the handbook for language teaching methodology

However, the book supplements the Project Modules and serves as a concise reference material on the theory of the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages.. Prabhu, the famous

Maya Pentcheva Todor Shopov

Whole Language, Whole Person

A Handbook of Language Teaching Methodology

Viseu, 2003

Passagem Editores ISBN 972-98770-0-9

Chapter 2: Exploring Language Teaching Methods 35

2.1 Period I: Direct Language Teaching 35

2.2 Period II: Audio-lingual Teaching and the Innovative Methods of

the 1970s 37

2.3 Period III: Communicative Language Teaching 41

Chapter 3: Paradigm Shift in Education 47

3.1 Changing the Focus of Education 47

3.2 A Teaching Paradigm to Meet Psychosocial Needs 50

3.3 Factors of Cooperative Learning 53

3.4 Cooperative Language Learning 56

Chapter 4: The Language Curriculum 59

4.1 Constructivism 60

4.2 The General versus Specific Course Conjecture 63

4.3 Random Access Instruction in Complex and Ill-structured

Domains 65

4.4 Language Curriculum as a Knowledge Strategic Hypertext 66 4.5 Instead of a Conclusion 70

References 71

Foreword

This book is written within the framework of the Exchange to Change

Project We have been trying the find out what the methodological

implications of the awareness resulting from reflective mobility are Is there any “methodological value” added in result of the visiting and welcoming experiences of language teachers and learners in mobility? Our aim is to offer some orientation into the general educational concerns of the Project The task is formidable It is the focus of many different lines of exploration

In his poem “Little Gidding”, No 4 of Four Quarters, T S Eliot puts it in

this way:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time

Yet, this is an optimistic book At some moments in history, professional spheres are susceptible to important change We believe that we want and can cross the threshold of “exchange to change” and step into the realm of educational promises fulfilled

The title indicates our holistic approach to the analysis and synthesis of the

concepts of language, personality, methodology, communication and comprehension, etc This approach emphasizes the priority of the whole over

inter-its parts We hold that language teaching and learning is a complex

knowledge domain, characterized by network of relationships in a social and

cultural context In addition, we believe that methodology is an

interdisciplinary field, which cannot be understood in isolation Our

perspective sees it in terms of its relations to other knowledge domains

We shall look into a range of issues, which are not only interesting

themselves, but also relevant to the objectives of the Project and, hopefully,

to the Reader The nature and extent of the relevance is difficult, if not

impossible, to determine a priori However, the book supplements the

Project Modules and serves as a concise reference material on the theory of the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages Methodological literature is of course extensive, so we shall be pointing out some of the good books on the topics presented

We have just mentioned the term “foreign language”; throughout the book

we shall use it interchangeably with the term “second language” Here, we shall consider them synonymous albeit we realize that they can be easily distinguished In the literature, “second language” usually refers to a target language that is being taught in the country where it is the dominant

language, whereas “foreign language” usually refers to a target language that

is being taught in the country where it is not the dominant language

However, we do not find this distinction quite relevant for the focus of this book

A decade ago, N S Prabhu, the famous Indian methodologist, pointed out that language teaching faced three major problems, “(1) the measurement of language competence involves elicitation (in some form) of specific

language behaviour but the relationship between such elicited behaviour and language competence which manifests itself in natural use is unclear, (2) given the view that the development of linguistic competence is a holistic process, there is not enough knowledge available either to identify and

assess different intermediate stages of that development or to relate those stages to some table of norms which can be said to represent expectations, and (3) there is, ultimately, no way of attributing with any certainty any specific piece of learning to any specific teaching: language learning can take place independently of teaching intentions and it is impossible to tell what has been learnt because of some teaching, and what in spite of it”

(Prabhu 1987, 8) Many things have happened in the field of language

teaching methodology since then For example, the Common European

Framework of Reference (Council of Europe 1996 and 1998) was published, European Language Council (http://www.fu-berlin.de/elc) was founded, European Language Portfolio (Scharer 1999) was launched and so on

Nonetheless, Prabhu‟s claims are still valid We shall focus on a range of questions in the light of modern methodological developments trying to state the scientific facts Our own opinion emerges in the discussion now and then, though We hope our fortuitous academic bias will be understood

The book is written in English and our examples come from English but we

do not intend to promote a lingua Adamica restituta We believe in

plurilingualism and pluriculturalism and our inadequacy is only because of our teleological prudence The book is a collaborative effort but the

responsibility of the authors is individual Maya Pencheva wrote Chapter 1 and Todor Shopov prepared Chapters 2, 3 and 4

Chapter 1 offers a theoretical orientation into the philosophical foundations

of methodology Cognitive and other principles of language teaching and learning are discussed It is claimed that the Picture of the World, which we all keep in our minds, determines the way we speak This relativistic

perspective and other ideas have found different applications in teaching They are explored in Chapter 2 It is a brief historical overview of teaching methods The three major periods of the development of methodology in the twentieth century are presented Chapter 3 discusses the more specific theme

of the approach level of teaching methods The authors argue that

educational paradigm shift has had a pronounced impact on language

methodology Particular plans for a language curriculum, which constitutes the relatively concrete design level of teaching methods, are made in

Chapter 4 The question of modern curriculum design and development is examined in it The book functions as a whole text We recommend that the reader speed-read the book first Then, the appropriate readings can be

selected easily However, the reader can approach it as a compendium,

browsing only through the relevant sections

We want to acknowledge the encouragement and support extended to us by many people We have had the good fortune to work with Filomena

Capucho of Universidade Catolica Portuguesa – Centro Regional das Beiras Polo de Viseu, PT, Project General Coordinator, and our Partners from

Hogskolan Kalmar, SE, Centro de Professores y Recursos de Salamanca,

ES, Centro de Professores y Recursos de Vitigudino, ES, Institut Universaire

de Formation des Maitres d‟Auvergne, FR, Skarup Statsseminarium, DK and Universitat Salzburg, AT We also wish to acknowledge our deep sense

of indebtedness to our colleagues at the Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski, BG Our work would have hardly been possible without the order introduced in the system by Alex Fedotoff We are especially grateful to Peter Hanenberg of Universidade Catolica Portuguesa – Centro Regional das Beiras Polo de Viseu, PT, who had the idea of this book first, for his example and help

To all these people, many thanks

Sofia, December 1999

Chapter 1: Principles of Teaching

In his Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, H Douglas Brown

notes that there are “…best of times and worst of times” in the language teaching profession (Brown 1994a) We can safely say that this is the best of times for the foreign language teacher Today, we know much about foreign language acquisition, about child acquisition of language, about cognitive processes, etc It is also very important that we have come to an appreciation

of the extreme complexity of this field This gives us cautious optimism to plunge even deeper into the problems

