Learning vs. Acquisition Theories

Linguistic theorists have identified two views of reading development:  learning and acquisition.  The classroom activities prepared by a teacher whose pedagogy more closely relates to the learning theory differ from those prepared by a teacher who believes in acquisition. 

In the Freeman (2004) text, many examples of classroom activities from each theory are presented and analyzed as to the characteristics that identify them as either learning or acquisition based.  Learning based reading activities focus more on word recognition, phonics, spelling, correct usage, and other explicitly taught, teacher-led experiences.  Conversely, acquisition-based activities put more focus on gaining meaning from text, applying comprehension strategies, creating, and synthesizing with a more student-centered approach(Freeman, 2004).  While the acquistion view does allow for the use of graphophonics in daily instruction, it is only focused on as one of three language systems students must participate in to understand written text.   

On page 48 of the Freeman text, a list of classroom activities conducted by both teachers and students is presented.  I analyzed these to determine which of the activities were more closely aligned with the learning theory and which were to be considered more acquistion-oriented.  My findings are listed below:  

Learning-Based Classroom Activities

Teacher will:

• preteach vocabulary
• have students segment words into phonemes
• teach Latin and Greek roots
• conduct phonics drills
• use decodable texts
• use a variety of worksheets to teach phonics skills

Students will:

• look up words in the dictionary to determine meanings
• practice sounding out words
• read in a round-robin fashion
• correct peers when they make a mistake during reading
• ask the teacher how to spell words they don't know
• divide words into syllables
• on a worksheet, draw a line from each word to a picture that starts with the same sound

Clearly, learning based classrooms are more focused on the traditional, phonics-based pedagogy for reading instruction.  Teachers provide multiple exposures of letter-sound relationships and students participate in reading activities solely meant to improve their graphophonic skills.  Reading aloud is the valued method of reading, as errors are more readily identified and immediately corrected that way.  Vocabulary is taught through explicit instruction rather than in context.  While this is one way of instructing reading, it is not the favored method of current linguistic researchers.  The acquisition model is the one most commonly accepted as the best for ELLs in the mainstream reading classroom.  The activities of teacher and student in an acquisition classroom are as follows:

Acquisition-Based Classroom Activities

Teacher will:

• do shared readings using big books
• write words the students dictate for a story and has students help with spelling of difficult words
• use predictable text such as poetry and chants
• set aside time for SSR (sustained silent reading)
• has students meet in literature circles
• teach students different comprehension strategies
• do a picture walk of a new book

Students will:

• make graphic organizers such as Venn diagrams to compare two different stories
• write rhyming poetry and then discuss different spellings for the same sound
• read a language experience story they have written with their teacher
• work in pairs to arrange words from a familiar chant into sentences
• make illustrated alphabet books on different topics

These activities engage students in pre-reading, during reading, and post-reading experiences designed to enhance their understanding of the text.  Although some attention is paid to spelling and grammar, it is done through the context of books they have read and/or written; therefore, they have already done the work of constructing meaning and can now focus on the graphophonics.  Students synthesize their understanding into mini-projects.  They read silently as opposed to orally in order to practice the comprehension strategies they will need to employ when reading independently.  They read engaging predictable text to learn language patterns and new vocabulary rather than muddle through "mind numbingly boring" (Gibbons, 2002) decodable texts which only focus on phonics.  It is the belief of an acquisition-based teacher that students should acquire English language structures through their instruction in the most important reading skill of all...comprehension. 

A few activities seemed, to me, to lend themselves well to both the learning and the acquisition views of reading instruction.  These are as follows:

• identify words on a big book page that begin with same sound
• group cards with classmates' names by a criterion such as first or last letter
• teach Greek and Latin roots of words

The first two seem to represent both views in that they ask students to identify particular letters and sounds, indicative of the learning view, but to do so in a meaningful context.  By identifying word/letter relationships in the context of a big book is to do so in a acquisitionist
manner; within the context of comprehension.  By identifying letters in classmates' names, the acquisition view is represented because the names of the students are part of the cultural environment of the classroom.  To understand that is to meet the main goal of acquisition theory. 

The third activity, as stated by Freeman (2004), is one that can be done both as a learning activity and as an acquisition activity based on the intensity and frequency of administration.  If done as a daily, structured part of the reading lesson, it is more of a learning theory activity.  If done only when it is deemed to be necessary to the meaning of a word, and only taught as a vocabulary strategy that can be used by the student later when encountering other unfamiliar words, it is most definitely an acquisition-based experience. 

When reading this chapter and completing the above activity, I realized that my classroom is almost an exact balance between these two views.  I spend equal amounts of time in explicit phonetic instruction and experiential, comprehension-based instruction.  I wonder if that is a good thing....