THE CONTRIBUTION OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS TO ELT

(ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING)

The Assignment of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Wury Anggun Kusumawati

NIM: S891708019

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION
UNIVERSITAS SEBELAS MARET
2017
 LIST OF CONTENT

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................

A. Background of Study ....................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER II CONTENT OF DISCUSSION

A. The Nature of Psycholinguistics ..................................................................................... 3

B. The Contribution of Psycholinguistics to ELT .............................................................. 4

CHAPTER III CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 9

REFERENCES
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Psycholinguistics is one of the branches of linguistics field. It lately becomes

multi-disciplinary field that covers the science of speech, phonetics, neuro-linguistics,
pragmatics, and even discourse analysis. As its name derived from two terms ‘psycho’
which refers to the science of human mind and behavior and ‘linguistics’ that means
the study of language, psycholinguistics is defined as the study of human brain in
correlation with how an individual acquires, comprehends, and produces language. The
one who is treated as the expert of this branch of sciene is known as a psycholinguist.
However, psycholinguists are interested in the social rules involved in language use and
the mechanism of the human brain which are associated with language and are implied
in daily language use.

According to Field in Eghlidi, 2017, psycholinguistics is defined as the study of

how the mind equips human beings to handle language and considers language as a
restricted phenomenon to the human race which is knowable. In fact, they are about to
determine how language developed, what the relationship is between language and
thought and whether language shares functions with general thought. This relationship
leads to the goals of psycholinguistics as follow:

a) to establish an understanding of the processes which underlie the system that we

call language.
b) to examine language as a product of the human mind and thus as evidence of the
way in which human beings organize their thoughts and impose patterns upon their
experiences.

To sum up, to learn about psycholinguistic in the field of ELT is very beneficial
yet challenging particularly for English teachers. This is since teachers are dealing with
students’ behavior towards language learning. In this case, teachers are not expected to
only be able to assist students but also to overcome students’ problems or barriers
related to language learning. By studying the psycholinguistics too, teachers are led to
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comprehend cases related to this, such as students’ thought of language, how students
acquire and produce language, and students’ language-related disorders.

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 CHAPTER II

CONTENT OF DISCUSSION

A. The Nature of Psycholinguistics

As other fields of study, psycholinguistics is about to ask questions generated
by its nature and how it looks at mind and language. Psycholinguistics has six main
research scopes, some of which includes: language and the brain, language acquisition
and learning, theory of comprehension, language processing, language storage and
access (Field via Eghlidi, 2017).
Psycholinguistic approach gets its name from the integration of the two fields
of study; psychology and linguistics. Generally known, psychology means the scientific
study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given
context, whereas linguistics represents the scientific study of language and its structure,
including the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. Specific branches
of linguistics include sociolinguistics, dialectology, psycholinguistics, computational
linguistics, historical-comparative linguistics, and applied linguistics. It can be
concluded that, basically, psycholinguistics is signified as the branch field under
linguistics study which concerns the study of the relationship between language and
mind by which its focus is mainly on the study of the mental processes that a person
uses especially on how human acquires, comprehends, processes, stores, and produces
language.
Formerly, the development of the psycholinguistics was initiated by the
behaviorism principle. Some of behaviorists such as Bloomfield and Skinner were able
to apply the principles that they implemented to the description of other human and
non-human kinds of behavior to the human speech. Consider the example of manner
when parents at the first time teach their child to talk. This is what being called as
Verbal Behavior since it is involving the process of producing language verbally.
Accordingly, the Empiricist theory of learning as well as the behaviorism
pointed out that the entirety of human language originates from individual’s experience
and is called as formative period. Within this period, these following issues have
become the scope of discussion of the psycholinguistics: (1) How people comprehend

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 language? (2) How do people produce language? (3) How and under what
circumstances do people lose language? (4) How does a particular language affect
human’s cognition? (5) Is there any relation between the first and foreign language
learning? (6) Is there such a concept like mother tongue interference? In this manner,
very complex verbal forms may be reached (Skinner in Demirezen, 2004). It means that
the acquisition of language in infancy was treated the same way as an infant learning
other habits.

B. The Contribution of Psycholinguistics to ELT

a. Contribution to English basic components (lexis, grammar, and phonology)
Generally speaking, every language has three basic components: a) lexis, b)
grammar, and c) phonology. Lexis is so related to vocabulary items, grammar tries
to describe the speaker’s knowledge of the language, and the last one explains the
establishment and description of the distinctive sound units of a language by means
of distinctive features (Richards and Schmidt, 2002). Those three elements of
language have also become the case within language teaching. However, lexis,
grammar, and phonology are the important parts in learning language. By learning
lexis, students habituate themselves to develop the vocabulary mastery.
Understanding grammar will help students construct the language structure
correctly and to produce the language either in spoken or written expressions as
well. The good comprehension of linguistics competence will respectively lead to
good linguistics performance. Last but not least, as regarding to psycholinguistics
concern, it emphasis on how the three components are regained by the speaker of
language.

Lexis
Lexis refers to vocabulary. It is so related to human’s mind because it is
involving the process of acquiring, processing, comprehending, and producing
words being learnt. Lexis, based on how psycholinguistics views, can be comprised
into two process, the first is the process of reception (input) and the second one is
the process of production (output) and both cannot be separated. The reception
process explains how words are identified by a recipient (listener and reader). It is

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 not being assumed as a simple one-to-one match between input and word itself.
According to Rastle via Demirezen (2004), competition models postulate that a
listener or reader tries to balance word cues at many levels in order to achieve word
recognition. Lexical retrieval in the process of production is supported by the way
in which entries are stored in one’s mind and is considered linked by a complex
network of interconnections.