Foreign language teachers and educators are often confronted with the

question "What method or what system do you use in teaching a foreign language?" Most often the answer does not come easily or if one gives a straightforward answer, he risks to be subjected to criticism Teachers

always have to make choices These choices are motivated by the fact that they rest on certain principles of language learning and teaching Now that

we know much more about human language and its various aspects, we can make the next step and formulate at least some of these principles, which are based on what we know about language itself Often, swept by fashionable

theories or a desire to sound “scholarly”, we forget a simple truth – we, as

human beings, teach a human language to human beings “Students and

teachers of language”, says Osgood, “will discover the principles of their science in the universalities of humanness” (Osgood et al 1957, 301) A concise but true definition of man will probably include three major

characteristics: (i) one who can reflect and interpret the world around him; (ii) one who can express feelings; and (iii) one who can use language These characteristics underlie three major principles of language teaching and learning Well known and novice teaching techniques can be subsumed under these three headings Multiplicity of techniques can be brought down

to a number of methods and the methods reduced to a number of principles Mastering a great number of teaching techniques will not save you in new situations, “not predicted” by the theory but predictable It will not give you the all-important ability to rationalize what you are doing and why are you doing it To do that one must be aware of deeper principles of language acquisition and use, stemming from the foundations of human language as such

1.1 Cognitive Principles

We shall call the first set of principles “cognitive” because they relate to mental, intellectual and psychological faculties in operating with language It should be made clear, however, that the three types of principles described

in this chapter, cognitive, social and linguistic principles, do not exist as if in

three watertight compartments but rather spill across each other to make up the most remarkable ability of man – the linguistic ability

It is no wonder that the achievements of modern cognitive science have found such a warm and fast response in linguistics Some of the postulates of cognitive science today are crucial to our understanding of how language operates and how we acquire this ability, respectively Because one of the most difficult questions in foreign language acquisition and child acquisition

of language is, How is it possible that children at an early age and adults, late in their life, can master a system of such immense complexity? Is it only

a matter of memory capacity and automatic reproduction or is there

something else that helps us acquire a language?

Let us begin with some long established postulates of foreign language

acquisition and see what cognitive theory has to say about them

(1) Automaticity of Acquisition

No one can dispute the fact that children acquire a foreign language quickly and successfully This ease is commonly attributed to children‟s ability to

acquire language structures automatically and subconsciously, that is,

without actually analyzing the forms of language themselves They appear to learn languages without “thinking” about them This has been called by B McLaughlin “automatic processing” (McLaughlin 1990) In order to operate with the incredible complexity of language both children and adult learners

do not process language “unit by unit” but employ operations in which

language structures and forms (words, affixes, endings, word order,

grammatical rules, etc.) are peripheral The Principle of Automaticity, as stated above, aims at an “automatic processing of a relatively unlimited number of language forms” Overanalyzing language, thinking too much about its forms tend to impede the acquisition process This leads to the

recommendation to teachers to focus on the use of language and its

functional aspects But focus on use and functionality presupposes

meaningful learning, which is in strong contradiction with automaticity What is more, one major characteristic both of child acquisition and adult

learning of foreign languages is the phenomenon called hypercorrection

Again hypercorrection cannot exist without meaningful analysis of language structures and their “classification” into “regular patterns” and “exceptions” with respect to a language function

(2) Meaningful Learning

Meaningful learning “subsumes” new information into existing structures and memory systems The resulting associative links create stronger

retention “Children are good meaningful acquirers of language because they

associate…words, structures and discourse elements with that which is

relevant and important in their daily quest for knowledge and survival”

(Brown 1994b, 18) We must pay special attention to this sentence of H D Brown, especially the last words, underlined here It will be relevant in our argument in favor of the cognitive principles of language acquisition One of the recommendations for classroom application of Meaningful Learning is also of relevance to our further argument in this direction It states

“Whenever a new topic or concept is introduced, attempt to anchor it in students‟ existing knowledge and background so that it gets associated with something they already know”

Some thirty-five years ago, a new science was born Now called “Cognitive Science”, it combines tools from psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, child psychology, and neurobiology to explain the workings of human intelligence Linguistics, in particular, has seen spectacular advances

in the years since There are many phenomena of language that we are

coming to understand

Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell the time Instead, it is a distinct characteristic of our brains Language is a

complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child For that reason

cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological and mental

faculty The idea that thought is the same thing as language is an example of

what can be called a conventional absurdity Now that cognitive scientists know how to think about thinking, there is less of a temptation to equate it with language and we are in a better position to understand how language works

In essence, to reason is to deduce new pieces of knowledge from old ones But “knowledge” is something complex, the product of social and cultural

experience from living in a particular “world” In his Philosophy of

Language, Wilhelm von Humboldt claims that speaking a language means

living in a specific conceptual domain Acquiring a foreign language means entering a new conceptual domain This statement poses a major problem or

perhaps the major problem of acquiring a foreign language – are these

conceptual domains so different that they are incompatible? Or there are certain mechanisms by which we can make transitions from the one into the other?

We shall present arguments in support of the second decision The pivotal question is how we interpret Humboldt‟s conceptual domains We will refer

to them by the term Picture of the World, initially used in analyzing

mythology and today employed by cognitive science The word “picture”, though usually used metaphorically, expresses truly the essence of the

phenomenon – it is a picture, not a mirror reflection, or a snapshot of the

world around us Like any other picture, it presupposes a definite point of view or the attitude of its creator It involves interpretation, representations

of the world from various angles (the so- called “facet viewing”) This of course implies the possibility to have a number of different pictures of one object What is important here is that our conceptualization of the world is not “an objective reflection of reality”, but a subjective picture, which

reflects our views, beliefs, and attitudes “Subjective” in the sense of the collective interpretation or point of view of a society or cultural and

linguistic community This picture explicates the relativity of human

cognition In semiotics it goes under the name of “passive” cultural

memory Cognitive science, however, rejects the qualification “passive” and claims that Pictures of the World are actively and currently structured by common cognitive models In connection with Humboldt‟s statement, it is possible to pass from one picture of the world into another by means of a set

of universal cognitive mechanisms This is crucial for explaining foreign language acquisition But what are those mechanisms? And what is the

nature of the evidence?

Our conceptual system or Picture of the World is not something that we are normally aware of But human language is an important source of evidence for what a picture of the world is like On the basis of linguistic evidence we can say that most of our everyday conceptual system is metaphorical in nature Cognitive science explains the essence of metaphor as understanding

and experiencing one thing in terms of another The first thing is called Target Domain (what we want to express) and the second one is called

Source Domain (by means of which we express the first) We can use, as an example, the way we conceive of time in our everyday life Let us have the following linguistic expressions:

You are wasting my time

This gadget will save you hours

How do you spend your time?

