Students using a language

[Niko]

As a teacher, we want our students to USE the language being learnt. That's where the real learning takes place - when students USE a language. But we have to be sure that students are really using the language, and not just appearing to use it. There is a difference.

ON the surface level, one student utterance of a given sentence may be roughly equivalent to any other. One student utterance of the sentence might be repetition after the teacher. Another might be recalled from a memorised use of the language. Another might be manipulation on cue. We can't count these as real use of the language. Then another might be free creation and urgent expression. That's a different matter.

It is true that these differences are differences in what is taking place inside a black box. But that does not mean that they are beyond knowing. If you can hang a man on circumstantial evidence - and I think you can - then you can hang a learning model on what is going on inside the black box, given the inputs and the outputs. With a better idea of what real language use involves, we'll better position to make real learning happen.