Psycholinguistic Perspectives and Contributions of ELL and ELT

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to overview psycholinguistic perspectives and contributions of English language learning (ELL) and English language teaching (ELT). Psycholinguistics is the empirical and theoretical study of the mental processes that enable linguistic behavior. It means that psycholinguistics puts its consideration on two disciplines: psychology and linguistics. So it has a crucial role in language learning and teaching studies. To overview of psycholinguistic points of view on second language learning, its models of language storage and retrieval, its contributions to second language components i.e. lexis, phonology and grammar, and four language skills i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing will be looked at. Psycholinguistic perspectives also have an essential role to build the theoretical foundations of language teaching methods, and to develop them over periods of time. So the different language teaching methods will be overviewed in terms of psychology and linguistics, two contributed disciplines to psycholinguistics.