A General Introduction
A competent FL teacher should have a good understanding of the approaches and principles of FLT in order to use the most appropriate ways in different teaching circumstances.
A competent teacher helps the learners develop the four skills and competences
Namely 1. Linguistic skills
2. Socio-cultural competence
3. Knowing the rules of discourse
4.communicative strategies
Linguistic competence refers to the domain of grammatical and lexical skills including syntax, semantics, phonology…
Sociolinguistic competence refers to the social context in which communication takes place, including role relationship, shared knowledge, purpose of interaction…
Discourse competence refers to the interpretation of the message in terms of how the meaning is represented in the whole text, or discourse…
Strategic competence refers to the skills employed to initiate, terminate, repair
and redirect, maintain…communication, including verbal and nonverbal skills.
A competent teacher understand the nature of language, the nature of language teaching, the relevant theories, and the history of FLT.
A competent teacher understands the nature of communication:
1. Communication is based on socio-cultural interaction and interpersonal interaction.
2. It is creative and unpredictable.
3. It is purposive behavior.
4. It takes place in socio-cultural context and discourse.
5. It is under performance constrains.
6. It is judged by behavioral outcomes.
7. It involves continuous evaluation and negotiation of meaning.
8. It involves continuous reduction of uncertainty.
9. It involves verbal and nonverbal skills
Understanding the Nature of FLTM
It is a science which studies the process, patterns, approaches, methods, techniques, principles, beliefs of FLT. It reveals the nature , rules of language and language teaching.
FLT is an Interdisciplinary Science
It requires the knowledge of different subjects, such as linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics, socio-linguistics etc. to teach well.
What should we teach?
Facing a teaching task, we have to select the content, to divide the language into smaller units, to sequence the units etc. How to do it? It largely depends on our understanding of the nature of language.
How should we teach?
The choice of methods depends on the understanding of the nature of language teaching. A process of imitation?
A process of social interaction? Models and drills? Tasks and activities?
Theories of Linguistics
Language study is at least 2500 years old. Many theories emerged during the long history of linguistic study. We focus on the following four schools.
1. Traditional linguistics
In the 5th century B.C. Greeks made serious study of language in the realm of philosophy. 2 controversies:
↓1) naturalist：form of words reflects the nature of objects 安, pictograph
↑2) conventionalist: No logical relation between form and meaning.
Language is conventional
↓1)analogist: Language is regular. There are rules to follow. 类比主义
↑2)anomalist: Language is irregular. Many exceptions and irregularities.变则主义
The main features of traditional linguistics:
1) It is practical in nature. It is used to study classical works and teach students to appreciate classical works.
2) The practical purpose makes them believe that written language is superior to spoken form.
3) They take a prescriptive approaches as they want to set up standards for people to use their language correctly.
2. American Structuralism
It was popular in the 1930s and 1940s all over the world. Two pioneers: Boas, as an anthropologist, worked in the field for 20 years recording the languages and culture of American Indians. He had to describe their languages which had no written form. He found traditional grammar could not be used to describe them. Sapir began his field work in1904 He found although those languages were considered primitive, They were very efficient in communication, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Language Relativity Language determines thought.
Leonard Bloomfield, the father of American Structuralism, In 1933,he published his book Language which became a bible of linguistics.
Features of structuralism
1.He accepted the theories and principles of behaviorism
2.Linguistic study should only accept data that could be objectively proved
3.He believed linguistics should study speech rather than writing.
4.He agreed with Watson a language was a habit of verbal behavior.
5.He argued that linguist should describe rather than prescribe a language
6.Language is thought. Thought is language
3.Transformational Generative Linguistics
In 1957 Chomsky published his book Syntactic Structures Structuralism could not explain:
1.why children can acquire their first language in a few years
2. Why same structure can express different meanings
3. Why same meaning can be expressed by different structures
He assumes that children are born with a LAD, which is made of general principles (universal grammar)
The universal grammar can be applied to all the languages in the world.
A child is born → particular environment → it triggers LAD →makes hypothesis by universal grammar → tests the hypothesis against the actual language → modifies the hypothesis → tests them again against the data →. How to trigger his LAD? Provide the actual language and the social environment. Imitation, repetition and memorization are not enough to trigger his LAD The hypothesis-testing procedure will repeat again and again until the hypothesis agrees with the actual grammar.
