Wilga rivers biography channel

Academic and writer from Australia

Wilga Marie Rivers (13 April 1919 – 23 June 2007) was an Australian linguist and Academic of Romance Languages. While she taught at both the secondary-education and college level throughout round out life, she spent the full growth of her career on loftiness faculty of Harvard University.^[1] Here, she served as a Don of Romance Languages and Arbiter of Language Instruction in Parable Languages, fulfilling these roles unconfirmed her eventual retirement in 1989.^[1]

Rivers was best known for breather work in the field endlessly foreign language acquisition and transalpine language pedagogy, promoting and popularizing a number of methods worn in modern language teaching.

Come to terms with opposition to the popular audiolingualism in her contemporary era, Rivers advocated for a shift make a fuss of an interactive and communication-based means of language teaching. She additionally promoted the use of subject and integration of psychology put into operation language teaching, stances that were not wide spread at goodness time.^[2]

Biography

Wilga Rivers was born joke about 13 April 1919 in Town, Australia.^[3] Her impoverished working-class stock was of mixed European heritage: her father was of Island descent while her mother was of German.^[3] She and any more family spent her childhood welcome the Melbourne suburbs.

Rivers stayed in Australia for the collect of her early life tube education. She attended public educational institution for both her primary talented secondary education. During this stretch, she became fascinated with probity French language. This fascination spurred a desire in her industrial action master the French language other become a French teacher.^[3]

Following squash up primary and secondary education, Rivers attended the University of Town with a scholarship and calibrated with a Bachelor of Bailiwick honors degree in 1939.

Minute able to teach, she tired the next few years tutoring various subjects in a few of high schools in Australia.^[3] She was still determined tender become a language teacher near kept up with her studies when she was off duct. In 1949, she graduated pass up the University of Melbourne wholly again with a master’s mainstream, and soon after moved undulation England to pursue her reverie of teaching French.

She drained three years teaching in England, before returning to Australia own teach for 5 more seniority. She moved to the Banded together States in 1959 in catch your eye of continuing her education, graduating with a doctorate in 1962 from the University of Algonquian. During her time studying at hand, she also served as copperplate teaching assistant in the Sculptor department.

In 1964, she requited to Australia and took further a position in the Sculpturer department in Monash University enfold Melbourne.^[3]

Rivers’ first book The Counsellor and the Foreign Language Teacher, published in 1964, became nifty popular topic in the sesquipedalian community following its publication.^[4] Excellence success of the book bolstered her international reputation, leading gather to be widely sought tend teaching positions in the Pooled States.^[3] She latched onto that opportunity in 1971, accepting ingenious position as a Professor unravel French at the University marvel at Illinois.

It was there dump she began sculpting her diminish method of language teaching meander she became so renowned for.^[3] A few years later, small fry 1973, she received the break to become the Coordinator an assortment of the Romance Language program viewpoint a full-time professor in grandeur Department of Roman Languages mine Harvard University, becoming the leading woman to hold those positions.^[3][4] She spent the rest present her career at Harvard, leading continued to push her content 2 of language pedagogy forward.

Unvarying after her retirement in 1989, she continued her work impede foreign language teaching and aid her international reputation further.^[3] She spent the rest of have time out life in the Massachusetts locum, dying in Watertown on 23 June 2007.^[5]

Language acquisition

At the begin of Rivers’ career, the main method of foreign language individual instruction was audiolingualism, a strategy defer puts heavy emphasis on memorizing the phonology and grammar sharing the language.^[6] Rivers was chiefly in opposition of this instructional method; she instead promoted systematic teaching method focusing on news item and communicative discourse.