Grammar
Grammar is associated with the comprehension of language structure. The
better the comprehension is, the better one can perform in the target language.
Moreover, one’s capacity in dealing with speech production depends on the groups
of words stored in the mind as pre-assembled chunks that can form a complete and
comprehensible language utterance. For example, one does not have to assemble
afresh a sequence such as I wish I knew … each time one utters it, instead, he may
draw on a unit which is, in effect, part of the lexicon. Similarly, one can recognize
it as a fixed systematic utterance when it occurs in connected speech, without
having to parse its parts (Eghlidi, et.al., 2017).

Phonology
Phonology deals with the study of how sounds function as systems in languages.
It refers to the fact that each speaker leaves a trace, enabling the listener to build up
an increasingly detailed record of how this particular group realizes phonemes or
words (Field in Demirezen, 2004).

b. Contribution to English four skills

Four language skills i.e., and listening, speaking, reading, and writing are
processes that are employed when a language learner engages in every of them. In
the following sections the language skills will be briefly discussed based upon
information processing approach and psycholinguistic approach to instruction.
Listening
Listening is also known as a receptive skill. Based on the information processes
approach, listening, even in one’s first language, is viewed as a highly tentative
process that is constantly being formed and revised. This receptive skill includes
two phases: decoding (perceptual phase) and incoding (conceptual phase). In fact,

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it has been common that EFL students are facing difficulties in listening. This is
categorized into two, intrinsic and extrinsic difficulty. Some familiar intrinsic
difficulties, according to psycholinguistics approach are such as speed of the
speech, the number of new words, and the interaction between the previous topic
and the new one. Whereas, the extrinsic difficulty covers some examples like
students’ motivation and interest, the goal of listening, as well as the noise coming
out from the environment.

Speaking
Psycholinguistics approach has brought a great benefit toward the speaking skill
within language teaching. Numerous problems or difficulties faced by students in
the process of language teaching and learning under the EFL context can be solved
using this approach. Some like extrinsic, stuttering, and misarticulating originally
derived from students’ personality factors are under the workable control of
psycholinguistics approach (Demirezen, 2004). Moreover, the personality factors
like introvert and extrovert have also become the example of difficulties students
have to carry with. Those considered more serious difficulties are such as agnosia
and aphasia which are dominantly caused by brain damage because of accidents.
Accordingly, EFL teachers have big role in applying the psycholinguistics approach
in solving the students’ speaking problems. Thus, teachers are highly recommended
to be as reflective as possible.

Reading
There are some reading activities which are psycholinguistically connected.
One reads certain types of reading materials for any different purpose, for example
scanning and reading. Those activities are actually oriented to psycholinguistics
field. This is because when reading such reading materials, one is using his mind in
order to acquire as well as process the information he gets from reading the
materials. Obviously, most of students find reading as unpleasant activity rather
than the other things they can do within their spare time. By applying the
psycholinguistics approach, one and even more of the intrinsic problems faced by
the students in reading can be solved through arousing the students’ reading
interests onto the reading passages. To consider, an authentic materials which are

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relevant to the real world here are profoundly recommended as to give the students
the real view of the real world.

Writing
Psycholinguistics approach has been as well dealing with writing skill. Some
problems are very well overcome through this approach. Here are the difficulties
frequently faced by EFL students in writing:
a. It is generally known that words in English are not spelled the same way as
they sound. It, surely, becomes the challenge for the learners to deal with
this matter. It has become their hardship to store every single word in their
minds and to remember the way how it is written and uttered.
b. Psycholinguistics is also helpful in overcoming the case of students’
mechanical mistakes such as punctuation. As punctuation has become
important part in producing writing, students should memorize the use of
different punctuation in different texts. This is to say that psycholinguistics
approach has its role in pinning down the use of punctuation in students’
writing.
c. It is, afresh, also to say that psycholinguistics approach is beneficial for EFL
teachers in figuring out the interesting topics for teaching writing. It also,
using needs analysis, indicates the importance of creating reasons for
finding topics which are relevant to students’ needs and interest.
d. Also, by following this approach, it is advantageous to decrease the level of
students’ writing difficulties.

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Previously speaking, the psycholinguistics approach is kind of problem-solving
field when implemented within the English Language Teaching process. Assuredly,
it has a great deal and contributions to the practice of ELT. For teachers, to cope
with psycholinguistics approach will likely bring many benefits such as help them
recognize the students’ problems and difficulties in learning the target language,
figure out interesting topics for teaching writing, etc. while for students, some
benefits can also be identified like to improve students’ vocabulary mastery, help
tem in terms of words memorization, arise students’ interest and motivation in
learning the target language, and so forth.

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 CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

Psycholinguistic deals with the study of human’s mind especially related to the process
of acquire, process, store, and produce language. In the field of English Language Education
teaching and learning process, psycholinguistic approach has a great contribution to various
aspects of ELT teaching and learning porcess such as in teaching English basic components
(lexis, grammar, and phonology), and English four skills like listening, speaking, reading, and
writing. Also, by means of psycholinguistic approach, a teacher is feasible to identify students’
difficulties in learning English either caused by intrinsic (students’ motivation, speaking
defects, voice disorders, aphasia, etc.) or extrinsic factors like noise from the environment. It
is, additionall,y to say that the psycholinguistics can be the good choice for overcoming the
problems or difficulties of students within the process of learning.

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 REFERENCES

Demirezen, M. (2004). Relations between Psycholinguistic Approach and Foreign Language

Learning and Teaching. Ondokıızmayıs Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, Vol. 17 p.
26-36.

Eghlidi, M. E., et.al. (2017). Psycholinguistics Perspectives and Contributions to ELL and
ELT. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research. Vol. 4 (7), p. 317-335.

Richards, J. C., & Schmidt, R. (2002). Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied
linguistics (3rd ed). Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

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