•When the universal grammar is transferred into the particular grammar, the child’s language acquisition completes.
•Chomsky made a distinction between
•(1) linguistic competence and
•(2) linguistic performance:
(1) Internalized language knowledge that a native speaker possesses including, the ability to understand and produce sentences, detect ambiguity ,grammar mistakes, paraphrase…
(2) The actual utterances produced by the native speakers. He opposes classification and description of language performance.. Chomsky holds the position that they should study the linguistic competence rather than the performance of the native speakers
4. Functional Linguistics
It was developed directly from the London school of linguistics.
•Malinowsky was one of the founders. When he was doing his field work as an anthropologist in Eastern New Guinea tribes he found it was very difficult to translate the native language. He had to resort to the situation of the language. He then concluded that the meaning of any single word is to a large degree dependent on its context.
•Firth applied the context of situation to language events and established a descriptive frame work for the analysis of language. He held that all branches of linguistics are concerned with meaning, and the meaning of linguistic items depends on the context of situation. He set up categories which could link language items with the context of situation. He also developed a linguistic theory" concept system, for Firth a system is a set of choices in a specific context.
The professor rapped on his desk and shouted: “Gentlemen, order!” The entire class yelled “beer!”
M.A.K. Halliday
who made the London school of Linguistics most competitive. In 1961 he made clear his point of view that Linguistic events should be accounted for at least at 3 primary levels: substance, form, and context. Language (实体), discourse(形式), context (语境)。
•In the1970s Halliday began to represent the situation in more abstract terms, as situation types: A particular situation type is a semiotic structure, which can be represented as a complex of 3 dimensions:
•He named the 3 dimensions as field, tenor and mode respectively
• field tenor mode
•Ongoing social role relationships rhetorical channel
• activity involved discourse type
语场 语旨 语式
正讨论的问题（社会活动 ） 相关角色关系 语篇形式（口语？书面？）
Purposes:
1) to predict the semantic properties of texts,
2)to reveal the systematic relation between context and text
言语环境： 语言条件；1、语言系统掌握
2 、上下文理解能力
交际条件；1、背景知识；时代、社会 、文化、常识、事实
2、情景；时间、地点 场合、心情、体态、目光、
3、交际身份；年龄、性别、职业、角色、亲疏、等级、 心理健康、生理健康、思维定势、
谈话内容； 目的、话题、事件…….
Theories of Psychology
Since 1879 the German scientist Wundt at the University of Leipzig opened
a laboratory of experimental psychology, a number of schools of
psychology emerged. We will mention only four schools.
1. Gestalt psychology 完形心理学
It was founded by a group of German psychologists.
•Focused on the study of the relation between parts and whole in people's perceptual experience
•People perceived objects as organized wholes before they noticed their component parts
•An object was not the sum of the individual parts
•The mind must be understood in terms of a whole, not individual parts
2. Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud began to work with his patients from 1886.
•He found that many of their problems were from some disturbing events in their early childhood.
•They couldn't recall these disturbing events but the events existed.
•They are buried somewhere in the mind and cause abnormal behaviors.
•Freud believed human mind is composed of conscious mind and unconscious mind which is even larger than the former.
•The unconscious mind consisted of buried memories and instinctive wishes that would influence people's behavior. ( hypnotism, psychological consultation)
•Freud regarded all irrational behaviors as evidence of unconscious mind
•His basic approach was to analyze the irrational behaviors, their dreams and slip of tongue,in order to identify the content of their conscious mind
3. Behaviorism
In 1913 the American psychologist J.B. Watson published an article Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it
•He believed that psychologist should study the behaviors of the animals which were observable rather than the mind.
•Psychologists should focus on the environmental conditions that would cause an animal to behave in a certain way
•There was no fundamental difference between human behavior and that of animals, so the methods that were suitable for the study of animal behavior would be suitable for the study of human behaviors
•His ideas developed so quickly and became dominant. That dominant position was maintained for several decades
•Skinner was the most famous behaviorist and regarded as the leader of behaviorism. He focused his study on learning and understood learning in terms of stimuli and responses.
•He argued that learning process could be divided into two kinds.