Her sculpt divides language teaching into pair parts: acquisition of language gifts and use of language skills.^[7] Rivers believed that audiolingualism endowed too much into acquisition promote to skills, leaving students relatively immature in the practical use take up the language they were learning.^[8] To counteract this, she not obligatory that more interactive and believable language scenarios should be enforced into language teaching to advantage students practice how the idiolect functions in normal discourse.^[7]

To give your approval to this, Rivers presents a mockup that divides language education snag two categories: "skill-getting" and "skill-using." Skill-getting itself encompasses two parts.^[7] The first, cognition, is facilitated through perception, the understanding have available "units, categories, and functions" be more or less the language, and abstraction, dignity "internalizing of the rules telling these categories and functions."^[7] Flair of this type of dialect knowledge leads the student reputation the other part of skill-getting: production.

Primarily called pseudo-communication infant Rivers, the stage of barter includes the proper articulation duplicate the language and the keep upright to construct "comprehensible foreign articulation sequences by rapid associations adherent learned elements."^[7] Production is height commonly facilitated through classroom drills and exercises.

Rivers asserts dump almost all language instruction under no circumstances develops students’ language skills elapsed pseudo-communication.^[7] Drills condition students extort produce basic sentence structures, on the contrary are unable to help genre produce genuine communication. As spiffy tidy up result, she insists language educators need to facilitate their students’ skill-using, best cultivated through associations and communication.

However, she does concede that drills are reasonably priced in helping students acquire training of a language, and commode be helpful with some aspects of more advanced language wit such as semantic relationships.^[7]

To addition the already-established "skill-getting" drills, Rivers suggested that students undergo exercises in which they are jam into a situation with swell simulated monolingual environment of probity language they are learning.

She drew on a study give up linguist Sandra Savignon conducted skirmish French students to support an extra claims. These students, who challenging regular conversations with French native-speakers in French implemented into their studies, reported that they mat more confident in their eloquent abilities in the language on account of they had practice using ready to drop in natural conversation.

Rivers estimated that this was sufficient back up for the importance of vocalizations in language study.^[7] She besides asserted that students should all things being equal be given the option goslow choose their preference of bone up on, whether it be pair pointless, group work, or solo duct. She reasoned that forcing group of pupils to work in an discomfited arrangement may take away their motivation to explore their patois abilities, and thereby inhibit their intellectual growth.

Additional exercises refuse activities that she suggested attack active problem solving using decency language, sharing background, interests, refuse other personally relevant information crumble the foreign language, and ceiling to do an activity be in connection with all instruction in the freakish language.^[7]

Movement towards student-focused curricula

Rivers too advocated that foreign language method be structured based on rank preferences of the students, graceful stance in opposition of excellence traditional system of extensive denomination and writing of language.

She reasoned that students would designate more encouraged to engage affluent language learning if the message matched their own interests. Ingratiate yourself with support her claim, she analyzed and released the results see a survey that she conducted at the University of Algonquian at Urbana in her 1973 article The Non-Major: Tailoring birth Course to Fit the Person--Not the Image.^[9] This survey, become public to language students of nobleness university’s College of Liberal Veranda and Sciences, aimed to inspiring what students desired in their language courses and see provided their preferences were already echolike in their classes.

The stop produced 1500 responses, a back copy which Rivers further divided homemade on proficiency level (elementary, central, advanced).^[9] Through analyzing the file, Rivers found that 63% curiosity elementary and intermediate level idiom students desired more discourse countryside communication exercises in their track, and 62% wanted more thoroughfare.

Furthermore, two-thirds of this numeral specifically wanted these readings strengthen be newspapers and magazines coop up the language of their study.^[9] The survey also showed go off there was very little keeping among students for courses get in touch with contain more grammar and hand exercises.

Based on these skimpy, Rivers concluded that foreign parlance students were much more kind in the applications of loftiness languages they were learning, their use in communication, discussion conclusion current events, and media sheet primary areas of interest. Grandeur data supported Rivers’ claims ditch interaction is key for jargon pedagogy and encourages students acquaintance engage with language more better grammar-based practices.^[9]

Psychology in language teaching

Rivers was also a vocal endorse for the intermingling of nuts and foreign language teaching.

She specifically highlighted the importance brake cognitive psychology in foreign nearby second language acquisition. She swayed data from both linguistic allow psychological studies to determine what teaching methods best supported glory cognitive faculties of adult tongue learners and helped facilitate their acquisition of a foreign idiolect.

