learner develop their skills. They will provide a great deal of support and modelling to help the student until they can achieve a point where they can do the task on their own. Teaching strategies like guided practice,  direct instruction and modelling can help learners progress. 

Stage 3: Conscious Competence: When the students are at the conscious competence stage, they are able to do a task on their own and without teachers’ support. However, they still need to focus very hard on the task to minimize mistakes. The abilities are not yet habitual or built into their reflexive memory. Examples:  

• A learner driver, who knows the theory behind driving and has a few hours under their belt. They still have some trouble changing gears and need to repeat under their breath the steps they need to follow when starting or turning off a car.

Emotions  at this  Stage: 

• Hopefulness as the student starts seeing results.
• Determination to get over the last few hurdles.
• Awkwardness (at times) when needing to pause and think before progressing.

Role of the Educator: Ample practice and experience are necessary for reaching the upper stages of learning. As Malcolm Gladwell argues in Outliers, expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice! 

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence: By the time someone reaches unconscious competence, they are able to carry out a task without much effort. They have enough experience with it that it becomes second nature. We might say that they have reached mastery. When people are unconsciously competent, we often refer to them as entering a flow state. The state of flow, as explained by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1975, involves the hyper-focus of someone who is in the zone and going about their tasks without pausing to think. The unconsciousness’ of the learner’s skill at this level is often also called tacit knowledge. People with tacit knowledge often can’t explain how they do things:  they can just do it! Examples:

1.  Master musicians, playing elegant and flowing music.

2. An expert video game player who is expertly navigating around their gaming microworld.

3. A person who has been a practitioner for 20 years and can do tasks, but perhaps cannot explain how they can do them.

Role of the  Educator: At this stage, the educator is completely removed from the situation because the student has reached mastery. 

Stage 5: Conscious Unconscious Competence: The fifth stage has been added in recent years by educational psychologists. It is a stage that involves the ability to reflect upon the task and start dissecting how to educate others on how to complete the task. This is the educator‘s stage. This stage requires a return to consciousness of how they do a task. However, it is not consciousness based on uncertainty or lack of habit (such as in Stage 3). Instead, it is a stage in which the practitioner can critically reflect on how they do things so well, and unpick their strategies to teach them to others. Examples:

1.  A practitioner who takes up a professorship at a university to begin teaching their skill to others.

2.  A retired sportsperson who becomes a coach to future generations.

Role of the Educator: At this stage, the student becomes the teacher. Their job is to break down their skill into explainable chunks to educate others. 

The first stage of learning is acquisition. During this stage, a person learns a new task.

The second stage is fluency /proficiency. During this stage, the person learns to perform new tasks to a degree of accuracy. 

The third stage is maintenance. In this stage, the person is able to perform the task independently even after teaching has ended.

The fourth stage is a generalisation. In this stage, the learner is able to perform the task in situations other than the ones in which he had to learn it. 

The last & the fifth stage is adaption. During this stage, the learner applies a previously learnt skill to a new application without direction or instruction. 

The process of learning is influenced by a variety of personal factors. Thorough knowledge of these factors will prove very helpful for teachers and parents in understanding and guiding their children’s learning. Some of the personal factors that influence the learning process can be classified as under: 

sensation and perception, fatigue and boredom, maturation, emotional condition, needs, interests, motivation, attention, intelligence,  aptitude, attitude, etc.

Affecting Learning:

Sensation and Perception: Apart from the general health of the students, sensation and perception are the psychological factors that help in learning.  The sensation is at the core of perception. There are five sense organs i.e., skin, ears, tongue, eyes and nose. These sense organs are the gateways of knowledge and help in the perception of various stimuli in the environment. Any defect in any of the sense organs will affect learning and hence the acquisition of knowledge.   

Fatigue and Boredom: The difference between the two is that fatigue is mental or physical tiredness which decreases efficiency and competency to work. Boredom, on the other hand. is a lack of desire or an aversion to work.  Such an aversion makes one feel fatigued without being actually fatigued. Studying seldom causes fatigue. It is mainly boredom which, besides causing the impression of fatigue, decreases student efficiency in learning.

Age and Maturation: Leaning is directly dependent upon age and maturation. No learning can take place unless an individual is matured enough to learn. Some children can learn better at an earlier age while others take more time to learn the same content. 

Emotional Conditions: Desirable emotional conditions enhance the quality and speed of learning. Happiness, joy and satisfaction are always favourable for any type of learning. Adverse emotional conditions, on the other hand, hinder learning. Many studies have established the fact that emotional strain, stress, tensions, disturbances, etc., are extremely inimical to scholastic pursuits. 

Needs: A need is the lack of something which, if provided, would facilitate the child’s usual behaviour. The lack of something is experienced by the child. The child then tries to perform that activity which culminates in the satisfaction of the need. Thus, the needs are associated with goals. Among human beings, the needs are relatively permanent tendencies that seek satisfaction in achieving certain specific goals. When these goals are achieved, the particular need is satisfied or met for the time being, but it recurs sooner or later and energises further activity. 

Interests: Various types of interests of the students can be exploited to facilitate their learning. The interests during early infancy are mostly limited and short-lived. As the child grows older his interests diversify and stabilize. You, a school teacher, should have a thorough knowledge of children’s interests. You can eliminate much drudgery, monotony and boredom from the school work if you make your instruction lively and stimulating and arouse student interest in it. Once the students’  interest is aroused in an activity you should expend more effort on it. No learning can be achieved without the proper expenditure of effort on it. 

