Филологические науки/1. Методика преподавания языка и литературы
Reshetniak M.V.
Ukrainian
Banking Academy of the National Bank of Ukraine
A foreign language acquisition
The article
discloses historically based approaches of a foreign language education and
throws light on the new study, which may revolutionize
language learning. The main methods of teaching foreign languages, which
are highlighted in the article, are:
the grammar translation method, the direct method, the audio-lingual
method, the communicative language teaching method and the series method. And a
modern research of a PhD from New Zealand is described below.
Key words:
language education, Comenius, the grammar translation method, the direct
method, the audio-lingual method, communicative language teaching, the series
method, language lab, the learning through
listening methodology.
Стаття розкриває історично сформовані підходи до вивчення
іноземних мов, а також надає додаткову інформацію щодо нового дослідження, яке
може внести революційні зміни до вивчення будь-якої мови. Основні методи навчання іноземним мовам, що
будуть проаналізовані в даній статті, наступні: метод граматичного перекладу,
аудіально-лінгвістичний метод, комунікативний метод, прямий метод та послідовний
(серійний) метод. І сучасне дослідження доктора філософії з Нової Зеландії
оглянуто нижче.
Ключові слова:
вивчення мови, Комініус, метод граматичного перекладу, аудіально-лінгвістичний
метод, комунікативний метод, прямий метод, послідовний (серійний) метод,
методологія навчання через прослуховування.
Статья
раскрывает исторически сформировавшиеся подходы к изучению иностранных языков,
а также предоставляет дополнительную информацию про новое исследование, которое
может революционно перевернуть изучение языков. Основные методы преподавания
иностранных языков, которые будут проанализированы в данной статье, следующие:
метод грамматического перевода, аудиально-лингвистический метод,
коммуникативный метод, прямой метод и последовательный (серийный) метод. И современное исследование доктора философии
из Новой Зеландии рассмотрено ниже.
Ключевые слова: языковое образование,
Коминиус, метод грамматического перевода, аудиально-лингвистический метод,
коммуникативный метод, прямой метод, последовательный (серийный) метод,
методология изучения с помощью прослушивания.
The term language education is
more commonly used with regard to second language acquisition, which means the
learning of a foreign or second language [1] and which is the topic of this
article. The article discloses the development of the original methods of
language education, and its practical value is to help readers to elaborate the
most appropriate for their style of learning way of a foreign language
acquisition or teaching.
Although
the need to learn foreign languages is almost as old as human history itself,
the origins of modern language education are in the study and teaching of Latin
in the 17th century. One of the linguists, who outlined theories of
language acquisition, was John Amos Comenius.
He held that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience,
teaching must be oral and the schoolroom should have models of things, and
failing that, pictures of them [2; p.14].
By
the 18th century an oral work had been minimized, and students were
instead required to memorize grammatical rules and apply these to decode
written texts in the target language. This tradition-inspired method became
known as the 'grammar-translation method'
[3].
Innovation in foreign language teaching began in the 19th century
and became very rapid in the 20th century. It lead to a number of
different and sometimes conflicting methodologies, each trying to be a major
improvement over the previous or contemporary methods. Among those
methodologies, a ‘direct method’ [4]
is worth mentioning. The direct method of teaching foreign languages, sometimes
also called the natural method,
refrains from using the learners' native language and uses only the target
language. It was established in Germany and France around 1900. The earliest applied linguists included Jean
Manesca, Heinrich Gottfried Ollendorff (1803-1865), Henry Sweet (1845-1912),
Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), and Harold Palmer (1877-1949). They worked on
setting language teaching principles and approaches based on linguistic and
psychological theories, but they left many of the specific practical details
for others to devise [5].
