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  Applied Linguistics during the Twentieth Century  
作者:FroG 点击数: 更新时间:2006-10-13

by Norbert Schimitt Marianne Cele-Murcia

编者按:

    本章选自Norbert Schimitt, University of Nottingham与Marianne Cele-Murcia, University of California, Los Angeles合著的An Overview of Applied Linguistics一书。

    前一章介绍了应用语言学发展的早期历史。本章介绍二十世纪的应用语言学。

    作者首先对二十世纪应用语言学的发展做了概述,主要介绍了语法翻译法(Grammar-translation method)、直接法(Direct method)、阅读法(Reading method)、听说法(Audiolingualism)、乔姆斯基的普遍语法(Universal Grammar)、 海姆斯(Hymes)提出的交际能力(communicative competence)、韩礼德(Halliday)的系统功能语法(systemic functional grammar)、欧洲委员会(Council of Europe)的功能——意念大纲(functional-notional syllabus)、克拉申(Krashen)的二语习得论(second language acquisition),以及根据这一理论发展起来的交际法(communicative language teaching,简称CLT)。

    文章还概括介绍了上述教学法或理论产生的时代背景、它们的语言学理论依据,及其优、缺点。

    本章最后几句值得认真阅读,仔细体会:

    In other words, a communicative approach helped learners to become fluent, but was insufficient to ensure comparable levels of accuracy. It seems as if a certain amount of explicit instruction focusing on language form may be necessary as well. The current focus-on-form movement (for example, Doughty and Williams, 1998) is an attempt to inject well-considered explicit instruction back into language lessons without abandoning the positive features and result of the communicative approach..

    这几句话提出了三个问题:

    一、 如何处理语言的流利性和准确性之间的关系。

    作者指出:交际法有助于学习者流利地使用语言(become fluent),但不足以保证语言的准确性(insufficient to ensure comparable levels of accuracy)。

    值得我们思考的是:我国缺乏良好的英语语言环境,我国的英语教师是非英语母语教师(non-NESTs),我们的英语课时又少,如果不扎扎实实抓好双基,会不会导致流利性和准确性两头落空,又怎样培养学生继续学习和使用英语的能力?

    二、 注重于语言形式的显性知识教学的必要性。

    针对交际法的局限性,作者提出:适量的“明示教学”(explicit instruction)也是必要的。

    这种明示教学要注重语言的形式(focusing on language form)。应用语言学的研究对象基本上是二语习得。中国英语教学研究的对象是英语外语教学。对我们来说,聚焦于语言形式的明示教学的必要性就不是It seems as if…may be necessary了,而是It is certain that it IS necessary。这个问题性连国外语言学家都已经注意到了,我们中国的英语教师和教研人员还能保持木然,仍热中于让学生在使用中“体验、感悟,先糊涂,再明白”吗?

    三、 究竟什么是国际语言学研究发展的新趋势?

    作者明确指出:当前语言学研究的一种趋势是focus-on-form,是在语言教学中重新注入经过周密考虑的明示教学,而不放弃交际法的积极作用。这说明:后教法时代各种教学法应该互相借鉴、取长补短。对于不同的教学法,正确的做法是包容、优选。在英语外语教学中,我们当然要重视语言形式,重视正规的课堂教学,重视明示教学;但同时我们也不能否定交际法注重语言的功能、重视语言运用的得体性等积极作用。只有这样才能使我国的英语教学既符合中国的国情、教情、学情,又能跟上国际语言教学的发展趋势。

    The real acceleration of change in linguistic description and pedagogy occurred during the twentieth century, in which a number of movements influenced the field only to be replaced or modified by subsequent developments. At the beginning of the century, second languages were usually taught by the‘Grammar-translation method’, which had been in use since the late eighteenth century, but was fully codified in the nineteenth century by Karl Plötz(1819-1881), cited in Kelly (1969: 53,220). A lesson would typically have one or two new grammar rules, a list of vocabulary items and some practice examples to translate from L1 into L2 or vice versa. The approach was originally reformist in nature, attempting to make language learning easier through the use of example sentences instead of whole texts(Howatt, 1984: 136). However, the method grew into a very controlled system, with a heavy emphasis on accuracy and explicit grammar rules, many of which were quite obscure. The content focused on reading and writing literary materials, which highlighted the archaic vocabulary found in the classics.