That flat tyre will cost me an hour

I’m running out of time

The central postulate of cognitive science is that metaphorical transfer is not just a matter of language, of mere words Human thought processes are largely metaphorical Metaphor means metaphorical concepts And these are specifically structured If we generalize the examples above, we come up

with the metaphor /TIME IS MONEY/ This metaphor entails the treatment

of time as a limited resource and a valuable commodity The examples

demonstrate one type of metaphorical transfer – structural metaphor

On the more linguistic side of the problem, when metaphorical concepts become lexicalized, they help a variety of people understand what the

concepts mean In other words, they have a certain didactic role Metaphors

in computer terminology, for example, aid users speaking different

languages but using English to understand and remember new concepts At the same time they allow users to associate unfamiliar concepts with old ones, thereby helping to palliate technostress “User friendliness” of

computer metaphorical terms can be illustrated by the numerous examples found in the vocabulary of user interfaces – e.g desktop, wallpaper, and menu, to mention just a few It appears that conceptual domains are shaped

by several themes The domain of the Internet features several conceptual themes Most of these are based on the functions that the Internet is

perceived to have: (1) helping people “move” across vast distances; (2) facilitate communication; and (3) send and store data The following

metaphorical domains can present these themes:

1 Transportation

The theme of transportation dominates Internet terminology, specified

sometimes as marine navigation, highway transportation:

to navigate/cruise/surf the Internet (or the Web)

internaut

cybersurfer

anchor

information highway, data highway

to ride/get on the Internet

Some metaphorical terms have spawned numerous conceptually related ones

by metaphorical extension Gopher, for example, has given rise to

Gopherspace, Gopher hole The famous desktop metaphor has given rise to files, folders, trash cans The mouse metaphor has generated mouse trails

and so on

A different type of metaphorical model is the second one, which organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another – the so-called

orientation metaphor They rely on bodily experience: up-down, in-out,

front-back, deep-shallow, center-periphery, etc Such orientation metaphors are grounded in physical perception and hence universal For example:

Thinking about her gives me a lift I’m depressed

flue

I have control over the situation He is under my control

He’s climbing the social ladder fast He is at the bottom of the

social hierarchy

His arguments rose above emotions Discussion fell to the

emotional level

The third type of metaphor is called ontological Cognitive science has it

that we understand our experience in terms of objects and substances This allows us to pick fragments of our experience and treat them as discrete entities or substances Thus, we interpret the human mind as a material

object with specific properties - the /MIND IS A MACHINE/ metaphor:

My mind just isn’t operating today

I’m a little rusty today

The experience shattered her

He is easily crushed

He broke under cross-examination

The conception of /MIND IS A MACHINE/ also enables us to view mind

as having an off-state, a level of efficiency, productive capacity, internal mechanisms, etc What is more, and it is very important, we view both

conceptual domains (The Mind and The Machine) as internally structured,

so that we can make transfers not only between the domains as a whole but also between parts of these domains This process is known as “metaphorical mapping” In this way, when we use a metaphorical model, we can also use elements of that model with the same effect Let‟s illustrate this with an example:

/LIFE IS A JOURNEY/

The mapping between the two domains is not simple The structure of

Journey includes, for example, point of departure, path to destination, means

of transportation, co-travelers, obstacles along the way to destination,

crossroads, etc It is amazing how our concept of life repeats all the details

of our concept of journeys What is much more amazing, however, is not that we have many metaphors for life, but that we have just a few They are among the basic metaphors we live by

Basic metaphors are limited in number Among them are:

/STATES ARE LOCATIONS/

/EVENTS ARE ACTIONS/

/PEOPLE ARE PLANTS/

/PEOPLE ARE CONTAINERS/

/LIFE IS A PRECIOUS POSSESSION/

/DEATH IS SLEEP/REST/ < /STATES ARE LOCATIONS/

We understand the Source Domains of basic metaphors relying on our

everyday experience – bodily experience and social experience This means that they are not independent of thinking and cognition

What motivates our ability to create and understand metaphorical structures? According to cognitive science, these are cognitive and psychological

characteristics, which are elements of our species specific as human beings They are:

(1) Our ability to create structures in concepts that do not exist

independent of the metaphor, i.e our ability for modeling,

(2) Our ability to choose and explicate optional elements from

conceptual structures,

(3) Our ability to make conclusions and inferences,

(4) Our ability to evaluate and transfer evaluations of elements of the Source Domain onto the Target Domain

Our mental ability for modeling enables us to operate easily with extremely complex conceptual structures A very good example is the notion of

„mother‟ It comprises six sub-models:

Mother is the one who feeds and cares for the baby

Mothers stay at home and care for the family

Sub-models (i), (iii), and (iv) form the core of the concept They build the

stereotype image of a mother Sub-models (i), (ii), and (v) describe what a

mother is “objectively” (biologically) And (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) describe

what a mother normally is, i.e the prototypical mother This prototype

remains stable cross-culturally All six sub-models describe the ideal

mother This ideal changes historically and across cultures

Thus, we operate with several images The most important are the stereotype and the ideal Very often they have separate linguistic expressions Thus in English we distinguish between the biological and the ideal father We can normally ask

Who is the child’s father?

but not

*Who is the child’s daddy?

because the ideal implies caring for the family and being married to the child‟s mother In the „mother‟ concept the biological and the social are inseparable All deviations from the model are interpreted as highly marked, i.e exceptions from the ideal For that reason they are consistently marked linguistically:

I On the diachronic level

There is a marked parallelism between current English metaphors and

models of semantic change Living metaphors and semantic change are related and mutually reinforcing This explains the commonality of such metaphors in the Indo-European languages through time By using cognitive

models we can explain but also teach the established one-way directions of

semantic change For example, Indo-European languages follow consistently certain metaphorical transfers:

1 /MENTAL ACTIVITY IS MOTION IN PHYSICAL SPACE/,

e.g report

< Latin „carry back‟

refer

This direction of semantic change is paralleled by the existence of

synchronic metaphorical schemes in which physical motion is used as the Source Domain for more abstract notions like „time‟ or „mental activity‟ Shifts in the opposite direction are unknown

2 /MENTAL STATES ARE PHYSICAL PERCEPTION/,

e.g know < „see‟

remark < observe < „look closely at‟

3 /MENTAL STATES ARE PHYSICAL MOTION/,

e.g suppose „understand‟ < Latin sub + ponere „put under‟

4 /MENTAL STATES ARE MANIPULATION OF OBJECTS

IN SPACE/,

e.g comprehend < Latin „seize‟

grasp2 „understand‟ < grasp1 „ seize in the hand‟

get2 „understand‟ < get1 „acquire a physical entity‟

decide < Latin de + caedo „cut off from‟

confuse < Latin con + fundere „pour together, mix‟

prefer < Latin prae + ferre „carry before‟

deduce < Latin de + ducere „lead out from‟

infer < Latin in + fere „carry in‟

presume < Latin prae + sumere „take before‟

This is the most productive metaphor with „Mental state‟ verbs in English The manipulation with ideas is seen as holding, touching, moving, uniting, separating, arranging, and re-ordering them, like physical objects

5 /SPEECH COMMUNICATION IS SPATIAL RELATION/,

e.g propose < Latin pro + ponere „put forward‟

Data demonstrate a stable direction in meaning change: a) verbs of „Physical motion/location‟ > verbs of „Mental state‟/‟Speech acts‟; b) verbs of „Mental state‟ > verbs of „Speech acts‟, but never in the opposite direction Therefore

semantic change tends to move towards more personal meanings, meanings

closer to the Self

6 /SPEECH ACTS ARE MANIPULATION OF OBJECTS IN

SPACE/,

e.g admit < Latin ad + mittere „send to‟

assert < Latin ad + serere „connect to‟

ad- expressing „direction from speaker to hearer‟

reply < Latin re + plicare „feed back‟

refuse < Latin re + futare „beat back‟

re- expressing „direction from hearer to speaker‟

7 /MENTAL ACTIVITY/SPEECH ACT IS TRAVEL IN

SPACE/,

e.g We haven’t got anywhere in this conversation

Now we must go back to the main issue

Notice also the use of spatial prepositions both with „Speech act‟ and

„Mental activity‟ verbs:

This shows that we conceive of a speech act as a distance between the two communicating parties, a route along which ideas=objects can travel or be exchanged This is a replica of the model of „Physical action‟ verbs, with

their regular contrast between to and at prepositions:

e.g throw to talk to shout to

to, expressing active participation on the part of the receiver=hearer, a

successful completion of the trajectory of the action, and at, expressing an

inactive receiver=hearer

Since „Speech act‟ verbs involve exchange between two parties, i.e action,

they can also have a metaphorical variant like /SPEECH ACTS ARE

WARFARE/,

e.g concede < Latin con + cedere „give up‟

insist < Latin in + sistere „stand in‟

convince < Latin con + vincere „conquer together‟

II On the synchronic level

Synchronically, we can employ metaphorical transfer models to teach

semantic fields and explain semantic extension Thus, „Human emotions‟ can be explained through „Temperature‟, „Cooking activities‟, or „Colours‟,

burn with emotion

simmer with anger

be in a stew

Other spheres of language teaching or linguistic analysis where we can apply the same mechanism of explanation are synonymy, phraseology,

development of grammatical categories and forms of their expression,

predominant word order, etc We shall demonstrate the validity of this

approach in teaching grammar, using auxiliary verbs as an example

There is a stable tendency for a limited set of notional verbs, with specific meaning, to turn, over time, into auxiliary verbs of analytical constructions (the perfect tenses, the progressive tenses, and the future tense) The lexical sources for auxiliaries in such constructions usually include notions like:

PHYSICAL LOCATION: be + on/at/in + nominal form

MOVEMENT TO A GOAL: go(to)/come(to) + nominal form

DEVELOPMENT OF ACTION IN TIME: begin/become/finish +

nominal form

VOLITION: want/will + nominal form

OBLIGATION: must + verbal form

PERMISSION: let + verbal form

In other words, there is a “selectivity” with respect to the initial lexical

meaning of verbs that are likely to evolve into auxiliaries of analytical

constructions across languages Thus the initial meaning of 117 auxiliaries from 15 languages involve 20 lexical sources:

give

There are a number of immediate questions that arise Is this “rule of

auxiliation” due to pure coincidence; does it result from geographic or

genetic closeness of languages; or could this be the reflection of some

fundamental cognitive principle that gets actualized in linguistic structure?

We can postulate that this process of auxiliation is the reflection of a basic principle in human conceptualization, namely that abstract notions are

conceptualized by means of a limited number of concrete basic concepts

We can make an even stronger claim that lexical sources for grammatization

in general involve notions basic to human experience (bodily and social) that provide central reference points

1.2 Social Principles

We now turn our attention to those principles of language acquisition that are central to human beings as social entities We shall look at the concept of self and self-awareness, at relationships in a community (of speakers and learners), at the relationships between language and culture

In speaking, learning and teaching a language we are taking part in one of the wonders of the world For we all belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events and ideas in each other‟s brains The ability is language Language is not just any cultural invention but the product of society and culture, and the ability of man to cope with them and to create them But it is much more than that There must be something, then, that makes language accessible to all, manageable and flexible enough to

accommodate various cultures and societies, and to be the most widely used instrument in interpersonal relations

(1) The Self and Self-awareness

One of the products of social development is the formation of the concept

of self and awareness of the ego, which model a specific pattern of linguistic

behaviour and structure of linguistic categories In the context of the

problems discussed here, this touches onto the old and widely disputed idea

of language relativity, i.e the idea that the structure of our mother tongue

and its categories, which are a reflection of our way of life and the

environment, give particular shape to our way of thinking That is, speaking

a particular language, you are also a particular linguistic self As human

beings learn a foreign language, they also develop a new mode of thinking and acting – they enter a new identity But this new “language ego”,

intertwined with the new language itself, can create a sense of uncertainty, defensiveness, even humiliation, and raise inhibitions Learners can feel this because the arsenals of their native-language egos may be suddenly useless

in developing a “second self”

The foreign language teacher is the major factor in the formation of this

“second self” His choice of techniques needs to be cognitively challenging

to achieve the accommodation of the learner to his “new world” If the

student is learning the foreign language in the milieu of the country where it

is spoken, then he is likely to experience an “identity crisis” To avoid this the teacher must “create” appropriate “natural” situations for the learner so that he can practice his new identity

Let us take one ordinary example – learning to write compositions in

English Students whose teachers urge them to reduce the number of times they use the pronoun “I” in their essays (or, conversely, encourage the use of

“I”) may be surprised to discover that in some cultures this grammatical choice has profound cultural and even political connotations A Chinese student is taught to use always “we” instead of “I” lest he give the

impression of being selfish and individualistic Starting to study English he required to “imagine looking at the world with his head upside down” and to invent a new “English self” that could use the pronoun “I” Learning to write

an essay in English is not an isolated classroom activity, but a social and cultural experience Learning the rules of English essay writing is, to a

certain extent, learning the values of Anglo-American society Writing

essays in English, a Chinese student has to “reprogram” his mind, to

redefine some of the basic concepts and values that he had about himself, about society

Rule number one in English composition writing is: “Be yourself” But writing many “I‟s” is only the beginning of the process of redefining oneself

By such a redefinition is meant not only the change of how one envisioned oneself, but also a change in how he perceived the world The Chinese

student gradually creates his new “English Self”

(2) The Language-Culture Connection

Everyone knows what is supposed to happen when two Englishmen who have never met before come face to face in a railway compartment – they start talking about the weather By talking to the other person about some neutral topic like the weather, it is possible to strike up a relationship with him without actually having to say very much Conversations of this kind are

a good example of the sort of important social function that is often fulfilled

by language By trying to master this function of language, the learner is building part of his new language identity

It is well known, and often humorously exaggerated, that the British always

talk about the weather In his famous book, How To Be an Alien, George

Mikes (1970) discusses the weather as the first and most important topic for

a person who wants to learn English Here is his comment:

“This is the most important topic in the land Do not be misled by memories

of your youth when, on the Continent, wanting to describe someone as

exceptionally dull, you remarked: „He is the type who would discuss the weather with you.‟ In England, this is an ever-interesting, even thrilling topic, and you must be good at discussing the weather

EXAMPLES FOR CONVERSATION

For Good Weather

„Lovely day, isn‟t it?‟

„Isn‟t it beautiful?‟

„The sun…‟

„Isn‟t it gorgeous?‟

„Wonderful, isn‟t it?‟

„It‟s so nice and hot…‟

„Personally, I think it‟s so nice when it‟s hot – isn‟t it?‟

„I adore it – don‟t you?‟

For Bad Weather

„Nasty day, isn‟t it?‟

„Isn‟t it dreadful?‟

„The rain…I hate rain…‟

„I don‟t like it at all Do you?‟

„Fancy such a day in July Rain in the morning, then a bit of sunshine, and then rain, rain, rain, all day long.‟

„I remember exactly the same July in 1936.‟

„Yes, I remember too.‟

„Or was it in 1928?‟

„Yes, it was.‟

„Or in 1939?‟

„Yes, that‟s right.‟

Now, observe the last few sentences of this conversation A very important rule emerges from it You must never contradict anybody when discussing the weather in England Should it hail and snow, should hurricanes uproot trees, and should someone remark to you: „Nice day, isn‟t it?‟ – answer without hesitation: „Isn‟t it lovely?‟”

And here is Mikes‟ advice to the learner of English:

“Learn the above conversations by heart If you are a bit slow in picking things up, learn at least one conversation, it would do wonderfully for any occasion.”