1.Classical conditioning:
a stimulus does not elicit a response comes to elicit a response, after it is paired several times with a stimulus that already elicits a response. A baby is not afraid of a rabbit, but he is afraid of a loud noise. Whenever a baby comes to a rabbit , you produce a loud noise. After these repeated several times, a baby will cry whenever a rabbit comes
2. Operant conditioning:
the occurrence of a response will be determined by the consequences of the response. A lot of our actions are performed because of their consequences. We go to a supermarket because we…
4. Cognitive psychology
•Defined as the study of people's ability to acquire, organize, remember and use knowledge to guide their behaviors (in 1960s.)
•There are a number of factors that have made cognitive psychology the dominant approach in the world;
1. The development of computer science helps psychologists to assume that the brain works in a similar way to process information as computers.
2. Another factor is the work of a Swiss psychologists Jean Piaget, who studied the reasoning ability of children. He described the children's reasoning ability at each stage in terms of hypothetical mental structures which he called schemas
3. Still another: The publication of Noam Chomsky Syntactic Structures in 1957 started a revolution in linguistics. He argued language should be view as a system of mental rules,which wired into human brain as a result of evolution
The research result of cognitive psychologists shows:
Experimental subjects don't simply make passive mechanic responses to stimuli. They are very active in identifying the meaning of stimuli and in expecting the consequences of the responses
•They believe that all the responses, stimuli and consequences are integrated into the animals' knowledge. An animal makes a response because a particular response will have a particular effect.
•Piaget described the acquisition of knowledge in terms of cognitive structure. There are two types of structures: schemas and concepts
• Acquisition of knowledge
• schema↑ ↑concepts
• (rules that define (properties of events
• categories of behaviors) and their relation)
• ↑Children acquire schemas and concepts through↑
interaction with environment
assimilation↑ ↑accommodation
The process,new items are added Existing schema or concept is changed
to concept or schema because of new information
Read the following jokes and make reference to the children’s acquisition of knowledge:
Compare the new information with the most familiar thing in the old schema.
A father was very proud of his son. Once he had a visitor and he wanted to show how clever his son was. He took out a picture of giraffe and asked his son, “What is that, boy?” “Horsey”, said the boy. Next he showed him a picture of a lion. “What is that, boy?” “doggie”, said the boy. Then the father showed him a picture of a gorilla. “ What is that, boy?” “Daddy”, the boy said.
A little boy comes in the front door.
Mother: Wipe your feet, please.
The boy : But Mum, my feet are clean and my shoes are dirty.
A father is trying to get his 3-year daughter to stop lifting up her dress to display her new underwear to the assembled guests.
Father: We don’t do that.
Daughter: I know, Daddy. You don’t wear dresses..
We learn through everyday interaction.
Psycholinguistic processes of language learning
The control of attention during comprehension and the way different cues can
be focused on: VanPatten(1996) proposes 3 principles for input processing.
1. Learners process input for meaning before they do it for form.
-Learners process content words in the input before anything else.
-Learners prefer lexical items to grammatical items for meaning.
-Learners prefer more meaningful morphology to less meaningful one. e.g. past regular ending rather than verbal agreement.
2. For learners to process meaningless form, e.g. third person-s, they must be able to process informational content at no cost.
3. Learners possess default strategies that assign the role of agent to the first noun they encounter in a sentence.
The conceptual framework of the schema theory
Schemata are the abstract cognitive structures which incorporate generalized knowledge about objects of events. These abstract structures contain slots (niches) which are filled with specific information bits as a text is processed. Three functions of schemata:
1) Provide basis for filling the gaps in a text.
2)… interpret ambiguity
3) monitor their comprehension. This meta-comprehension function is important ,Anderson, Skehan
Case Study: Four people were riding in a train coach. A woman and her beautiful 19-year-old daughter were on one side, and facing them were the army general and his escort, an army private. The train enters a tunnel, and the cabin becomes dark. A kiss is heard, followed by a slap. The mother thinks, "That young man stole a kiss from my daughter, and she rightfully slapped him." The daughter thinks, "That young man tried to kiss me and kissed my mother by mistake and got slapped." The general thinks, "That young man stole a kiss, and I got slapped by mistake." The private thinks, "I am pretty smart. I kiss the back of my hand and get to hit the general.