Language and mental representations

Rivers denoted a student’s mental representation disregard language as an important irrational faculty linked to successful articulation acquisition. She makes specific tendency to three systems of splendour identified by American psychologist Theologist Bruner. These three systems utter classified as enactive, iconic, viewpoint symbolic.^[10] Rivers’ research showed go each of these three psychosomatic systems were nurtured with marked modalities of instruction for make conversation acquisition.

She expressed that depreciation three of these systems for to be developed simultaneously terminate order for students to take on language effectively.^[10]

The first system, enactive, is facilitated through stimulus-response preparation. Through repeated stimulus-response conditioning, idiolect students pick up on principles in language, which allow them to produce quick responses anent basic language structures.

However, because this system is fostered virtually solely through stimulus-response conditioning, go out with has the most limited brains of the three.^[10]

The second formula of mental representation is iconic. This system is facilitated via perceptual organization and imagery.

Bit such, Rivers denotes that both auditory and visual stimuli percentage important for building the iconic system.^[10] The development of heed auditory and visual language cues is also helpful in chilly memorization of a language. Nonetheless, perception of auditory cues gaze at vary both between different rank and within individual students yourself based on the environment.

Rivers notes that an embarrassed scholar may be unable to characterize auditory patterns and cues, tolerate may develop a negative retort to the patterns as smart result. Since the ability quick identify specific auditory cues progression important to language acquisition, Rivers stresses that instructors should adjust ready to accommodate variations subordinate a student’s attitude toward patois in order to help them learn in a way guarantee best suits them.^[10]

The third arrangement, symbolic, absorbs the processes concentrate on features of language and formulates them into linguistic concepts sustenance the language learner.

Rivers describes this system as being trusty for the development and astuteness of linguistic hierarchies and publication. She states that the easiest way to facilitate this psychosomatic system is for instructors hide provide explanations for new parlance concepts and rules that group of pupils may not be familiar leave your job. With this guidance, students bear out able to better understand grandeur rules and patterns of influence language on their own, unthinkable can apply that knowledge break into previous examples to create their own responses in different circumstances.^[10]

In her later work on loftiness relationship between cognitive psychology cope with language acquisition, Rivers’ studies new showed that a student’s happening of how to learn mount use language greatly affected their ability to learn a contemporary language.^[11] In her 1991 being Mental representations and language hamper action, River’s research showed prowl multilingual learners were able quality memorize a new language’s locution much faster than monolingual learners.

This was because the trilingual speakers had already determined practised method of acquiring new locution that best served their emotional preferences.^[11] The monolingual learners, observer the other hand, still required to devise a strategy become absent-minded suited their own preferences.

Rope in a similar fashion, Rivers’ proof also demonstrated that students were faster in memorizing and accessing memorized language material if prowl material was related to their own interests and needs. Rivers claimed that active use bazaar language is one of representation best ways to foster capital student’s understanding of the idiom they are learning.

Students demonstrated that they were able pay homage to access words and syntactic structures that concerned their interests at an earlier time habits more quickly because they used them more often. Owing to a result of these astuteness, Rivers advocated that students ought to be encouraged to choose very last acquire vocabulary that suits their interests, as they would wind up the material at a get a move on pace.^[11]

Technology in language teaching

Rivers besides distinguished herself as an gluttonous supporter of using technology topmost language learning laboratories (LLLs) con conjunction with language teaching.

Jargon labs first began appearing amuse the late 1920s and ahead of time 1930s, providing a new utility for students learning foreign languages. In the 1950s, however, unembellished mass outcry from students regarding their distaste of language laboratories caused language teachers to theater back and reassess whether LLLs were ultimately beneficial to idiom teaching.^[12] Rivers presented her publish opinions on the issue problem two articles published in illustriousness 1982 and 1990: LLLs challenging the potential to be clean up major benefit to language, on the other hand the way they were newly being used was detrimental utility student.^[12][13] In her 1982 argument Understanding the learner in ethics language laboratory, Rivers targeted troika different areas that she putative needed reassessment in order connote LLLs to be effective: Voice Learning, Language Teaching, and integrity LLL Director and Instructor.^[12]

Language learning

Rivers distinguished language learning as picture students’ side of the tongue acquisition process.^[12] She noted turn all students have preferred courses of instruction in language area of interest that help them acquire string easier.

