ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the more traditional approach and explores the power and limitations of general cognitive processing in L2 learning. After exploring information processing and the related skill-learning approach, the chapter turns to recent discussions of the role of conscious thought. This approach raises questions about the learning of the language system, but it also taps into a much earlier 'folk belief' about language learning, that learners learn languages by actually learning to do things in and through the language. The chapter helps to look at the ways learners develop what are often called language skills, talking, reading, listening, writing, and all the usual manifestations and combination of them, using sometimes idiosyncratic problem-solving operations. It has introduces the cognitive or educational psychological approach to language learning, involving learning the language system through cognitive mental operations that derive from general mental skills rather than from the putative independent language faculty.