Similar to direct method, the ‘audio-lingual method’ [6] was used. The
audio-lingual method, Army Method, or
New Key [7], is a style of teaching
used in teaching foreign languages. It is based on behaviorist theory, which
professes that certain traits of living things, and in this case humans, could
be trained through a system of reinforcement—correct use of a trait would
receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait would receive
negative feedback. Like the direct method, the audio-lingual method advised
that students be taught a language directly, without using the students' native
language to explain new words or grammar in the target language. However,
unlike the direct method, the audio-lingual method didn’t focus on teaching
vocabulary. Rather, the teacher drilled students in the use of grammar. Applied
to language instruction, and often within the context of the language lab [8; p.530], this means that
the instructor would present the correct model of a sentence and the students
would have to repeat it. The teacher would then continue by presenting new
words for the students to sample in the same structure. In audio-lingualism,
there is no explicit grammar instruction—everything is simply memorized in
form. The idea is for the students to practice the particular construct until
they can use it spontaneously. In this manner, the lessons are built on static
drills in which the students have little or no control on their own output; the
teacher is expecting a particular response and not providing that - will result
in a student receiving negative feedback. This type of activity, for the
foundation of language learning, is in direct opposition with communicative
language teaching.
Communicative
language teaching (CLT) [9] is an approach to the teaching of second and
foreign languages that emphasizes interaction as both the means and the
ultimate goal of learning a language. It is also referred to as “communicative
approach to the teaching of foreign languages” or simply the “communicative
approach”. CLT places great emphasis on helping students use the target
language in a variety of contexts and places great emphasis on learning
language functions. Its primary focus is on helping learners create meaning
rather than helping them develop perfectly grammatical structures or acquire
native-like pronunciation. This means that successfully learning a foreign
language is assessed in terms of how well learners have developed their communicative competence [10], which can
loosely be defined as their ability to apply knowledge of both formal and
sociolinguistic aspects of a language with adequate proficiency to communicate.
Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely
accepted that communicative competence should be the goal of language
education, central to good classroom practice [11]. This is in contrast to
previous views in which grammatical competence was commonly given top priority.
The understanding of communicative competence has been influenced by the field
of pragmatics and the philosophy of language concerning speech acts as
described in large part by John Searle and J.L. Austin.
On the one hand, it is also often inferred
or even stated that the oldest methods were completely ineffective or have died
out completely, however the oldest approaches are still used (e.g. the Berlitz [12] version of the direct
method). One reason for this situation is that proponents of new methods have
been so sure that their ideas are so new and so correct that they could not
conceive that the older ones have enough validity to cause controversy. This
was in turn caused by emphasis on new scientific advances, which has tended to
blind researchers to precedents in older work [13; p.5]. These have led to the
positive evaluation of Gouin's ‘series method’ [14]. In the 19th
century, Francois Gouin went to Hamburg to learn German. Based on his
experience as a Latin teacher, he thought the best way to do this would be to
memorize a German grammar book and a table of its 248 irregular verbs. However,
when he went to the academy to test his new language skills, he was disappointed
to find out that he could not understand anything. Trying again, he similarly
memorized the 800 root words of the language as well as re-memorizing the
grammar and verb forms. However, the results were the same. During this time,
he had isolated himself from people around him, so he tried to learn by
listening, imitating and conversing with the Germans around him, but found that
his carefully-constructed sentences often caused native German speakers to
laugh. Again he tried a more classical approach, translation, and even
memorizing the entire dictionary but had no better luck [14]. When he returned
home, he found that his three-year-old nephew had learned to speak French. He
noticed the boy was very curious and upon his first visit to a mill, he wanted
to see everything and be told the name of everything. After digesting the
experience silently, he then reenacted his experiences in play, talking about
what he learned to whoever would listen or to himself. Gouin decided that
language learning was a matter of transforming perceptions into conceptions,
using language to represent what one experiences. Language is not an arbitrary
set of conventions but a way of thinking and representing the world to oneself.
It is not a conditioning process, but one in which the learner actively
organizes his perceptions into linguistics concepts [15].