    As the method became increasingly pedantic, a new pedagogical direction was needed. One of the main problems with Grammar-translation was that it focused on the ability to ‘analyse’ language, and not the ability to ‘use’ it. In addition, the emphasis on reading and writing did little to promote an ability to communicate orally in the target language. By the beginning of the twentieth century, new use-based ideas had coalesced into what became known as the ‘Direct method’. This emphasized exposure to oral language, with listening and speaking as the primary skills. Meaning was related directly to the target language, without the step of translation, while explicit grammar teaching was also downplayed. It imitated how a mother tongue is learnt naturally, with listening first, then speaking and only later reading and writing. The focus was squarely on use of the second language, with stronger proponents banishing all use of the L1 in the classroom. The Direct method had its own problems, however. It required teachers to be highly proficient in the target language, which was not always possible. Also, it mimicked L1 learning, but did not take into account the differences between L1 and L2 acquisition. One key difference is that L1 learners have abundant exposure to the target language, which the Direct method could not hope to match.

    In the UK, Michael West was interested in increasing learners’ exposure to language through reading. His ‘Reading method’ attempted to make this possible by promoting reading skills through vocabulary management. To improve the readability of his textbooks, he ‘substituted low-frequency “literary” words such as isle, nought, and ere with more frequent items such as island, nothing, and before’ (Schmitt, 2000: 17). He also controlled the number of new words which could appear in any text. These steps had the effect of significantly reducing the lexical load for readers. This focus on vocabulary management was part of a greater approach called the ‘Vocabulary Control Movement’, which eventually resulted in a book called the General Service List of English Words (West, 1953), which listed the most useful 2000 words in English. (See Chapter 3, Vocabulary, for more on frequency, the percentage of words known in a text and readability.) The three methods, Grammar-translation, the Direct method and the Reading method, continued to hold sway until World War II.

    During the war, the weaknesses of all of the above approaches became obvious, as the American military found itself short of people who were conversationally fluent in foreign languages. It needed a way of training soldiers in oral and aural skills quickly. American structural linguists stepped into the gap and developed a programme which borrowed from the Direct method, especially its emphasis on listening and speaking. It drew its rationale from the dominant psychological theory of the time, Behaviourism, that essentially said that language learning was a result of habit formation. Thus the method included activities which were believed to reinforce ‘good’ language habits, such as close attention to pronunciation, intensive oral drilling, a focus on sentence patterns and memorization. In short, students were expected to learn through drills rather than through an analysis of the target language. The students who went through this ‘Army method’ were mostly mature and highly motivated, and their success was dramatic. This success meant that the method naturally continued on after the war, and it came to be known as ‘Audiolingualism’.

    Chomsky’s(1959) attack on the behaviourist underpinnings of structural linguistics in the late 1950s proved decisive, and its associated pedagogical approach - audiolingualism- began to fall out of favour. Supplanting the behaviourist idea of habit-formation, language was now seen as governed by cognitive factors, in particular a set of abstract rules which were assumed to be innate. Chomsky(1959) suggested that children form hypotheses about their language that they tested out in practice. Some would naturally be incorrect, but Chomsky and his followers argued that children do not receive enough negative feedback from other people about these inappropriate language forms(negative evidence) to be able to discard them. Thus some other mechanismmust constrain the type of hypotheses generated. Chomsky(1959) posited that children are born with an understanding of the way languages work; which was referred to as ‘Universal Grammar’. They would know the underlying principles of language (for example, languages usually have pronouns) and their parameters(some languages allow these pronouns to be dropped when in the subject position). Thus, children would need only enough exposure to a language to determine whether their L1 allowed the deletion of pronouns (+pro drop, for example, Japanese) or not(-pro drop, for example, English). This parameter-setting would require much less exposure than a habit-formation route, and so appeared a more convincing argument for how children learned language so quickly. The flurry of research inspired by Chomsky’s ideas did much to stimulate the development of the field of second language acquisition and its psychological counterpart, psycholinguistics.