故事的结尾告诉我们三个事实：1）将军挨了一个耳光。2）士兵吻了自己的手背一下。3）士兵抽了将军一记耳光。除了士兵之外，对三个不知情者来说，黑暗之中到底发生了什么事情？这里存在许多需要细节进行填补的“空隙”。将军、姑娘、妈妈都是运用心理上的知识结构，有关日常生活的情景知识，包括人们那些形成习惯的行为程序填充了“空隙”，编出了各自的故事。在这个幽默里尽管每个人的背景不同，但是生活在类似的物质世界上，人们会享有共同的思维定势，一事当前人们的猜测有趋同之处，比如，三个不知情者都猜测“被吻的对象是漂亮的姑娘”，“偷吻姑娘的人是年轻的士兵”， “偷吻姑娘的人挨了打” 虽然这并非是事实，却被三个人信以为真。年轻的士兵就是利用了人们利用知识框架填补信息空缺时的思维定势，搞了一个恶作剧。其实没有人吻过那个姑娘，将军却挨了耳光，是谁打的呢？不是姑娘，也不是姑娘的妈，谁也想不到是士兵打的。不难看出，听话人是根据人们那些养成了习惯的行为程序和知识框架处理不完整信息然后得出的结论并非一定符合事实。
Theories of Second language Acquisition
In the study of second language acquisition process, scholars in the world have proposed quite a few theories and hypotheses e.g. the habit formation theory, the hypothesis of linguistic universals, the acculturation theory, the discourse theory, the monitor hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the affective filter hypothesis…
The habit-formation theory
The theory comes from behaviorist psychology and popular in the 1960s.According to behaviorists, B.E. Skinner etc. language is a set of linguistic habits and they are formed by identifying and enhancing association between stimuli and responses. Learning a second language means the formation of a new set of linguistic habits, through imitation and practice. Imitation=identify, Practice=strengthening . Since the process of second language acquisition is a process of habit formation, the old habit will either facilitate or hamper second language learn-
Positive transfer: The first language and the second language have the same linguistic habit, language learning is facilitated: eye-opener, double effort half done, half effort twice done, bullfrog, white flag, whitewash…
Negative transfer: If the first language and second language share the same meaning but express it in different ways, the learner may use the way of his first language to express the meaning of the second language, thus cause negative transfer e.g. white slave, white trash, white elephant, white lie, social disease, white pages , blue film, sea ox, buy one get one free
Error analysis: over-generalization and creative construction
Second language learner like a child, is constructing rules from the data they encounter and gradually adapting these rules in the direction of the target language system. Learners' errors should not be seen as signs of failure. We know that rules have exceptions. We need new rules.
The hypothesis of linguistic universals 语言共性说
There are two approaches to the study of linguistic universals. One is Chomsky who is making a detailed study of a particular language to reveal the universals of language; the other is taken by Greenberg who compares different languages to determine them.
Chomsky divides the grammar of a language into core grammar and peripheral grammar. He believes learners first acquire the core grammar and the peripheral grammar is acquired later, because the core grammar agrees with the inborn general principles. Chomsky believes, the core grammar of the learners' mother tongue will facilitate second language acquisition, and put a positive influence on foreign language learning.
The acculturation theory
It was founded by Schumann and Anderson in the 1970s. By acculturation they mean, people of one culture have to go through modification in attitudes, knowledge, and behavior in order to function well in another culture. Acculturation involves both social adaptation and psychological adaptation. The degree of acculturation will control the degree of second language acquisition. Social and psychological distance play a decisive role in SLA. The better the learning environment, the better the results.
The following factors will create good language learning results:
1. Social equality between SL learners and target language group.
2. Both groups desire assimilation.
3. First language group is small and not cohesive.
4. Learner group's culture is similar to target culture.
5. Both groups have positive attitudes to each other.
6. Both groups expect learner's group share facilities.
7. The learner's group expects to stay in the target community.
Low motivation, cultural shock, high ego boundaries will increase the psychological distance.
The discourse theory 话语交际说
It was put forward by Hatch in the late 1970s. It was developed from Halliday's theory of first language acquisition . Halliday thinks the process of first language acquisition is actually learning how to communicate in that language. Hatch: the SLA process is similar to that of the first language acquisition process.
Only through communication can the learner acquire the second language.
