Wilga Rivers facts for kids

Wilga Marie Rivers (born April 13, 1919 – died June 23, 2007) was an Australian linguist and university professor. She taught languages like French and Spanish. Wilga Rivers spent most of her career at Harvard University. There, she was a professor and helped guide language teaching until she retired in 1989.

Rivers was famous for her ideas on how people learn new languages. She also had new ways to teach languages. She did not agree with the popular method called audiolingualism. Instead, she wanted language classes to be more interactive. She believed students should talk and communicate more. She also thought using technology and understanding psychology could help with language teaching. These ideas were quite new at the time.

Wilga Rivers' Life Story

Wilga Rivers was born in Melbourne, Australia, on April 13, 1919. Her family was not rich. Her father was British, and her mother was German. Wilga grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne. She went to public schools for her early education. During this time, she became very interested in the French language. She dreamed of becoming a French teacher.

After high school, Rivers went to the University of Melbourne. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in 1939. She then taught different subjects in high schools across Australia. She still wanted to teach languages. In 1949, she earned her master's degree from the University of Melbourne. Soon after, she moved to England to teach French. She taught there for three years. Then she returned to Australia and taught for five more years.

In 1959, she moved to the United States to continue her studies. She earned her doctorate degree in 1962 from the University of Illinois. While studying, she also helped teach French. In 1964, she went back to Australia. She took a job in the French department at Monash University in Melbourne.

Rivers' first book, The Psychologist and the Foreign Language Teacher, came out in 1964. It became very popular among language experts. The book's success made her well-known around the world. Many universities in the United States wanted her to teach for them. In 1971, she accepted a job as a French professor at the University of Illinois. There, she started to develop her own famous language teaching methods.

A few years later, in 1973, she got a big opportunity. She became the head of the Romance Language program at Harvard University. She was also a full professor there. She was the first woman to hold these jobs. She stayed at Harvard for the rest of her career. She kept pushing her new ideas about language teaching. Even after she retired in 1989, she continued to work on foreign language teaching. She lived in Massachusetts and died in Watertown on June 23, 2007.

How We Learn Languages

When Wilga Rivers started her career, the main way to teach languages was audiolingualism. This method focused a lot on memorizing sounds and grammar rules. Rivers did not like this teaching method. She believed in teaching that focused on talking and interacting.

Her idea was to divide language learning into two parts. First, you learn the language skills. Second, you use those skills. Rivers thought that audiolingualism focused too much on just learning skills. This left students unable to use the language in real life. To fix this, she suggested using more interactive and real-life situations in class. This would help students practice how the language works in normal conversations.

Rivers used a model with two parts: "skill-getting" and "skill-using." Skill-getting is about learning the language. It has two parts. The first is cognition, which means understanding the language's parts and how they work. The second part is abstraction, which means learning the rules that connect these parts. Mastering this knowledge helps students move to the next part of skill-getting: production.

Production is what Rivers called "pseudo-communication." This means being able to speak the language clearly. It also means being able to put together sentences quickly using what you've learned. This is often practiced through drills and exercises in class. Rivers believed that most language teaching stopped at this "pseudo-communication" stage. Drills helped students make basic sentences. But they didn't help students have real conversations.

So, she said teachers needed to help students with "skill-using." This is best done through talking and interacting. However, she agreed that drills are good for learning language knowledge. They can also help with some advanced language skills, like understanding word meanings.

To improve on the "skill-getting" drills, Rivers suggested exercises where students were put in situations like a real-life setting. For example, they would talk with someone who only spoke the language they were learning. She used a study by linguist Sandra Savignon to support her ideas. In this study, French students had regular conversations with native French speakers. These students felt more confident in their speaking. This showed Rivers how important communication was in language study.

She also believed students should choose how they want to study. They could work in pairs, groups, or alone. She thought forcing students to work in ways they didn't like could make them lose interest. This could stop them from exploring their language skills. Other activities she suggested included solving problems using the language. Students could also share their interests in the new language. Or they could learn to do an activity with all instructions in the foreign language.

Students' Choices in Learning

Rivers also thought that language teaching should be based on what students prefer. This was different from the old way of focusing mostly on grammar and writing. She believed students would be more motivated if the lessons matched their interests.

To prove her point, she did a survey at the University of Illinois. She shared the results in her 1973 article, The Non-Major: Tailoring the Course to Fit the Person--Not the Image. The survey asked language students what they wanted in their classes. It also checked if their preferences were already being met. Over 1500 students answered the survey.

Rivers found that most beginner and intermediate students (63%) wanted more talking and communication exercises. Also, 62% wanted more reading. Two-thirds of these students specifically wanted to read newspapers and magazines in the language. The survey also showed that students were not very interested in more grammar and writing exercises.

