Second language learning remains a difficult subject in high schools. Teaching a group of students a second language in a short period of time is something educators continue to struggle with. This...Show moreSecond language learning remains a difficult subject in high schools. Teaching a group of students a second language in a short period of time is something educators continue to struggle with. This thesis has the aim to see if a Communicative or Varied approach works best for students of a certain age. Two groups of students, dubbed juniors and seniors, were split and taught in the two different ways. They were taught various grammatical structures to see of this influenced the results. Two theories of language learning, namely the nativist and constructivist theory, were considered for this study and they both claimed that the Communicative approach would work best. This seemed, however, not to be the case when looking at the results of the lessons. The students of both age groups did better with the Varied approach with the lesson on conditionals. The lesson on the past tense was done better when taught with the grammatical approach. The claim that this approach works best is thus not entirely defendable. This paper concludes that the grammatical construction is of more importance when deciding on a varied or communicative approach.Show less
This thesis studies the social and linguistic attitudes of native speakers (NS) towards second language learners’ (L2L) of their own tongue. Firstly, it will explore British, American, Chinese and...Show moreThis thesis studies the social and linguistic attitudes of native speakers (NS) towards second language learners’ (L2L) of their own tongue. Firstly, it will explore British, American, Chinese and Japanese NS’ social acceptance of L2L and whether L2L may be accepted as new NS. Secondly, it will relate which linguistic requirements NS find of more salience in L2L’ speech. The conducted experiment partly supported the proposed hypothesis. Regarding social acceptance, the results indicated that the ‘Western’ participants were more socially accepting of foreigners and would be more likely to welcome L2L as new NS than the ‘Eastern’ NS. However, in case of the language requirements the results did not support the hypothesis as the ‘Western’ participants also rated being capable of general communication as the most salient language requirement for L2L. For both the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ participants acquiring a perfect accent was the least important linguistic goal for L2L. Ultimately, the outcomes of this research may not be regarded as truly reflecting ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ views on social acceptance and language requirements of L2L as the sample of this research was unfortunately not considerable. Also, attitudes regarding social acceptance may undergo rapid change due to personal experiences and moods. Therefore, this study may be regarded as a guideline for further research since a study on a much larger scale may truly reflect upon social acceptance of L2L and language requirements NS set for L2L.Show less
On the subject of education opinions differ as to how one could teach a group of students. In the past years new approaches have been put forward. The purpose of this thesis is to find out what the...Show moreOn the subject of education opinions differ as to how one could teach a group of students. In the past years new approaches have been put forward. The purpose of this thesis is to find out what the best way is to teach students when teaching English as a second language. For the purpose of this study two groups of students have been approached in their beginning phase of learning English in high school. A single topic was chosen (passives) and the two groups were taught in two different ways. The first group group was taught an instruction based lesson which was defined by the Skill Acquisition Theory as the best teaching method. The second group was taught in a more communicative manner, propagated by the Sociocultural Theory. Both groups made the same test to find out which method led to fewer mistakes. Surprisingly, it was the second group who scored better. Even without explicit rule teaching the students were more capable of doing the exercises they were presented with and they were more capable of doing a writing assignment. It may thus be concluded that for similar groups of students and this particular topic the communicative approach works best.Show less