Major points of the theory:
1. In SLA the rules of grammar are acquired in the natural order.
2. When communicating with a non-native speaker, the native speaker will adjust his discourse.
3. The speed and order of the second language acquisition is influenced in the following aspects.
1) The order of the acquisition of the SL grammar is consistent with the frequency of the grammar structures.
2) The learners acquire structures patterns before he is able to analyze them.
3) Before he acquires the formation of single sentences, the learner acquires cohesive discourse.
4. The natural order of SLA is the result of the learner's discourse interaction.
The monitor theory
It was put forward by Krashen in the late 1970s, which consists the following five hypotheses:
1. The acquisition-learning hypothesis
Krashen claims that adult learners have two ways of developing their competence in a foreign language learning: One is acquisition which refers to the subconscious process in which learners develop their competence through natural communication with focus on the meaning of language, and which is similar to the process children acquire their first language. The other is the conscious process in which learners pay conscious attention to the rules of the target grammar, which is called conscious learning. Meaning or form?
Girls is naturally better looking than boys.
Girls is artificially better looking than boys.
2. The monitor hypothesis
According to Krashen, acquisition and learning have different functions in the communication activities: Acquisition is for the fluency of the language. Learning is for the accuracy of the language. In natural communication acquisition is more important than learning. The function of learning is to monitor what is going to be produced according to the
norm of the target language. In order to perform this monitor function, learners have to satisfy 3 conditions:
1) The speaker must have enough time: conversation no; writing yes.
2) The learner must have his focus on form. Prepare a speech or exam.
3) The learner must have a good knowledge of the grammar rules.
3. The natural order hypothesis
The hypothesis claims, foreign language learners acquire the rules of the target language in the same order no matter where, when and how they learn the language. He believes this natural order of acquisition can not be changed by classroom language teaching. He cannot explain what it is.
4. The input hypothesis
It explains how people acquire languages. According to Krashen, the only way for people to acquire a language is by understanding comprehensible input. Learners move from i, their current level to i+1 , the next level, along the natural order. That is to say, language is acquired by people's comprehension of input that is slightly beyond their current level. People understand input containing i +1 because the situation, context, body language provide the clues
5. The affective filter hypothesis
It tries to explain the speed of language acquisition. Research in SLA shows motivation, self-confidence and anxiety are the 3 affective factors that determine the degree of success in second language acquisition. Learners with high motivation, strong confidence, lower anxiety and stress will do much better, as they will get more comprehensible input.
Section 1. A Brief History of Language Teaching p.1
Why do we look back to the history of language teaching method?
1.1From historical perspective, we know the background of out discussion, we understand the concerns and issues that prompted innovations of teaching method.
1.2 We know these changes which reflect the requirements of learners. For example, their requirements have changed from reading to oral proficiency.
1.3 The changes also reflect different understandings of the nature of language and language learning.
1.4 We know, today's controversies reflect contemporary responses to those old questions.
Throughout history, foreign language learning has always been an important practical concern, why?
60% of today's world population is multilingual. Multilingual and bilingual are common. English is the most popular foreign language in the world. But 500 years ago, Latin was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion and government.
In the 16th century, French, Italian and English gained importance as a result of political change. Latin took on a different function. It was used to analyze classical works of Virgil, Ovid and Cicero.
In the 18th century, modern language began to enter the curriculum of European schools, they were taught with the same procedure used for teaching Latin. Textbooks are composed of grammar rules, list of vocabulary and sentences for translation.
By the end of the18th century, this approach based on the study of Latin became the standard way of EFL schools.
19th century textbooks are mainly determined to arrange foreign language into fixed rules of morphology and syntax. .
The grammar-translation method
The principal features. P.3
Why it is so popular?
1. It requires limited specialized skills on the part of teachers.
2. Grammar rules and translations are easy to construct and and can be scored easily.
3. Grammar rules seem systematic and can be sequenced easily.
Language Teaching Innovation in the 19th Century
It was caused by the rejection of grammar translation method. There are several factors contributed to it.
1. Increased communication opportunities created a demand for oral proficiency in FL.
2. The public education system was seen to be failing in its responsibilities.
3. New approaches to FLT were developed by individual language teaching specialists.Marcel, Prendergast and Gouin were innovators who recognized the need for oral proficiency下载本文
