LECTURE TWO

THEORETICAL BASIS

OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

By Alec

Before we begin, let’s look at the diagram:

LANGUAGE TEACHING

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS       EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

LINGUISTICS            PSYCHOLOGY            PEDAGOGY

In the pyramid-shaped diagram, we can obviously see that “language teaching” is on the roof, while basic subjects, namely, psychology, linguistics and pedagogy are at the bottom. Consequently, any little change at the bottom can have more or less effect on the top level---English language teaching.

1. Linguistics

In the following lectures, I’ll devote one whole lecture on this topic. Therefore, here I only mention that  the three main trends in the history of scientific language study are well represented in various language teaching approaches or methods. Prescriptive, descriptive or modernist attitudes towards language are quite different from each other.

2. Psychology

In some early attempts by psychologists to describe the basic learning process, the terms “stimulus”, “response”, and “reinforcement” were introduced. In an educational setting, these terms could be defined as follows. When a teacher gives an instruction, or sets a problem, or asks a question, the pupil responds in some way and the teacher then tells the pupil if he has responded correctly. The teacher’s first action is called the stimulus. The pupil’s action, carrying out the instruction, or answering the question, or solving the problem, is known as the response. When the teacher tells the pupil if his/her response is correct, the bond between the stimulus and the response is strengthened and reinforcement is positive. If the response in incorrect, the bond is weakened, and reinforcement is negative.

Some psychologists laid great emphasis on the importance of reinforcement for continuous learning. They argued that, if a learner is not given information about his response (feedback), he/she might not continue to respond. For example, if his/her homework is not marked regularly, he/she will stop doing it. If, in class, the answers he/she gives to the teacher’s questions are ignored or brushed aside, he/she will stop trying to give any.

Educational psychologists are, however, are moving away from this simple, early model of the basic learning process. The effects of feedback, for example, are seen to be more complex than this description suggests. Feedback does not merely positively or negatively reinforce the s-r bond. It may also confirm previously learned meanings and associations, correct mistakes, clear up misunderstandings and show how well or badly different parts of the material have been learned. Thus feedback may have the effect of increasing the learner’s confidence, backing up his/her previously acquired knowledge, and showing him/her which items he/she has not fully grasped. On the other hand, it seems to be the case that the more meaningful learning tasks are, the less important feedback of information seems to have, as the achievement of understanding becomes a reward in its own right.

What has been mentioned above is just one of the aspects that are related to learning, and to language learning as well. That is to say, it is just one example to show our language teaching and us how important psychology is in education.

3. Pedagogy

We’ll take “process of development in the child” as another example to help us understand what pedagogy has to do with education and language teaching.

Piaget, a great educational psychologist, has described two processes of development within the growing child, which he calls assimilation and accommodation.

At first, the child while he plays assimilates his surroundings, that is, he makes things do what he wants them to do, using his imagination to control the environment around him in fantasy play. Later, the child learns that he cannot make things around him do just what he wants, so he learns to accommodate himself to his environment. He learns to accept the world as it is and to live with it. These two processes, assimilation and accommodation, combine with each other as the child grows up.

Children’s paintings clearly demonstrate the developing balance between the two processes. In paintings done by very young children, the imagination is most obvious, showing qualities of assimilation. Later on, children attempt to make their paintings look as close as possible to the real thing they are representing. At this stage, qualities of accommodation are uppermost. Adolescents tend to be more concerned with copying reality accurately than with expressing their imaginative ideas. At a later sage, however, the student will find a balance between the two tendencies.

The development of reading and writing also shows a balance between the two processes. The child continues to assimilate, to use his imagination to control the language when he writes stories or compositions. But he also learns to accommodate himself, to understand and take in the writings of other people, when he studies literature. Eventually, as a sensitive reader of poetry, he will accommodate himself fully, appreciating the ideas and feelings that the poet is trying to convey.

Even in the learning of arithmetic, one can see the double processes. Learning to manipulate figures, to add, subtract, divide and multiply, is of course a matter of accommodation, of using and controlling his surroundings. He can begin to manipulate money, time, weights and measures. He can begin to enter the wider world of shops, post offices and transport, and he can attempt more advanced school subjects, such as geography and sciences.

In elementary science, the same is of course also true. The pupil learns the basic rules governing nature, through a process of accommodation, and then he assimilates and begins to control nature for himself, or to transform solid matter into gasses.

4. Technology advancement

As we have seen in lecture one that IT has brought us new demands ands needs to meet, IT has also brought us new technology that is available to us English teachers. For instance, if we could create a Cyberspace of the English-speaking community, our pupils and students could learn the English language in the same way as the native speakers do.

What we have to do now is simply to learn how to handle that most advanced equipment.

5. Audio-lingual Approach

Let’s just have a look at this approach, which appears a little out of date today, and we can easily understand what we have said so far today. We shall see the background as well as other aspects of this approach that used to be very popular home and abroad.

Time: World War II, when foreign language teaching became an urgent need because troops had to be sent abroad.

Linguistics: Linguistists have taken a descriptive attitude to language, which in America is called structuralism.

Psychology: J. B. Watson and his successor B. F. Skinner develop the theory of behaviorism, in which the r-s bond is what we have talked about.

Governing Principles in Language Teaching:

1.     Language is speech, not writing.

2.    A language is a set of habits.

3.    Teach the language, not about the language.

4.    A language is what its native speakers say, not what someone thinks they ought to say.

5.    Languages are different.

Stage of Teaching:

1.     Recognition

2.    Imitation

3.    Repetition

4.    Variation (e.g. substitution, conversion, expansion)

5.    Selection (of an event, words, context, etc.)

Textbook: English 900

From the above example, we can see the relations between language teaching and the three subjects.

March 11,2001