Language Learning and Teaching (стр. 14 из 46)

Discourse

We have only begun to scratch the surface of possibilities of second language discourse analysis. As we search for better ways of teaching communicative competence to second language learners, research on the acquisition of discourse becomes more and more important. Perhaps a study of children's amazing dexterity in acquiring rules of conversation and in perceiving intended meaning will help us to find ways of teaching such capacities to second language learners. We will look more at these issues in Chapter 9.

In the Classroom: The Audiolingual Method

In the first part of the twentieth century, the Direct Method did not take hold in the United States the way it did in Europe. While one could easily procure native-speaking teachers of modern foreign languages in Europe, such was not the case in the United States. Also, European high school and university students did not have to travel far to find opportunities to put the oral skills of another language to actual, practical use. Moreover, U.S. educational institutions had become firmly convinced that a reading approach to foreign languages was more useful than an oral approach, given the perceived linguistic isolation of the United States at the time. The highly influential Coleman Report of 1929 (Coleman 1929) had persuaded foreign language teachers that it was impractical to teach oral skills, and that reading should become the focus. Thus schools returned in the 1930s and 1940s to Grammar Translation, "the handmaiden of reading" (Bowen et al. 1985).

The outbreak of World War II thrust the United States into a worldwide conflict, heightening the need for Americans to become orally proficient in the languages of both their allies and their enemies. The time was ripe for a language-teaching revolution. The U.S. military provided the impetus with funding for special, intensive language courses that focused on the aural/oral skills; these courses came to be known as the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), or, more colloquially, the "Army Method." Characteristic of these courses was a great deal of oral activity—pronunciation and pattern drills and conversation practice—with virtually none of the grammar and translation found in traditional classes. It was ironic that numerous foundation stones of the discarded Direct Method were borrowed and injected into this new approach. Soon, the success of the Army Method and the revived national interest in foreign languages spurred educational institutions to adopt the new methodology. In all its variations and adaptations, the Army Method came to be known in the 1950s as the Audiolingual Method.

The Audiolingual Method (ALM) was firmly grounded in linguistic and psychological theory. Structural linguists of the 1940s and 1950s were engaged in what they claimed was a "scientific descriptive analysis" of various languages; teaching methodologists saw a direct application of such analysis to teaching linguistic patterns (Fries 1945). (We will return to this particular theory-practice issue in Chapter 8.) At the same time, behavioristic psychologists advocated conditioning and habit-formation models of learning, which were perfectly married with the mimicry drills and pattern practices of audiolingual methodology.

The characteristics of the ALM may be summed up in the following list (adapted from Prator and Celce-Murcia 1979):

1. New material is presented in dialog form.

2. There is dependence on mimicry, memorization of set phrases, and overleaming.

3. Structures are sequenced by means of contrastive analysis and taught one at a time.

4. Structural patterns are taught using repetitive drills.

5. There is little or no grammatical explanation: grammar is taught by inductive analogy rather than deductive explanation.

6. Vocabulary is strictly limited and learned in context.

7. There is much use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids.

8. Great importance is attached to pronunciation.

9. Very little use of the mother tongue by teachers is permitted.

10.

Successful responses are immediately reinforced.

11. There is a great effort to get students to produce error-free utterances.

12. There is a tendency to manipulate language and disregard content.

For a number of reasons the ALM enjoyed many years of popularity, and even to this day, adaptations of the ALM are found in contemporary methodologies. The ALM was firmly rooted in respectable theoretical perspectives at the time. Materials were carefully prepared, tested, and disseminated to educational institutions. "Success" could be more overtly experienced by students as they practiced their dialogs in off-hours.

But the popularity did not last forever. Due in part to Wilga Rivers's (1964) eloquent exposure of the shortcomings of the ALM, and its ultimate failure to teach long-term communicative proficiency, its popularity waned. We discovered that language was not really acquired through a process of habit formation and over-learning, that errors were not necessarily to be avoided at all costs, and that structural linguistics did not tell us everything about language that we needed to know. While the ALM was a valiant attempt to reap the fruits of language teaching methodologies that had preceded it, in the end it still fell short, as all methods do. But we learned something from the very failure of the ALM to do everything it had promised, and we moved forward.

TOPICS AND QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

[Note: (I) individual work; (G) group or pair work; (C) whole-class discussion.]

1. (G/C) Each group or pair should be assigned one of the seven common arguments (page 50) cited by Stern (1970) that were used to justify analogies between first language learning and second language teaching. In the group, determine what is assumed or presupposed in the statement. Then reiterate the flaw in each analogy. Report conclusions back to the whole class for further discussion.

2. (C) Are there students in the class who were exposed to, or learned, second languages before puberty? What were the circumstances, and what difficulties, if any, were encountered? Has authentic pronunciation in the language remained to this day?

3. (C) Is there anyone in the class, or anyone who knows someone else, who started learning a second language after puberty and who nevertheless has an almost "perfect" accent? How did you assess whether the accent was perfect? Why do you suppose such a person was able to be so successful?

4. (I) In your words, write down the essence of Scovel's claim that the acquisition of a native accent around the age of puberty is an evolutionary left-over of sociobiological critical periods evident in many species of animals and birds. In view of widely accepted cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and interracial marriages today, how relevant is the biological claim for mating within the gene pool?

5. (G/C) In groups, try to determine the criteria for deciding whether or not someone is an authentic native speaker of your native language. In the process, consider the wide variety of "World Englishes" commonly spoken today. How clearly definitive can your criteria be? Talk about occupations, if any, in which a native accent is indispensable. Share with the rest of the class, and try to come to a consensus.

