Blog #6

Upon examining the worksheet with information about (L) learning/word recognition and (A) acquisition/sociopsycholinguistic views that we received in class, I noticed that a lot of the activities could be labeled as both (L) and (A) depending on how you look at the activity.  In addition, many of the topics can be categorized differently based on the grade level that the activity is being done with.  A lot of the learning activities were things such as looking up words in the dictionary and dividing words into syllables; things that can all be done with a worksheet or with a simple teacher lecture and doing drills with the students.  With learning activities, students are practicing and doing exercises, but they do not have a purpose or are not given strategies.

                Acquisition activities involve talking, giving a purpose to what students are doing, and giving students strategies that they can use later.  If a teacher is correcting a student, that would be a learning activity; however, if a student is the one correcting another student that would be an acquisition activity.   The students are able talk about the correction and are providing a purpose to why they are correcting their peers.