Vol 04 No 4 TESL Reporter

              teachir4rwish as
vol 4 no 4

a second language laie hawaii

summer 1971

b RMHO j M A M r A ional IM P sy M o ogy BehaviorRst AND RatHONAist pSYchOIlDGY i
AND LANGUAGE TEACHING THEORY
by WILliIam GALLAGHER wll L AM il
language teachers have felt the need to follow typical linguistic field techniques and a behaviorist

in the recent past foreign

inspired teaching theory this theory consisted of a stimulus response model with pra ctice and reinforcement playing the a leading roles at the present time psycholliinguiistts are searching for better cho ngu s s solutions to the problem of effective foreign 119 language teach ing lakoff 69117119 l l eiich

classroom operation

although the foreign language teachees r f own pedagogy may be far from the speculative domain of psycholinguistics and language acquisition theorries if the teacher d hiod has a clear understanding of the theories of grammar teaching practice and language acquisition he will have the first step in the development of his personal strategy of
william gallagher is a MATESL graduate of the university of hawaii

what are the language teachers themselves doing rationalist noam chomskys conception of the role that the mind plays in language acquisition and smith and millers 1966 the genesis of language should be causing foreign language teachers around the world to reexamine their own teaching theories however these rationalist ideas havent had any real influence on actual teaching to date after explaining the results of recent experiments on language acquisition jerry fodor states in genesis of language

A teacher has to have some understanding of how the language works ie a theory of

CONTENTS
behaviorist and rationalist psychology and language teaching theory by william gallagher paw1 paae1 gp d I
TIESL andspeech communication a

concepts with which american psychologists have traditionally approached problems about language learning are simply useless ew v klere smith 1966112 if fodor is correct kemm er m ba ree hethor drastic changes in underlying teacher eh r eahr theory should be expected except perhaps in areas where motor skills can be developed through practice namely pronunciation intonation etc

imitation and reinforcement the two

ka M amad a by kaymyyamada

pamaps s paeb aw

more on using a telephone directory to tech english as a second language a page 6 e bs by sony mlcrrethar h benv iIiWu a e e eny wL c

supplementation of opposites
predicate expansion

i in simple
e paga be

rtoibberrt krohn kenneth chastain danny eg sen
and ronald wardhaugh

many ideas and references were borrowed from

y a p by yaoshen

reporter revolution in language teaching theory grammar a general understanding of how a which persists until today language language is learned as well as a general acquisition was thought to come through a pedagogical strategy of classroom operation process of habit formation which is before he can teach these understandings or 1 completely consistent with behaviorist theories may be unconscious but I believe principles of learning with such notions as that the more they are made explicit the
better the teacher will be able to assess his own strengths and weaknesses in short given the qualities of rapport and sensitivity superior teachers can be created m teaching is an art or a talent perhaps but as with all talents when one knows explicitly what he is doing he should be able to perform even better wardhaugh 70231 it appears that we may have a better theory of grammar and with it a superior theory of language acquisition than ever before fraught with teaching implications I in order to understand why 1 say better and superrnore a summary of the previous pe i o foreign language teaching model in contrast with the newer model will be helpful the base of the previous linguistic method of language teaching can be found in the work of leonard bloomfield the methods he developed were applied to the famous army language schools the language training mission of which 1 was a small part and the I peace corps training schools these same methods redefined by fries brooks and others are now found in nearly all language teaching situations around the world they seem to have great success compared with the previous grammar transition model it is interesting to note that several years passed before bloom fields model was Bm developed into an actual teaching theory even though it appears to lend itself more directly to classroom application with chomskys model in terms of parallel chronological development it would appear that the time is ripe 1971 for the development of a chhomskn teaching an C omskiaai model
bloomfield it is important to keep in mind that bloomfield was a behaviorist he completely rejected rationalism listen to oln l the foUowing the command of a language is not a matter of knowledge the speakers are quite unable to describe the habits which make up their language the command of a language is a matter of practice and language learning is over learning anything else is of no use lado 6494 statements like the the foregoing inspired foreign language teachers and set off a
4s e e h sppeech is

page 2

TySL IES l t Es

primary practice makes perfect reinforcement and a stimulus response one can understand why learning model the so called linguistic model was so easily adaptable to the classroom all one had to do was to induce behavior in the classroom and overteach it and out of class acumen would develop since language was thus viewed as a