6. (G) In groups, talk about any cognitive or affective blocks you have experienced in your own attempts to learn a second language. What could you do (or what could you have done) to overcome those barriers?

7. (I) Summarize the ten "revisited" issues in your own words. How does your understanding of those issues, as they apply to second language learning, help you to formulate a better understanding of the total process of second language acquisition? Cite what you think might be
some practical classroom implications of the ten issues.

8. (C) Do you think it is worthwhile to teach children a second language in the classroom? If so, how might approaches and methods differ between a class of children and a class of adults?

LANGUAGE LEARNING EXPERIENCE: JOURNAL ENTRY 3

[Note: See pages 18 and 19 of Chapter 1 for general guidelines for writing a journal on a previous or concurrent language learning experience.]

· How good do you think your pronunciation of your foreign language is? Assuming you would not expect to be "perfect," what steps can you take (or could you have taken) to improve your pronunciation to a point of maximum clarity of articulation?

· Children might have some secrets of success: not monitoring themselves too much, not analyzing grammar, not being too worried about their egos, shedding inhibitions, not letting the native language interfere much. In what way did you, or could you, put those secrets to use in your ownlearning?

· In learning a foreign language, were any aspects (such as listening discrimination exercises, pronunciation drills, learning grammar rules, smallgroup conversations, reading, or writing) easier than others for you?Analyze.

· Do you think you might have some advantages over children in learninga foreign language? Speculate on what those advantages might be. Then, if possible, resolve to capitalize on them.

CHAPTER 4

HUMAN LEARNING

So far, in outlining a theory of second language acquisition, we have discovered that the cognitive domain of human behavior is of key importance in the acquisition of both a first and a second language. The processes of perceiving, attending, storing, and recalling are central to the task of internalizing a language. In this chapter we focus specifically on cognitive processes by examining the general nature of human learning. In the first part of the chapter, different learning theories are outlined. Then, we deal with some other universal learning principles. Finally, some current thoughts about aptitude and intelligence are presented.

LEARNING AND TRAINING

How do human beings learn? Are there certain basic principles of learning that apply to all learning acts? Is one theory of learning "better" than another? If so, how can you evaluate the usefulness of a theory? These and other important questions need to be answered in order to achieve an integrated understanding of second language acquisition.

Before tackling theories of human learning directly, consider the following situation as an illustration of sorting out cognitive considerations in any task in which you are trying to determine what it means to conclude that an organism has learned something. Suppose you have decided to train your somewhat untalented pet dog to catch frisbees in midair at a distance of thirty or more yards. What would you need to know about your dog and how would you go about the training program?

First, you will need to specify entry behavior: what your dog already "knows." What abilities does it possess upon which you, the trainer, can build? What are its drives, needs, motivations, limitations? Next, you need to formulate explicitly the goals of the task. You have a general directive; what are your specific objectives? How successfully and with what sort of "style points" must this dog perform? In what differing environments? You would also need to devise some methods of training. Based on what you know about entry behavior and goals of the task, how would you go about the training process? Where would you begin? Would you start at three feet? Place the frisbee in the dog's mouth? Would you use rewards? Punishment? What alternatives would you have ready if the dog failed to learn? Finally, you would need some sort of evaluation procedure. How would you determine whether or not the dog had indeed learned what you set out to teach? You would need to determine short-term and long-term evaluation measures. If the dog performs correctly after one day of training, what will happen one month later? That is, will the dog maintain what it has learned?

Already a somewhat simple task has become quite complex with questions that require considerable forethought and expertise. But we are talking only about a dog performing a simple trick. If we talk about human beings learning a second language, the task is of course much, much more complex. Nevertheless, the questions and procedures that apply to you, the language teacher, are akin to those that applied to you, the dog trainer. You must have a comprehensive knowledge of the entry behavior of a person, of objectives you wish to reach, of possible methods that follow from your understanding of the first two factors, and of an evaluation procedure. These steps derive from your conception of how human beings learn, and that is what this chapter is all about.

In turning now to varied theories of how human beings learn, consider once again the definition of learning given in Chapter 1:" acquiring or getting of knowledge of a subject or a skill by study, experience, or instruction," or "a relatively permanent change in a behavioral tendency, . . . the result of reinforced practice." When we consider such definitions, it is clear that one can understand learning in many different ways, which is why there are so many different theories, extended definitions, and schools of thought on the topic of learning.

We nowfocus on how psychologists have defined learning, and we will look at these theories through the eyes of four psychologists, two representing a behavioristic viewpoint (Pavlov and Skinner), one representing a rational/cognitive stance (Ausubel), and one that stretches into what could be loosely defined as a constructivist school of thought (Rogers). The four positions should illustrate not only some of the history of learning theory, but also the diverse perspectives that form the foundations of varying language teaching approaches and methods.

PAVLOV'S CLASSICAL BEHAVIORISM

Certainly the best-known classical behaviorist is the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, who at the turn of the century conducted a series of experiments in which he trained a dog to salivate to the tone of a tuning fork through a procedure that has come to be labeled classical conditioning For Pavlov the learning process consisted of the formation of associations between stimuli and reflexive responses. All of us are aware that certain stimuli automatically produce or elicit rather specific responses or reflexes, and we have also observed that sometimes that reflex occurs in response to stimuli that appear to be indirectly related to the reflex. Pavlov used the salivation response to the sight or smell of food (an unconditioned response) in many of his pioneering experiments. In the classical experiment he trained a dog, by repeated occurrences, to associate the sound of a tuning fork with salivation until the dog acquired a conditionedresponse: salivation at the sound of the tuning fork. A previously neutral stimulus (the sound of the tuning fork) had acquired the power to elicit aresponse (salivation) that was originally elicited by another stimulus (the smell of meat).