    In the early 1970s, Hymes (1972) added the concept of‘communicative competence’, which emphasized that language competence consists of more than just being able to ‘form grammatically correct sentences but also to know when and where to use these sentences and to whom’ (Richards, Platt and Weber, 1985: 49). This helped to swing the focus from language ‘correctness’ (accuracy) to how suitable any use of language was for a particular context (appropriacy). At the same time, Haliday’s(1973) systemic-functional grammar was offering an alternative to Chomsky’s approach, in which language was seen not as something exclusively internal to a learner, but rather as a means of functioning in society. Halliday (1973) identified three types of function:

    ● ideational(telling people facts or experiences)

    ● interpersonal (maintaining personal relationships with people)

    ● textual(expressing the connections and organization within a text, for example, clarifying, summarizing, signalling the beginning and end of an argument).

    This approach to language highlighted its communicative and dynamic nature. These and other factors pushed the field towards a more ‘communicative’ type of pedagogy. In the mid-1970s, a Council of Europe project(van Ek, 1976) attempted to create a Europe-wide language teaching system which was based on a survey of L2 learners’ needs(needs analysis) and was ‘based on semantic categories related to those needs, including the relevant concepts (notions) and uses of language (functions)’ (Howatt, 1999: 624). The revised 1998 version(van Ek and Trim: 27) lists six broad categories of language function:

    ●   imparting and seeking factual information

    ●   expressing and finding out attitudes

    ●  getting things done (suasion)

    ●   socializing

    ●   structuring discourse

    ●  communication repair

    In addition, eight general categories of notions were listed, which are shown here with representative examples of their sub-classes:

    ●  existential (existence, presence, availability)

    ●  spatial (location, distance, motion, size)

    ●  temporal (indications of time, duration, sequence)

    ●  quantitative (number, quantity, degree)

    ●  qualitative (shape, colour, age, physical condition)

    ●  mental (reflection, expression of ideas)

    ●  relational(ownership, logical relations, effect)

    ●  deixis(anaphoric and non-anaphoric proforms, articles).

    The materials from this project were influential (for example, Threshold Level English), and textbooks based on a notional-functional syllabus became widespread. In the early 1980s, a theory of acquisition promoted by Krashen(1982) focused attention on the role of input. Krashen’s ‘Monitor theory’ posited that a second language was mainly unconsciously acquired through exposure to ‘comprehensible input’ rather than being learnt through explicit exercises, that it required a focus on meaning rather than form and that a learner’s emotional state can affect this acquisition (‘affective filter’). The pedagogical implications of this theory were that classrooms should supply a rich source of language exposure that was meaning-based and understandable, always including some elements just beyond the current level of learners’ ability (i+l).

    The methodology which developed from these factors emphasized the use of language for meaningful communication- communicative language teaching(CLT) (Littlewood, 1981). The focus was on learners’ message and fluency rather than their grammatical accuracy. It was often taught through problem-solving activities and tasks which required students to transact information, such as information gap exercises. In these, one student is given information the other does not have, with the two having to negotiate the exchange of that information. Taken further, students could be taught some non-language-related subject, such as history or politics, in the L2. The assumption was that the learners would acquire the L2 simply by using it to learn the subject matter content, without the L2 being the focus of explicit instruction. Taking the communicative approach to its logical extreme, students could be enrolled in 5mmersion’ programmes where they attended primary or secondary schools which taught subject matter only in the L2.

    Results from this kind of immersion programme, such as those initiated in Canada but which now also exist elsewhere, showed that learners could indeed become quite fluent in an L2 through exposure without explicit instruction, and that they developed excellent receptive skills. However, they also showed that the learners continued to make certain persistent grammatical errors, even after many years of instruction. In other words, a communicative approach helped learners to become fluent, but was insufficient to ensure comparable levels of accuracy. It seems as if a certain amount of explicit instruction focusing on language form may be necessary as well. The current focus-on-form movement (for example, Doughty and Williams, 1998) is an attempt to inject well-considered explicit instruction back into language lessons without abandoning the positive features and results of the communicative approach.

    (Selected from An Overview of the Century)

 
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