nnn eltlelctua l mechanical activity inovnilning eactstamulus response this was to v el u i i

spelled out by skinner the student needed only to be drilled through a series of patterns for which correct responses received immediate reinforcement and learning took place emphasis on imitation pattern drills mim mem drills the whole audio lingual approach is an extension of the skinneren Sk model chastian 6999 in the early stages meaning is not important in order for the students to develop the desired automatic responses nie plan is to practice to the h point of over learning until the student arrives at an automatic non thoughtful

response 38 6426 38

spolsky 66120

cf rivers

revolutionaries who seem to be following a movement developed in the last several years in the field of psychology this newer psychological learning theory is based on the earlier rationalist school of thought and

now been challenged by counter

the

linguistic method revolution has

experimentation and observation cf smith
1966

seems to be supported by recent

in analyzing the linguistic model

the theory of generative transformational grammar and the newer theories of psychology both rest on a cognitive neuro ppsychollogical basis for langauge sych o og there has even been an attempt to characterize the so called internal black
box as a computer complete with input output tapes and of course routing codes or rules it is as doubtful that the operations of the human mind can be characterized as
simply as an electronic computer as it is that these same mind operations can be likened ie amin n o to a rat loaarnigtg wind its way successfully le rn through a maze steiner 69217 236 236

mingto

rationalist extensions seriously challenges

this newer

grammar theory with its

page 3 summer 1971 m skinners theory cf chornskys criticism of journal of psychology 70193 7373 skinner in jakobovits 671421171 it should 142 7 1 74601 and the psychological review give rise to a new breed of language teacher 67208 it even appears that continual because it characterizes mans language repetition has a tendency to weaken or even acquisition as something a good deal more cause a complete lapse of association complex than other animal behavior and it between sound and meaning lambert may provide us with whole new areas of 60377 language requires thought bernard thought regarding teaching methods smollskys experience with language teaching po sk curriculum development textbook designing shows that knowing a language involves etc it should be noted that many of me t th not just the performance of language like behaviorist oriented authors outlined behaviors but an underlying competence excellent teaching techniques in practice that makes such performance possible by but the rationalist would quarrel with their t ignoring this it has been easy to nurse underlying rationale krohn 701041108 in 08 other words they often did the right things exaggerated claims for the effectiveness of for the wrong reasons operant conditioning in second language the main criticism of the behaviorist teaching spolsky 66123 language is not learned by pattern model of language learning may be characterized by chomskys argument that practice or by imitation david mcneill doubts the applicability of an SR model to the infinite number of sentences produced c language learning inaammu as his by a native speaker simply cannot be n s s uch observations show that the early grammar of accounted for by habits acquired through a child is not the same as that of an adult pattern practice or in any way as a result of and therefore could not be the result of SR learning theory given a finite amount of mere imitation in his opinion children are time there is no possible way anyone could learn by imitation or by practicing patterns born with the innate cognitive ability to develop their own grammatical systems the infinite number of sentences a fluent speaker is able to produce there simply smith 6617 24 generative transformational linguists maintain that the isnt enough time nor could a student ever subtleties of particular languages cannot ever learn enough patterns to account for the m completely novel or infinitely long be taught even by their own GT rules much less by pattern practice drills utterances he is able to make as a fluent

661724

speaker

what does happen according to the rationalists is that the student already knows innately how to generalize about
languages and thus discovers for himself the

sentences in the target language in other words what the student mostly needs is exposure lakoff 69122 language is not just a motor skill psychologist donald 0 hebb as early as 1949 claimed that extensive observations had shown that sentence construction could not be explained by a series of conditioned there are strong responses he said eake indicators that his the speakers thought run well ahead of his actual processes articulations lambert 6338 so language t0 production appears 1o require mental activity not just motor skill development language is not learned by repetition many other psychologists now agree and

grammar rules for constructing new

learning does not take place in much the same way somehow students know how to generalize deduce and form intuitions in short the student must be encouraged to reason about the operations of the target language lakoff 6929 130 130 agaan these findings should force us to ag i l i reexamine our previously held notions about the learning process and to look for the a mit adn dattedly more difficult to find teaching implications of the newer rationalist model even behaviorist robert lado has called for additional study into inductive behaviorist vs deductive rationalist language learning