All this is of course a very good joke but it says much about the British and their social behaviour Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling and acting A teacher must necessarily attract his students‟ attention to the cultural connotations, especially of socio-linguistic aspects of language An easy way to do this is to discuss cross-cultural differences with the students, emphasising that no culture is “better” than another What is important in such a discussion is to make them aware that they will never master the foreign language without “entering a new world” or “acquiring a new self”

A second aspect of the language – culture connection is the extent to which the students will be affected by the process of acculturation, which will vary with the context and the goals of learning In many language-learning

contexts such as ESL, students are faced with the full-blown realities of adapting to life in a foreign country, complete with varying stages of

acculturation Then, cultural adaptation, social distance, and psychological adjustment are also factors to deal with The success with which learners adapt to a new cultural milieu will affect their language acquisition success, and vice versa, in some significant ways

We cannot be certain that all the functions of language described in

linguistic literature are to be found in all cultures The relative importance of these different functions may vary from culture to culture, their distribution may vary For anyone to participate in the life of a community he has to be able to communicate and be communicated to That is why the learner is learning a language This does not mean that the range of functions aimed at

by a foreign language learner will be that at the command of the native

speaker A language learner may know exactly what he wants the foreign language for, or he may have no clear idea at all But for many teaching operations we need to specify the aims

Our ability to participate as members of social and language communities depends upon our control of linguistic and other behaviour considered

appropriate The learner of a foreign language is preparing to use that

language for certain purposes, in certain roles and in certain situations Many writers speak of the linguistic needs of the learner in terms of roles he may assume The primary role ascribed to him will be that of foreigner, in which his communicative needs are normally going to be more restricted than those

of the native speaker In preparing a teaching programme or choosing a teaching strategy, we have to take into account what the learner‟s needs may

be and we must do so in terms of the social situations she is going to have to participate in, perhaps not as a “full member” but as a “foreign associate” In this connection, it is appropriate to remind again of the wonderful book of George Mikes containing valuable advice to foreigners not to pretend to be native speakers Here is what Mikes says about foreigners, trying to acquire

“perfect” English and sound like native speakers

“In the first week after my coming to England I picked up a tolerable working knowledge of the language and the next seven years convinced me gradually but thoroughly that I would never know it really well, let alone perfectly This is sad My only consolation being that nobody speaks English perfectly

If you live here long enough you will find out to your greatest

amazement that the adjective nice is not the only adjective the language

possesses, in spite of the fact that in the first three years you do not need to learn or use any other adjective

Then you have to decide on your accent You will have your foreign accent all right, but many people like to mix it with something else The easiest way to give the impression of having a good accent or no foreign

accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your

teeth and finish your sentences with the question: „isn’t it?‟ People will not

understand much, but they are accustomed to that and they will get the most excellent impression

The most successful attempts to put on a highly cultured air have been

on the polysyllabic line Many foreigners, who have learned Latin and Greek

in school, discover with amazement and satisfaction that the English

language has absorbed a huge amount of ancient Greek and Latin

expressions, and they realize that (a) it is much easier to learn these

expressions than the much simpler English words; (b) that these words are as

a rule interminably long and make a simply superb impression when talking

to the greengrocer…”

1.3 Linguistic Principles

The last category of principles of language learning and teaching centres on language itself and on how learners deal with this complex and ill-formed system (see Chapter 4)

Earlier in this century, Edward Sapir wrote: “When it comes to linguistic form, Plato walks with the Macedonian swineherd, Confucius with the head-hunting savage of Assam.” There is a considerable knowledge available about the nature of human language Linguistics provides a growing body of scientific knowledge about language, which can guide the activity of the language teacher Linguists can make and have made great contributions to the solution of some of the problems

Language is such a complex phenomenon that it cannot be fully accounted for within one consistent and comprehensive theory For this reason, when asked the question "What is language?" the linguist is likely to reply by asking another question "Why do you want to know?" If we teach language, the way we approach the task will be influenced, or even determined, by what we believe language to be There is generally a close connection

between the way we talk about something and the way we regard it

Linguists, especially, often talk about how language “works” The linguistic approach to language is the most “objectivising” approach: it is concerned with language as a system; it aims to elucidate the structure of language To

do this it has set up various “levels of description” These levels bear such familiar names as syntax, morphology, phonology and phonetics, lexis and semantics, pragmatics, etc

The study of language is beset by the difficulty that it deals with something utterly familiar Everybody “knows” about language, because they use it all the time The problem of studying phenomena like language is to separate it from ourselves, to achieve a “psychic distance” (Chomsky 1968)

Perhaps the most cogent criticism of traditional language teaching with its insistence on correctness, the rules of grammar, and its limited objectives, is that it lacked the socio-cultural dimension Little thought seems to have been given to the notion of appropriateness, to the way that language behaviour is responsive to differing social situations It is one of the great values of

modern language teaching that it adopts a more social approach to language, and it is concerned with the problems of its communicative function

The relevance of the linguistic approach to language teaching is too obvious

to need much discussion here One point must be mentioned, however

Modern teachers of language are actually teaching their students not only the

language but also about language Modern linguistics requires that a

grammar should accord with a native speaker‟s intuitions about language This formulates a new goal for linguistic theory Now linguists describe what native speakers conceive to be the nature of their language The

emphasis has shifted from the nature of language data to the nature of the human capacity, which makes it possible to produce the language data

Some linguists, Chomsky among them, would claim that the objectives of the linguistic study of language have always implicitly been the

characterization of the internalized set of rules by a speaker-hearer (and learner) when he uses language Such linguists do not study what people do when they speak and understand language, but seek to discover the rules

underlying this performance This is what Chomsky calls competence

(1966a, 9): "A distinction must be made between what the speaker of a

language knows implicitly (what we may call his competence) and what he does (his performance) A grammar, in the traditional view, is an account of competence"

The speaker‟s competence, then, can be characterized as a set of rules for producing and understanding sentences in a language The grammar of a language, thus, in its linguistic sense, is a characterization of the native

speaker‟s competence All speakers of a language vary slightly in the rules they follow, as well, of course, as in their performance When we are

teaching a foreign language, we are trying to develop in the learner not just

grammatical competence, in the Chomskyan sense, but communicative

competence We are teaching him or her not only what we call “the

formation rules” of the language, but also in addition, what Hymes has

called “the speaking rules” The learner must develop the ability to

distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical sequences, but he must also know when to select a particular grammatical sequence, appropriate to the context, both linguistic and situational