Motivation:  Motivation is the heart of the learning process. It generates the will in an individual to do something. Adequate motivation not only engages the student in an activity that results in learning but also sustains and directs learning.  Two types of motivation are commonly recognised. These are intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Intrinsic motivation arises when the resolution of tension is to be found in mastering the learning task itself: the material learned provides its own reward. For example, the student who studies the construction of model aeroplanes diligently so that he can make a model is experiencing a kind of intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation occurs when a student pursues a learning task, but for reasons which are external. If a student engages in the construction of model aeroplanes because he thinks it will please his father, who is an ex-pilot rather than because of intrinsic motivation.   

Intelligence: Intelligence as expressed by an I.Q. score on an intelligence test is positively related to learning. Generally, students with higher I.Q.  learn rapidly.  However, higher I.Q. in itself is no guarantee for rapid learning, since other factors such as needs.  Interest, motivation. etc., of the students and the methods used for learning, are also important. 

Aptitude: A student who possesses an appropriate aptitude for a particular subject of study or skill will learn better and retain it for a longer time. On the other hand, he will require a relatively long time to study a subject for which he lacks natural aptitude. He is liable to forget it soon besides feeling bored and unhappy all the time while learning it.  Hence it is extremely desirable to analyse the aptitude of students before prescribed courses of study for them. 

Attitude: The learning process is also influenced considerably by the attitude of the student. If he is alert, attentive and interested in the material to be learnt he is bound to have an attitude towards it.

Environmental Factors Influencing Learning: Environmental influences begin from the time of conception or the child in the womb or the mother. Mother‘s mental, physical and emotional conditions influence the development of the foetus in the womb. The external environment starts from the time of birth of the child. External environment refers to the surroundings which prevail in home, school and locality.  At these places, the child interacts with members of the family, teachers, classmates or peers and neighbours and establishes relationships with them. The relationship with the members of the society, and the surroundings may affect the development of the child and also the way he learns. Some of the environmental factors are discussed as follows:

Surroundings (Natural, Social and Cultural): As the title of the sub-section indicates, we shall discuss here the natural, social and cultural environment the child interacts with and get influenced. Natural surrounding covers the climatic and atmospheric condition. These conditions affect learning directly. It has been found that high temperature and humidity reduces mental efficiency. For a limited time, humidity and high temperature can be tolerated but prolonged humidity and high temperature become unbearable and decrease mental efficiency. Social surrounding includes especially the environment of home, school and locality physical conditions at home such as large family, small family, insufficient ventilation, improper lighting, uncomfortable temperature, noisy home environment due to use of radio, TV, etc. noisy neighbourhood, constant visits by friends or relatives, etc., influence the intellectual learning of the student. Cultural demands and social expectations also influence learning. The spirit of culture is reflected in its social and educational institutions. Children’s learning, therefore, is greatly determined by the demands and expectations of their culture. 

Relationship with Teachers, Parents and Peers: The teacher is an important constituent in the instructional process. She/he plays an important role in shaping the behaviour of students. The way he teaches and manages the students has an effect on their learning.  Relationship with parents plays a vital role in the learning process of the student. If the child-parents relationship is based on mutual respect and faith, it can provide the child a congenial atmosphere which in turn can facilitate his/her learning. A distorted and unhealthy environment, on the other hand, adversely affects the learning of the student.  A healthy peer group relationship also plays an important role in Learning, Students’ relationships in the classroom, school, society, etc., create a particular type of emotional climate. The climate solely depends upon their relationships. A sound relationship provides a tension-free environment for the student to learn more and to compete in the class. If the relationship among peers is not good, it adversely affects their learning.

Media Influence on Learning: Media has been considered an important component of transmitting the information. Media can be divided into two broad categories – print and non-print media. Print media refers to texts or printed materials. It is economical and has traditionally been used for pedagogical purposes.

Concept of Acquisition: Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are relativization, complementation and coordination. 

There are two main guiding principles in first-language acquisition: speech perception always precedes speech production, and the gradually evolving system by which a child learns a language is built up one step at a time, beginning with the distinction between individual phonemes. Linguists who are interested in child language acquisition have for many years questioned how language is acquired. Lidz et al state "The question of how these structures are acquired, then, is more properly understood as the question of  how a learner takes the surface forms in the input and converts them into abstract linguistic rules and representations.” Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, whether that be spoken language or sign language, though it can also refer to bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), which refers to an infant's simultaneous acquisition of two native languages. This is distinguished from second-language acquisition, which deals with the acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages. In addition to speech, reading and writing a language with an entirely different script compounds the complexities of true foreign language literacy. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits. Instructional materials, also known as teaching/learning materials  (TLM)[1], are any collection of materials including animate and inanimate objects and human and nonhuman resources that a teacher may use in teaching and learning situations to help achieve desired learning objectives. Instructional materials may aid a student in concretizing a learning experience so as to make learning more exciting,  interesting and interactive. They are tools used in instructional activities, which include active learning and assessment [2]. The term encompasses all the materials and physical means an instructor might use to implement instruction and facilitate students achievement of instructional objectives.