Based on these results, Rivers concluded that students were more interested in using languages in real life. They wanted to communicate, discuss current events, and use media. This data supported her idea that interaction is key to language teaching. It encourages students more than just grammar practice.

Psychology and Language Teaching

Rivers also strongly believed that psychology should be part of foreign language teaching. She especially focused on cognitive psychology. This is the study of how our brains think and learn. She looked at information from both language and psychology studies. She wanted to find the best teaching methods for adults learning a new language.

How Language Works in Our Minds

Rivers said that how a student thinks about language in their mind is important for learning it well. She talked about three systems of thinking identified by American psychologist Jerome Bruner. These systems are called enactive, iconic, and symbolic. Rivers' research showed that each system needed different ways of teaching to help with language learning. She believed all three systems needed to grow at the same time for students to learn languages effectively.

The first system, enactive, learns through practice and repetition. When students repeat things, they start to notice patterns in the language. This helps them respond quickly to basic language structures. However, this system is limited because it mostly relies on simple practice.

The second system is iconic. This system learns through what we see and hear. Rivers said that both sounds and pictures are important for building this system. Learning to recognize sounds and visual clues also helps remember the language better. But how well someone hears sounds can change. For example, an embarrassed student might not hear patterns well. This could make them dislike the patterns. Rivers stressed that teachers should understand how students feel. This helps them learn in the best way for them.

The third system, symbolic, takes in language rules and features. It then turns them into ideas for the learner. Rivers said this system helps us understand language rules and how they are organized. She said the easiest way to help this system is for teachers to explain new language ideas and rules. With this help, students can better understand the rules on their own. They can then use what they learned from old examples to create their own responses in new situations.

In her later work, Rivers studied how cognitive psychology and language acquisition were connected. Her studies showed that how students understood learning and using language greatly affected their ability to learn a new one. In her 1991 article Mental representations and language in action, Rivers found that people who spoke many languages learned new words much faster than people who only spoke one. This was because multilingual speakers already had a way to learn new words that worked best for their brains. People who only spoke one language still needed to figure out their own best strategy.

Rivers' research also showed that students learned and remembered language material faster if it was about their own interests. Students could find words and sentence structures related to their interests more quickly. This was because they used them more often. Because of these findings, Rivers suggested that students should be encouraged to choose words that fit their interests. This would help them learn faster.

Technology in Language Teaching

Rivers was also a strong supporter of using technology and language learning laboratories (LLLs) in language teaching. Language labs first appeared in the late 1920s and early 1930s. They offered a new way for students to learn foreign languages. But in the 1950s, many students complained they didn't like language labs. This made teachers wonder if LLLs were truly helpful.

Rivers shared her thoughts in two articles published in 1982 and 1990. She believed LLLs could be very helpful. But the way they were being used was not good for students. In her 1982 article Understanding the learner in the language laboratory, Rivers pointed out three areas that needed to change for LLLs to work well: Language Learning, Language Teaching, and the LLL Director and Instructor.

How Students Learn in Labs

Rivers defined language learning as the student's part of the process. She noted that all students have favorite ways of learning. These ways help them understand information more easily. For example, most language teaching used only sounds. But many students learned better through seeing things. Rivers also noted that the old way of making students give quick, automatic answers didn't work for everyone. Many students gave better answers when they had time to think. Because of these differences, the drills and practices in LLLs needed to change. They needed to become a help, not a problem, for students.

How Teachers Teach in Labs

Rivers defined language teaching as the teacher's part of the process. She specifically talked about the teaching methods and plans used by many language teachers at the time. The common way to teach was a step-by-step approach: first listening, then speaking, then reading, then writing. Listening and speaking were usually done in the LLL. Reading and writing were done in the classroom.

Rivers said this method was old-fashioned. Many students showed that mixing these four skills helped them learn better. For example, using writing with listening and speaking. She also wanted teachers to move away from traditional grammar-first plans. Instead, she promoted plans that showed how the language worked in real life, like for communication. Or plans that gave students as much real language use as possible. To support these ideas, Rivers suggested that LLL materials should use more natural speech. This could include videos of native speakers talking or films in different languages.

Lab Directors and Teachers

Rivers also said that LLL instructors and directors were a main reason students didn't like LLLs. She stated that as technology improved, many LLL instructors didn't learn how to use new materials. So, the full power of LLLs was not used. Students could only learn through older methods. To fix this, Rivers urged LLL instructors to get the newest materials. She also said every instructor should take time to understand new technology. This would help students get the most benefit from LLLs.

Wilga Rivers' Lasting Impact

Wilga Rivers and her work in language studies are still honored today. Two awards were created after she passed away. The American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) gives the Wilga Rivers Graduate Student Award each year. This award is for graduate students who are members of the AAAL. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) also honors her impact. They give The ACTFL Wilga Rivers Award for Leadership in World Language Education every year. This award goes to an ACTFL member who is active in many language organizations and groups.