Language learning and language teaching (original) (raw)

In a language teaching operation, once the political and economic decision have been made those concerned with whether to teach languages, which languages to teach them there remain two general questions. What to teach and how to teach it. One of the best known expression of the point of view that of Chomsky: " I am Frankly, rather skeptical about the significance, for the teaching of languages of such insights and understanding as have gain attained linguistics and psychology.... It is difficult to believe that either linguistics or psychology has achieved a level of theoretical understanding that might enable it to support a " technology of language teaching. " (Chomsky, N. 1986). If we read this statement with care we shall see that Chomsky is not saying that linguistics can " t be relevant, only that he doesn " t see the relevance of what linguistics so far has been able to discover. He continues: " Teachers, in particular, have a responsibility to make sure (the linguistics) ideas and proposals are evaluated on their merits and it passively accepted on grounds of authority, real or presumed. The field of language teaching is no exception. It is possible even-likely that principles of psychology and linguistics, and research in three disciplines, may supply useful insights to be language teacher. But this must be demonstrated and can " t be presumed. It is the language teacher himself who must validate or repute any specific proposal " (ibid) The relevance of theoretical linguistics to language teaching is indirect and not the task of theoretical linguistics to say what relevance it may have. This is the field of applied linguistics. Describing language, or part of language, is, however, part of the process of developing linguistic theory itself. The linguist must test validate his predictions about the nature of language by applying it to a wide range of data drawn from different sources. There is, thus, feed back to theory in the activity of making linguistic description. Thus, linguistic theory must be applied to the data of that language as well. Describing language or parts of language, is, however, part of the process of developing linguistic theory itself. The linguist must test or validate his predictions about the nature of language by applying it to a wide range of data drawn from different sources. There is, thus, feed back to theory in the activity of making linguistic descriptions. There are however, linguists who would wish to make a distinction between the making of descriptions for purposes other than for thinking our knowledge of language. Haliday explains: " The use of linguistic theory to describe language is not itself counted as an application of linguistics. If a language, or a text, is described