Different functions of language can be associated with the factors involved

in a speech act – the speaker, the hearer, contact between them, the linguistic code used, the topic and the form of the message If the orientation is

towards the speaker, then we have the personal function of language It is through this function that the speaker reveals his attitude towards what he is speaking about It is not just that he expresses his thoughts and emotions through language, but his emotions and attitudes at what he is talking about

Hearer-oriented speech acts involve the directive function of language It is the function of controlling the behaviour of a participant This can be done

by command, request or warning, or by some general admonitory statement,

by invoking legal, moral or customary rules of society

Where the focus is on the contact between the participants, speech functions

to establish relations, maintain them, or promote social solidarity These are typically ritual, or formulaic speech acts: leave-taking, greetings, remarks about the weather, inquiries about health, etc This function, sometimes

called phatic, is also performed or supported by gestures, facial expression

The topic-oriented function of speech, often called the referential function,

is that which usually stands first in people‟s minds It is the function that gave rise to the traditional notion that language was created solely for the communication of thought, for making statements about how the speaker perceives the way things in the world are

There are two more functions, associated with the code used and the

message They are the most difficult to formulate We usually test them by asking the questions "Do you hear me?" and "Do you follow?"

(1) The Native Language Effect

S Pit Corder claims that when people learn a second language they are not acquiring language, they already possess it The learning of a second

language is rather a question of increasing a repertoire, or learning a set of alternatives for something they already know The assumption then is that some of the rules they already know are also used in the production and understanding of the second language This is what is meant by “transfer” Learners transfer what they already know Making errors in the second

language can, in part, be explained by the notion of transfer It is also called

“negative transfer” or interference But this tendency of transfer can be also positive (facilitation) It is just as well that different languages do, in fact,

have resemblances to each other On this account, it has to be established what is different between the mother tongue and the foreign language

Describing language, or part of language, is part of the process of

developing linguistic theory itself But we must now outline the hierarchy of applications of linguistics to language teaching There are a number of

stages in the application of linguistics to language teaching The first has already been identified as that of linguistic description The second is

concerned with operations performed on the descriptions of language Each stage has the function of answering some questions or solving some

problems relevant to language teaching Thus, the application of first order answers the very general question: what is the nature of the language, which

is to be taught? The next stage answers the question: what is to be taught and how is it to be taught? The criteria for selecting material for language

teaching are various: utility to the learner, that is, selecting what he needs to know, his proposed repertoire – those varieties of the language which will

be useful to him, those speech functions which he will need to command Or

we can invoke the criterion of difference In a sense, all parts of the foreign

language are different from the mother tongue But difference is relative Some parts will be more different than others For example, if the learner‟s mother tongue has no grammatical system of aspect, the learning of such a system presents a serious learning task Where the learner‟s mother tongue, however, has such a system, the size of the learning problem will depend on

the nature and degree of difference A third criterion might be difficulty

What is different in the foreign language does not necessarily in all cases represent a difficulty For example, at the phonological level, what is so totally different from anything encountered in the mother tongue does not

seem to be so difficult to learn as something, which is liable to confusion with some similar feature in the mother tongue

The procedures and techniques involved in all these cases of application of linguistics to foreign language teaching are comparative This is called

interlingual comparison, or “contrastive” comparison (Contrastive

Analysis) The other type of comparison is often called Error Analysis The

errors performed by the learners may be an important part of the data on which the comparison is made But what is being compared in this case is not two existing and already known languages, but the language of the

learner at some particular point in the process of learning, with the target language A learner‟s so called errors are systematic, and it is precisely this regularity which shows that the learner is following a set of rules These rules are not those of the target language but a “transitional” from of

language, similar to the target language, but also similar to the learner‟s mother tongue (what Larry Selinker calls “interlanguage”)

(2) Language Universals

In the context of discussing similarities and differences between languages,

we must touch upon the theme of language universals and their place in foreign language teaching The 4,000 to 6,000 languages of the world do look impressively different from English and from one another On the other hand, one can also find striking uniformities In 1963 the linguist Joseph Greenberg examined a sample of 30 far-flung languages from five

continents Greenberg wanted to see if any properties of grammar could be found in all these languages In the first investigation, which focused on the order of words and morphemes, he found no fewer than forty-five universal features

Since then, many other surveys have been conducted, involving scores of languages from every part of the world, and literally hundreds of universal patterns have been documented Some hold absolutely For example, no language forms questions by reversing the order within a sentence, like

*Built Jack that house the this is? Some universals are statistical: subjects

normally precede objects in almost all languages, and verbs and their objects tend to be adjacent Thus most languages have SVO or SOV word order; fewer have VSO; VOS and OVS are rare (less than 1%); and OSV may be non-existent The largest number of universals involve implications: if a language has X, it will also have Y Universal implications are found in all

aspects of language, from phonology (if a language has nasal vowels, it will have non-nasal vowels) to word meanings (if a language has a word for

„purple‟, it will also have a word for „red‟; if a language has a word for „leg‟,

it will also have a word for „arm‟)

The knowledge of the existence of language universals may save some

procedures of comparison between the mother tongue and the foreign

language taught In the second place, it can be part of the teaching material (mostly implicitly) and the methods of explanation

(3) Linguistics in Structuring the Syllabus

A finished syllabus (cf Chapter 4) is the overall plan for the learning

process It must specify what components must be available, or learned by a certain time line; what is the most efficient sequence in which they are

learned; what items can be learned “simultaneously”; what items are already known

The structure of language is a “system of systems”, or a “network” of

interrelated categories, no part of which is wholly independent or wholly dependent upon another In language, nothing is learned completely until everything is learned If this is so, then no simple linear sequence for a

syllabus is appropriate A logical solution to this problem seems to be a cyclic, or spiral, structure, which requires the learner to return time and again to some aspects of language structure, language process, or domain of language use Language learning is not just cumulative, it is an integrative process In Chapter 4, we shall offer a new approach to syllabus/curriculum design

The major problem that faces us in syllabus organisation is whether to take the formal criteria as dominant, leaving alternative ways of expressing the same idea to some other part of the syllabus, or to base our grouping on semantic criteria The teaching of modal verbs is a perfect example of the dilemma Should we bring all alternative ways of expressing necessity,

obligation, possibility and probability, etc together into separate single units? In other words, are we going to regard „modal verbs‟, or alternatively

„the expression of obligation‟, as a syllabus item?