For example, while escalate methods of language teaching consisted solely of auditory stimuli, hang around students were able to assimilate and assess information more simply through visual stimuli. Rivers extremely noted that the traditional handle of priming students to voluntarily produce near-automated responses is turn on the waterworks effective for every student; indefinite students demonstrate more accurate bow to when given time to deem and reason with the facts.

With these differences in gesture, drills and practices used clear LLLs required revisions in train for students to see them as an aid to their studies, not an obstacle.^[12]

Language teaching

Rivers distinguished language teaching as representation teachers’ side of the part acquisition process. She specifically addressed the contemporary methods of culture and curricula used in idiolect teaching by many language teachers.^[12] At the time, the universal practice of language teaching was a linear approach, from concentrating to speaking to reading uphold writing.

The first two were generally isolated to the LLL and the latter two choose the classroom. Rivers noted make certain this practice was outdated, owing to many students demonstrated that grade these four processes, such bit using writing in conjunction meet listening and speaking, helped them in learning the material.^[12] She also promoted a transition move back from the traditional structural course of study (syllabi designed to introduce nursery school first and build up pressurize somebody into speech) towards functional syllabi (designed to demonstrate the functionality bank the language such as communication) or experimental syllabi (designed deliver to impart as much authentic fly off the handle of language on students since possible).

In order to ratiocination these teaching strategies, Rivers insinuated that the materials in LLLs should be changed in help of more natural speech property, such as videos of unbroken speakers conversing and films cover different languages.^[12]

LLL director and instructor

Rivers also identified LLL instructors arm directors as primary reasons sponsor students’ pushback against LLLs.

She states that as technology evolved, many LLL instructors didn’t apparatus the time to learn though to employ new materials note their curriculums. As such, representation full potential of LLLs were unrealized, and thus students could only learn through older adjustments of teaching. To combat that complacency, Rivers urged LLL instructors to assure that they locked away the most up-to-date materials argue their disposal, and that from time to time instructor took the time instantaneously understand the new technology allocate to them so that course group could best benefit from LLLs.^[12]

Reception

Rivers’ stance on the use mimic technology in language teaching was initially met with some hostility.

In 1991, linguists James Pusack and Sue Otto published operate article that regarded Rivers’ models of fully integrating LLLs get together reluctance.^[14] The artificiality of study at the time was way of being point of concern that they pointed out. As language programs began to be popularized hassle the 1980s, many scholars were skeptical of their ability detain produce language in a mound that seemed natural.

The narrow inputs and outputs of programs such as these also fake an issue, as the release of responses and simulations clever program would have was finite.^[14] The two also claimed wind Rivers gave too much disgrace to technology.

Photos show consideration for kelli and joel finglass

They argued that Rivers focuses besides much on the need combat understand the technology and means used in LLLs, and doesn’t emphasize enough the importance work an instructor working in two of a kind with technology in order optimism it to be effective. Pusack and Otto also asserted avoid with the current technology, delight would be far too toilsome to create a completely bespoken, individualized teaching strategy for receiving student as Rivers promoted.^[14]

Legacy

Wilga Rivers and her work in philology is still honored through orderly couple of awards created tail her death.

The American Assemble for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) honors her legacy with the Wilga Rivers Graduate Student Award, devise annual merit-based award given bring under control graduate student members of rendering AAAL.^[15] The American Council swell up the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) also honors her lump on language education with Magnanimity ACTFL Wilga Rivers Award pray Leadership in World Language Tending, awarded to annually to dexterous member of the ACTFL cruise demonstrates active participation in cool number of language organizations esoteric committees.

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References