The report from the
27th of January, 2009, provided by PhD graduate Paul Sulzberger, Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand [16], suggests that the best way to learn a language is
through frequent exposure to its sound patterns, even if you haven’t a clue
what it all means. "Our ability to learn new words is directly
related to how often we have been exposed to the particular combinations of the
sounds which make up the words. If you want to learn Spanish, for example,
frequently listening to a Spanish language radio station on the internet will
dramatically boost your ability to pick up the language and learn new
words"[17], - Dr Sulzberger says. Without
going into all the findings of the research, it rings true in the sense that
this is surely the natural progression in first language acquisition: toddlers
learn to speak by first listening, then imitating the sounds, and only then
beginning gradually to formulate words in isolation. Another fact, which proves
the theory of ‘learning through
listening’, was experienced by my foreign friends, who moved to another
country with their 5-7-year old children. They observed their kids learning a
foreign language from their school friends; moreover their sounds and
intonation were not at all native-sounding, but very authentic as to the
language the children were learning. Of course, adults and children do not
learn languages in the same way. This is undoubtedly true: it takes a 5
year-old only few months to reach the communicative level of a foreign
language, but there are not many adults who could do that. As adults the
way we learn a second (third, fourth etc.) language may differ significantly
from the way we learnt our native language. Nevertheless, the researches should
not overstate the difference. This “new” research suggests that simply
listening to a new language sets up the necessary structures in the brain
required to learn the vocabulary. "Neural tissue required to learn and
understand a new language will develop automatically from simple exposure to
the language—which is how babies learn their first language"[17], - Dr
Sulzberger insists on. He was prompted to undertake the research after spending
seven years teaching Russian to New Zealand students and observing drop-out
patterns: "I was very conscious of the huge difficulties students have
when they tackle another language, especially at the beginning. Many drop out
because they feel they are not making progress"[17]. One interesting line of enquiry which
motivated the research was what makes it so difficult to learn foreign words
when we are constantly learning new ones in our native language. It was
found that even as adults each time we hear new combinations of sounds our
brain develops new corresponding neural structures. The more exposure to
the sounds, the better prepared we are to learn and retain the language.
"Teachers should recognise the importance of extensive aural exposure to a
language. One hour a day of studying French text in a classroom is not
enough—but an extra hour listening to it on the iPod would make a huge
difference…Language is a skill, it's not like learning a fact. If you want to
be a weight lifter, you've got to develop the muscle - you can't learn
weightlifting from a book. To learn a language you have to grow the appropriate
brain tissue, and you do this by lots of listening—songs and movies are
great"[17] - Dr Sulzberger says. And all the arguments from the research
of New Zealand linguist play a role of proponents to the discussed above
theories on methodology of a foreign language acquisition.
So what does that all mean for language
teachers or people, who are being self-educated? And if the goal is to help
learners exercise their linguistic neurons, rather than simply offload language
facts, should a teacher adopt the model of “trainer” or “coach” rather than
“teacher”? How to help learners keep their motivation levels high? The answer
could be a truly flexible one. The practical application to all the approaches
highlighted in this article are limited only by teachers’ imagination and a
desire to teach!
References:
1. Cook, V. (2001).
Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. London: Hodder Arnold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_language_acquisition
2. Johann Amos
Comenius, Charles William Bardeen, and Charles Hoole, The orbis pictus of John
Amos Comenius. ISBN 1437297528, page ii, quoting Cotton Mather, Magnalia, vol.
II, p. 14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Amos_Comenius
3. Chastain, Kenneth.
The Development of Modern Language Skills: Theory to Practice. Philadelphia:
Center for Curriculum Development, 1971. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_translation_method
4. Krause,
C. A. (1916),The Direct Method in Modern Languages, New York. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_method_(education)
5. Richards, Jack C.;
Theodore S. Rodgers (2001). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.
Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00843-3.
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio-lingual_method
7. Barker, James L. On
The Mortality of Language Learning Methods. Speech Nov. 8 2001. http://www.didascalia.be/mortality.htm
8. Roby, W.B. (2004).
Technology in the service of foreign language teaching: The case of the
language laboratory. In D. Jonassen (ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational
Communications and Technology, 523-541, 2nd ed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_lab
9. Luke, Meddings
(2004-03-26). "Throw away your textbooks". The Guardian. Retrieved
2009-03-10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_language_teaching
10. Communicative Competence:
Theory and Classroom Practice. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2nd edition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_competence
11. Savignon, S.J. (1997).
Communicative Competence: Theory and Classroom Practice. New York: McGraw-Hill.
2nd edition.
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Berlitz
13. Diller, Karl Conrad (1978).
The Language Teaching Controversy. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House. ISBN
912066-22-9.
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francois_Gouin
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_education
16. http://englishonthe.ner/2009/03/17/to-learn-a-foreign-language-listen-to-it-first/
17. Paul
Sulzberger (2009). New study may revolutionize language learning. New
Zealand: Victoria University of Wellington. PhysOrg.com.