There is no simple answer to this problem The more we take account of semantic considerations, the more evident it becomes that the relationship

between meaning and surface form is a complex and indirect one At the time when less attention was paid to the whole problem of meaning, and language learning was thought of as a matter of acquiring the ability to

produce automatically „sentence patterns‟, it was logical (or was it?) to

group materials in a syllabus on the basis of superficial formal criteria But with the increasing emphasis on language learning as training the learner in communication, the relevance of semantic criteria in organising the

linguistic material increases We are now trying to classify the linguistic material in terms of more abstract semantic categories as time, deixis,

modality, aspectuality, futurity, possession, quantification, causation, etc

We have seen that the systematic interconnectedness of language makes it unrealistic to think of any item as teachable or learnable in isolation We should consider an item in a more general way, i.e as a process, or as some

grammatical category, such as tense or number

(a) The syntactic syllabus

Nowadays, descriptions of language give us a relatively satisfactory account

of the structure of the system to be learned, that is, a characterisation of the

„formation rules‟ of the language But we are concerned with more than this

in language teaching – we are concerned with performance ability There are some general types of syntactic processes, such as nominalisation,

relativisation or thematisation, passivisation, interrogativisation, negation, which could be regarded as „items‟ of performance ability in a syllabus Linguistically speaking, all these involve performing certain operations (b) The morphological syllabus

The most frequent claim for the appropriate application of sequencing,

otherwise denied in principle, is made at the level of morphology For

example, the verb "to have" and "to be" are used as auxiliaries in the

formation of perfect or progressive aspect Most logically, we must present and teach these verbs before introducing the formation of these aspectual forms This seems a good argument until we specify what we mean by

'„teaching'‟ the verbs to have and to be Learning a verb involves not only discovering the relations in enters into with nominals, whether it is transitive

or copulative, but also learning the morphological system together with their associated meanings: time, duration, completion, frequency, etc The

learning of something must surely involve the ability to use it acceptably, i.e

discover its functions The function of the auxiliary to be in the progressive aspect, or passive voice, is different from that of the verb to be in copulative structures To say that in teaching copulative sentences one is teaching the verb "to be" so that it can be available for later auxiliary use is a categorial error

(c) The lexical syllabus

In order to present and exemplify grammatical categories and syntactic

structures, we have to use lexical words This does not mean that the

teaching of vocabulary is logically dependent on the teaching of grammar

The teaching of vocabulary provides us with another concept of syllabus grouping – lexico-semantic An example of this could be the co-occurrence

of adverbs of past time, yesterday, last week, three years ago, etc., with tense verbs; or co-occurrence of verbs of speaking and believing, say, tell,

cry, believe, hope, expect, etc., with nominalised sentences of different

types

We must outline „the network of relations‟ which bind the vocabulary of a language into a structure It is possible to isolate „sub-fields‟ within the lexical structure of a language Such groupings of lexical items bearing more

or less close semantic relations to each other are usually called „semantic fields‟ Semantic fields provide groupings of the vocabulary, which could serve as „items in a syllabus‟ The field of cooking will be used as an

example Cooking words provide a good source of examples because there are clear reference relations that one can appeal to; the words do not

normally carry strong connotations, so we can concentrate on the cognitive meaning

The basic words in the culinary field in English are cook, bake, boil, roast,

fry, and broil (or grill for British English) The set also includes steam,

simmer, stew, poach, braise, sauté, French-fry, deep-fry, barbecue, grill and charcoal There are, in addition, a number of peripheral words: parboil, plank, shirr, scallop, flambere, rissoler and several compounds: steam-bake, pot-roast, oven-poach, pan-broil, pan-fry, oven-fry

It is more than obvious that not all of the words are widely used and need to

be included in the syllabus Some are even unknown to ordinary native

speakers of English Cook can be used in two ways – once as the

superordinate term of the field, naming the activity expressed („preparing

food‟), and second, as a more specific word opposed to bake Cook and bake

are the most general terms, they appear freely intransitively with human

subjects Boil and its subordinate terms (simmer, poach, stew, braise) differ

from the others in the field in that water or liquid must be used, whereas the

absence of liquid is necessary for fry, broil, roast and bake

It is easy to demonstrate the set of words of this kind as they pattern in

semantic fields But we must also add, and it is very important for language teaching, that this approach has a strong explanatory value – it enables us to predict and explain some semantic and cognitive processes in language First, it enables us to explain how is it that words come to have new

meanings in certain contexts Secondly, we can predict what semantic and syntactic features a totally new word will have when added to a lexical field And thirdly, we can offer an explanation as to how we are able to understand and even offer explanations of our understanding of the meanings of totally unknown words and expressions

The first question – the semantic extension of words – can be illustrated by

looking at the items hot-warm-cool-cold These exhibit more or less the same relationships to one another: Hot and cold are gradable antonyms at end points of a scale, and warm and cool are antonyms which are closer to some centre point that separates hot and cold All four words are used and

have standard meanings when talking about the weather, psycho-physical

features (I feel cold; This water feels cold to me), emotions (John has a hot

temper; My brother is a cold person; Our former warm friendship has

cooled), guessing games like „I spy‟, colours (You should paint this room a warm colour, like orange), etc Other fields of discourse use only one or two

words from the field: We speak of hot news items but not of a *cold or a

*cool news item, a cold war or a hot war, but not a *cool war or a *warm

war There is hot jazz and cool jazz but not *warm jazz One can get a hot tip

on a horse, but not a *cool tip

Since hot, warm, cool, and cold bear a certain relationship to one another,

even when a word does not possess a certain meaning, it can acquire a new one in a context by virtue of that relationship Hence, these new coinages are

so easily understood

Such extensions of meaning related to semantic fields are usually performed

by means of metaphorical transfer Cognitive psychologists claim that

metaphors are strongly memorable This is due to the fact that they furnish conceptually rich, image-evoking conceptualisations Metaphorical vehicles facilitate memory to the extent that they evoke vivid mental images One question that is central to language learning is whether the occurrence of imagery with metaphor is simply epiphenomenal to its comprehension or a key element in understanding and memorising the meaning Various

empirical studies on the communicative function of metaphor suggest a number of possibilities about the positive influence of metaphor on learning

In the next chapter, we shall look at the development of language teaching methods in the twentieth century

Chapter 2: Exploring Language Teaching

Methods

In the twentieth century, the teaching of modern foreign languages has

progressed through three major periods In this chapter, we shall briefly sketch the facts and indicate the salient features of the teaching methods, which have been designed and implemented by several generations of

methodologists and teachers Our historical perspective is limited although

we realize that there have been many interesting theories and practices

through the ages For example, this is what Joseph Aickin wrote in the year 1693: “for no Tongue can be acquired without Grammatical rules; since then all other Tongues, and Languages are taught by Grammar, why ought not the English Tongue to be taught so too Imitation will never do it, under twenty years; I have known some Foreigners who have been longer in learning to speak English and yet are far from it: the not learning by Grammar, is the true cause” (quoted in Yule 1985, 150) Louis Kelly (1969) in his book 25 Centuries of Language Teaching provides an extensive historical analysis of the development of methodology from the time of Ancient Greece to the present

Many scholars have explored the development of language teaching in this century Here, we shall mention but a few, whose work we have been using successfully with our students, William Francis Mackey (1965), H H Stern (1983), Anthony Howatt (1984), Jack T Richards and Theodore S Rogers (1986), Diane Larsen-Freeman (1986), H Douglas Brown (1987, 1994) They, and many other colleagues, have inspired the discussion in this

chapter

2.1 Period I: Direct Language Teaching

The first half of the century was dominated by the teaching method, which is

known as Direct Language Teaching or Direct Method (DM) It emerged as

a result of the language education reform movement at the end of the

nineteenth century and was prominent until the middle of the twentieth

century

At the beginning of the century, the DM became the only officially approved method for the teaching of modern foreign languages in France through a decree of the French Minister of Public Instruction (1902) The term, which was used in the decree, was "methode directe" The method was soon

established in many European countries and was used with enthusiasm by its proponents Some of the commercial ventures in the area were very

successful and became quite popular For example, in 1878, the German born Maximilian Delphinus Berlitz opened his first language school in

Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A Today, Berlitz Languages Inc

(www.berlitz.com/free) is still thriving

Direct Method is of course only a general term, which covers a range of different teaching methods We shall mention two of them, which have been influencing language methodology to present In 1923, Harold Palmer

developed his Oral Method to be adapted some fifty years later in the

innovative approaches of the 1970s as the Total Physical Response Method (Asher 1977, 1982) The second one, Michael West‟s Reading Method, was

designed in 1926 And only two years ago, Stephen Krashen revived it in the

method, which he named the Easy Way (1997)

The basic premise of the DM is that a second language should be taught by

making a direct connection in the mind of the learner between what he

thinks and what he says In other words, no use is made of the learner's own language Thus, the target language becomes both the aim and the means of the teaching and learning process The following list sums up eight salient features of direct language teaching:

 Teaching is executed orally through the medium of the target language

 Teachers should be either native speakers or extremely fluent in the target language

 Grammar is taught inductively by situation

 Concrete vocabulary is taught in context through ostensive definition and pictures

 Abstract vocabulary is taught through association of ideas

 Language skills are ordered in a “natural way”: listening, speaking,

reading and writing

 Pronunciation is emphasized; the first few weeks are devoted to

pronunciation

 All reading matter is first presented orally

However, in the second quarter of the century, the method began to decline Its principles were questioned A group of prominent American experts stated that "the ability to converse should not be regarded as a thing of

primary importance for its own sake but as an auxiliary to the higher ends of

linguistic scholarship and literary culture" (Report of the Committee of

Twelve, Modern Language Association of America 1892) Moreover, the

DM demanded highly competent teachers who have always been difficult to recruit So by the middle of the twentieth century modern languages were being taught by the methods, most of which had been developed before the turn of the century The era of the Direct Method had ended

2.2 Period II: Audio-lingual Teaching and the Innovative Methods of the 1970s

The next stage of development started with the decade of 1940 to 1950 and continued until the mid-seventies Language teachers and the general public were dissatisfied with the methodological theory and practice of the previous era For example, Leonard Bloomfield (1942) stated, “Often enough the student, after two, three, or four years of instruction, cannot really use the language he has been studying.” In 1943, The American Army initiated the

Army Specialized Training Program (hence, "Army Method") to teach

intensive language courses that focused on aural/oral skills The “revolution”

in language teaching of that period created a new methodological ideology,

which came to be known in the late fifties as the Audio-lingual Method (ALM) According to the U.S Army Language School in California, 1300

hours are sufficient for an adult to attain near-native competence in

Vietnamese (Burke, quoted in Reich 1986)

Two major scientific theories were applied as methodological principles:

linguistic structuralism (e.g Bloomfield 1933) and psychological

neo-behaviorism (e.g Skinner 1957) The proponents of the ALM believed that

language learning was a process of habit formation in which the student over-learned carefully sequenced lists of set phrases or "base sentences"

The method was extremely successful and enjoyed considerable popularity

Courses like English 901 (Strevens 1964), the British edition of the original textbook in American English, English 900, and Realistic English (Abbs,

Cook & Underwood 1968) became widely accepted in Europe in the 1960s

In 1961, the American linguist William Moulton proclaimed the linguistic principles of ALM: “language is speech, not writing… a language is a set of habits… teach the language, not about the language… a language is what native speakers say, not what someone thinks they ought to say… languages are different” (quoted in Richards & Rogers 1986) The following list sums

up eight salient features of audio-lingual teaching:

 Language input is provided in dialog form

 Learning activities are based on mimicry and memorization and pattern practice

 Successful responses are immediately rewarded

 Mistakes are not tolerated

 Language structure is taught using pattern drills

 Vocabulary is strictly controlled and learnt in context

 Pronunciation is emphasized

 Audio-visual technology is used extensively, e.g slide projectors, tape recorders, language laboratories

Robert Ian Scott invented a “sentence generator” (1969, quoted in Roberts

1973, 99) as an aid to be used in the teaching of reading The machine could

be programmed to generate 4-word sentences of the simple, active

declarative type Words of each syntactic function could be entered on a separate wheel, the machine consisting of 4 wheels mounted side by side on

a cranking device The wheels could be turned independently of each other

to make a new sentence at each spin With 60 words on each wheel, it would

be possible to generate 12960000 sentences, which, assuming that it were possible to speak one sentence per second, would take about half a year of talking to get through The machine did not gain popularity though

The comparative merits of the ALM and the traditional grammar-translation instruction were evaluated in a two-year study of beginning students of

German in America (Scherer & Wertheimer 1964, quoted in Reich 1986) At the end of the two years, the results were that ALM and traditional

instruction were equal on listening, reading and English-to-German

translation; ALM was far superior to traditional instruction in speaking but traditional instruction was superior to ALM in writing and far superior to ALM in German-to-English translation Thus neither method is clearly

superior Which you prefer depends on what you deem most important

In the late sixties, the ALM was subjected to criticism and its popularity waned Controlled studies of the effectiveness of the language laboratories

as actually used in schools in the 1960s found that they were either a not particularly effective teaching aid or they were actually detrimental to

language learning (Keating 1963, quoted in Reich 1986) Noam Chomsky openly criticized audio-lingual theory and practice in his address to language teachers at the Northeast Conference, U.S.A., in 1966, “I am, frankly, rather skeptical about the significance, for the teaching of languages, of such

insights and understanding as have been attained in linguistics and

psychology” The pattern practice procedure was rejected together with the disillusionment over neo-behaviorism as a psychological theory Structural linguistics was also denounced and with it the ALM gave way to fresher teaching methods

The innovative approaches of the seventies were an attempt to bring

methodology in line with modern scientific developments in the related areas and to discover the new orientations in the teaching of modern foreign languages

The theoretical basis of Caleb Gattegno‟s method (1972), The Silent Way, is

the idea that teaching must be subordinated to learning and thus students must develop their own inner criteria for correctness Learning is facilitated

if the learner discovers and creates in a problem-solving process involving the material to be learnt All four skills are taught from the beginning

Students‟ errors are expected as a normal part of learning The teacher‟s silence helps foster students‟ self-reliance and initiative The teacher is

active in setting up situations using special teaching aids, Fidel charts and Cuisenaire rods, while the students do most of the talking and interacting

Georgi Lozanov‟s Suggestopedia (1972) seeks to help learners eliminate

psychological barriers to learning The learning environment is comfortable and subdued, with low lighting and soft slow music in the background

Students choose a name and character in the target language and culture and imagine being that person Dialogues are presented to the accompaniment of Baroque concertos Students are in a relaxed but focused state of “pseudo-