ENG505 Midterm Past Papers Spring 2025

ENG505

Mid-Term

ABSTRACT This comprehensive collection of notes is accurately crafted to empower students to excel academically, ensuring they achieve a minimum of 80% marks in their examinations. The content is organized with clarity and precision, focusing on key concepts, critical analyses, and practical applications tailored to the syllabus. These notes serve as a reliable resource for both thorough preparation and last-minute revision. Designed to inspire confidence and mastery, this guide is an essential tool for students striving for academic excellence.

Maha Malik

Spring 2025

1. Constructivism Theory (Short & Long):

Short: Learners construct knowledge through experience. Long: It emphasizes learner-centered instruction where knowledge is actively built via interaction with environment and experiences. Key figures: Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Dewey.

2. Socio-Cultural Theory (Vygotsky)

Learning is both social and individual. Emphasizes Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), where learners develop with the help of more knowledgeable others.

3. Krashen’s Monitor Model – 5 Hypotheses: · 1. Acquisition-Learning · 2. Natural Order

3. Monitor
4. Input

5. Affective Filter

Types of monitor users: Over-user, under-user, optimal-user.

4. BLC Theory (Basic Language Cognition)

Proposed by Hulstijn (2015). BLC is what all native speakers have in common (phonology, morphology, lexicon). HLC refers to extended cognitive-linguistic use.

5. Community of Language (Situated Learning & Language Socialization)

Language is acquired through social interaction in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger).

6. Mediation Theory (Osgood)

Stimulus → Internal Response → Internal Stimulus → Outward Response. Connects behaviorism and cognition.

7. CUP Model (Cummins)

Common Underlying Proficiency: A single cognitive system supports multiple languages in bilinguals.

8. Processability Theory (Pienemann)

Language structures are acquired in a predictable sequence because of the learner's cognitive processing capacity.

9. Encoding & Perception

Part of Information Processing Theory:

Encoding: transforming input into memory. Perception: organizing/interpreting sensory information.

10. Core and Periphery (Cognitive Linguistics)

Core: Central, abstract concepts. Periphery: Context-dependent, real-world applications.

11. Affective Filter Hypothesis (Krashen)

Learners with low anxiety, high motivation, and confidence acquire language better. A high filter blocks input.

12. Operant Conditioning (Skinner)

Behavior is shaped through positive/negative reinforcement and punishment.

13. Positive & Negative Reinforcement (Examples):

Positive: Teacher says "well done" → student repeats behavior. Negative: Removing homework for good class behavior.

14. Negative Evidence

Evidence that a learner’s utterance is incorrect. Helps guide correct language use, e.g., teacher corrections.

15. Indirect Strategies (Oxford, 1990): · Metacognitive · Affective

Social.

16. Implicit & Explicit Learning (Dörnyei)

Implicit: unconscious, automatic. Explicit: conscious rule-based learning.

17. Awareness (Definition)

Conscious noticing of language input – crucial for learning (Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis).

18. Memory (Atkinson-Shiffrin Model) · Sensory Memory · Short-term Memory

Long-term Memory.

19. McLaughlin’s Twin Theory

Automaticity: fluency via practice Restructuring: reorganization of knowledge into more complex forms.

20. Needs Analysis

Identifies learners’ needs for curriculum and teaching methods, especially in ESP.