Ruth Flores - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

No pan of this publication may be reproduced. stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted m any ... more No pan of this publication may be reproduced. stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted m any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise. without the prior peimi>sion of the publisher Pearson Education. 10 Bank Street. White Plains, MY 10606 Staff credits: The people who made up the Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, Fifth Edition team, representing editorial, production, design, ;ind manufacturing, are Danielle Belfiore. TraCev 4 CHAPTER 1 Language, Learning, and Tedcliing through the chapters of this book. And you can hone the global questions into finer, subtler questions, which in itself is an important task, for often being able to ask the right questions is more valuable than possessing storehouses of knowledge. At the same time, you should not labor under the impression that you can satisfactorily find final answers to all the questions, By some evaluations, the field of SLA is still in its infancy, with all the methodological and theoretical problems that come with a developing discipline (see Gregg, 2003, for example). Therefore, many of these questions will receive somewhat tentative answers, or at best, answers that must begin with the phrase, "it depends." Answers must almost always be framed in a context that can vary from one learner to another, from one moment to another, The wonderful intricacy of complex facets of human behavior will be very much with us for some time. Roger Brown's (1966, p. 526) wry remark of over four decades ago still applies: Psychologists find it exciting when a complex mental phenomenon-something Intelligent and slippery-seems about to be captured by a mechanical model. We yearn to see the model succeed, But when, at the last minute, the phenomenon proves too much for the model and darts off on some uncapturable tangent, there is something in us that rejoices at the defeat. We can rejoice in our defeats because we know that it is the very elusiveness of the phenomenon of SLA that makes the quest for answers so exciting. Our field of Inquiry is no simple, unidimensional reality. It is "slippery" in every way, The chapters of this book are designed to give you a picture of both the slip-periness of SLA and the systematic storehouse of reliable knowledge that is now available to us. As you consider the issues, chapter by chapter, you are led on a quest for your own personal, integrated understanding of how people learn-and sometimes fail to learn-a second language. That quest is eclectic no single theory or hypothesis wilt provide a magic formula for alt learners in all contexts. And the quest is cautious: you will be urged to be as critical as you can in considering the merit of various models and theories and research findings. By the end of the final chapter, however, you will no doubt surprise yourself on how many pieces of this giant puzzle you can actually put together! Thomas Kuhn (1970) referred to "normal science" as a process of puzzle solving in which part of the task of the scientist, in this case the teacher, is to discover the pieces and then to fit the pieces together Some of the pieces of the language learning puzzle have been located and set in place. Others are not yet discovered, and the careful defining of questions will lead to finding those pieces. We can then undertake the task of fitting the pieces together into a paradigm-an interlocking design, a theory of second language acquisition. 1. Language is systematic. 2. Language is a set of arbitrary symbols. 3. Those symbols are primarily vocal, but may also be visual, 4. The symbols have conventionalized meanings to which they refer. 5. Language is used for communication. 6. Language operates in a speech community or culture. 7. Language is essentially human, although possibly not limited to humans. 8. Language is acquired by all people in much the same way; language and language learning both have universal characteristics. These eight statements provide a reasonably concise "25-word-or-less" definition of language. But the simplicity of the eightfold definition should not be allowed to mask the sophistication of linguistic research underlying each concept. Enormous fields and subfields and yearlong university courses, are suggested in each of the eight categories, Consider some of these possible areas: 8 CHAPTFR t language. Learning, and Teaching of learning, may be defined as "showing or helping someone to learn how to do something, giving instructions, guiding in the study of something, providing with knowledge, causing to know or understand." Isn't it curious that professional lexicographers seem to have such difficulty in devising a definition of something as universal as teaching? More than perhaps anything else, such definitions reflect the difficulty of defining complex concepts. Breaking down the components of the definition of learning, we can extract, as we did with language, domains of research and inquiry, 1. Learning is acquisition or "getting." 2. Learning is retention of information or skill. 3. Retention implies storage systems, memory, cognitive organization. 4. Learning involves active, conscious focus on and acting upon events outside or inside the organism. 5-Learning is relatively permanent but subject to forgetting. 6. Learning involves some form of practice, perhaps reinforced practice. 7. Learning is a change in behavior. These concepts can also give way to a number of subfields within the discipline of psychology: acquisition processes.perception, memory (storage) systems,short-and long-term memory, recall, motivation, conscious and subconscious learning styles and strategies, theories of forgetting, reinforcement, the role of practice. Very quickly the concept of learning becomes every bit as complex as the concept of language. Yet the second language learner brings all these (and more) variables into play in the learning of a second language. Teaching cannot be defined apart from learning. Teaching is guiding and facilitating learning, enabling the learner to learn, setting the conditions for learning. Your understanding of how the learner learns will determine your philosophy of education, your teaching style, your approach, methods, and classroom techniques. If, like B. fi Skinner, you look at learning as a process of operant conditioning through a carefully paced program of reinforcement, you will teach accordingly. If you view second language learning as a deductive rather than an inductive process, you will probably choose to present copious rules and paradigms to your students rather than let them "discover" those rules inductively. An exrended definition-or theory-of teaching will spell out governing principles for choosing certain methods and techniques. A theory of teaching, in harmony with your integrated understanding of the learner and of the subject matter to be learned, will point the way to successful procedures on a given day for given learners under the various constraints of the particular context of learning. In other words, your theory of teaching is your theory of learning "stood on its head." SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION While the general definitions of language, learning, and teaching offered above might meet with the approval of most linguists, psychologists, and educators, points of disagreement become apparent after a little probing of the components of each definition. For example, is language primarily a "system of formal units" or a "means for social interaction"? Or, for better retention, should a teacher emphasize extrinsic or intrinsic motivation in students? Differing viewpoints emerge from equally knowledgeable scholars, usually over the extent to which one viewpoint or another should receive primacy. Yet with all the possible disagreements among applied linguists and SLA researchers, some historical patterns emerge that highlight trends and fashions in the study of second language acquisition. These trends will be described here in die form of three different schools of thought-primarily in the fields of linguistics and psychology-that follow somewhat historically, even though components of each school overlap chronologically to some extent. Bear in mind that such a sketch may suggest dichotomies in philosophical positions, and such contrasts are rarely so simplistic in the study of issues in SLA. Structural Linguistics and Behavioral Psychology In the 19-iOs and 1950s, the structural, or descriptive, school of linguistics, with its advocates-Leonard Bloonifield,Edward Sapir,Charles Hockett,Charles Fries,and others-prided itself in a rigorous application of scientific observations of human languages. Only "publicly observable responses" could be subject to investigation. The linguist's task, according to the structuralist, was to describe human languages and to identify the structural characteristics of those languages. An important axiom of structural linguistics was that languages can differ from each other without limit, and that no preconceptions could apply across languages. Freeman Twaddeli (1935, p. 57) stated this principle in perhaps its most extreme terms: Whatever our attitude toward mind, spirit, soul, etc., as realities, we must agree that the scientist proceeds as though there were no such things, as though all his uiformation were acquired through processes of his physiological nervous system. Insofar as he occupies himself with psychical, nonmateria) forces, the scientist is not a scientist. The scientific method is quite simply the convention that mind does not exist.. . Twaddeli was underscoring die mandate for the structural linguist to examine only overtly observable data, and to ignore the "mind" insofar as the latter represented a raentalistic approach that gave credence to unobservable guesses, hunches.and intuition. Such attitudes prevailed in B. E Skinner's thought.particularly CHAPTtR I Language, Learning, and Teaching in Verbal...