language acquisition takes place when these inborn abilities are awakened by a human language environment rudolf steiner in stockmyer 69103 there is no reason to believe that second language

their experiments clearly show that
repetition plays no significant role in the formation of association of american

after analyzing a number of language teaching projects underway in the early 50s all using the behaviorist model summarized by insisting as follows
B

lado 61581 in summary john

carroll

page 4 TESL no method has emerged as clearly the best method and there seems to be no end to the arguments as to the proper objectives of foreign language instruction in our schools carroll 53186 in other words after nearly twenty years from blloomfields linguistic theory up to the B ds no one method could be singled 1950s out as the best was that because the methods were advanced by linguists and psychologists rather than by language teachers themselves perhaps in any event the challenge is clearly upon us in the early 70s as teachers to develop our own materials with justifications and insights from the most advanced thinking of psychology sociology anthropology and of course linguistics my personal cliallenge to foreign language h teachers is to reduce ideas about language teaching to writing articulate a rationale justify them from a psychological and a linguistic standpoint and share them with the rest of us

reporter
chomsky noam 19677 recent contributions to 196 1 the theory of innate ideaa synthesis 172111 m 1 de s 1965 aspects of the theory of syntax MIT press cambridge generative gallagher william K 1971 transformational grammar and teachers of english as a second language HATESL newsletter march jakobovits leon A and murry S miron 1967 readings in the psychology of language e englewood cliffs now prentice hall inc jersey krohn robert 1970 the role of linguistics in language learning TEFL methodology
language teaching A scientific approach mcgraw hill new york lakoff robin 1969 transformational grammar eachi g l ng u ge and language teachinnglaangu age learning 19117 1140 40 O o ms e amsttein jacob and william W gage 1964 the
1964

xx103 108 lado robert 1961 language testing longmans green & co london

bibliography
ailen V 1970 some strategies for teaching li standard english as a second dialect HCTE paper no009 paper presented to the spring institute on teaching english as a second language and as a second dialect tallahassee florida feb 18 1197001 8 997 .1 70 bloomfield leonard 1933 language mcgraw hill new york carroll john B 1959 the study of language harvard university press cambridge chastain kenneth 1969 the audio lingual

philadelphia e 19 4 t h rivers wilga M 19664The psychologist and the nive s foreign language teacheruuniverrsiity of chicago press 19 6 t he smith frank and miller george A 19666The P ycho ngu s c a genesis of language A psycholliinguiisttiic Ap ro ch M t approaachmIiT press cambridge A psycholinguistic 1966 spolsky bernard critique of programmed foreign language instruction I RAL 4120 the tongues of steiner george 1969 m nnn w meenneew yorker nov 15 fen e w 0 stteinbrfg danny 1970 psychological aspects of er r S einbeeft
1

ABCs

of

languages

and

linguiutiics Lings st m

working distinction 93 university of hawaii 21801193 Sa stockmeyer E 1969 rudolf stteiners curriculum for waldorf schools rudolf steiner press

a chomskys compeptaenrce iperlfiormstnccse rn pe s n ngui i

london temperley

M

habit theory versI us the cognitive code learning theory IRA L VI 19 7 106 0 RA 99 110 g 7 lo 6
1
1

111251133 33 wardhaugh ronald 1970 teaching english to speakers of other languages the state of the eb art TESOL newsletter IV febi I
1

sentence

transformations in english patterns language learning
1962

science readings for students of english as a second language kenneth croft and billye walker brown editors educational series mcgraw hill 1966 184 pages paper back price 25050 2.5 an intermediate to advanced level text also expanded through footnote explanations and pictured illustrations a with 26 readings in science education glossary at the end of the book is included biology chemistry earth science physics each lesson includes ten comprehension engineering mathematics medicine questions in addition to 20 exercises on meteorology oceanography and space vocabulary exploration original readings have been the book is excellent for high school or adapted shortened and divided into parts college preparatory courses where science will be a required subject or for adults who vocabulary is controlled with an emphasis are scientists or wish to develop a science on the development of a working science vocabulary vocabulary general purpose vocabulary is ALICE C PACK

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