Many theories about the learning and teaching of languages have been proposed. These theories, normally influenced by developments in the fields of linguistics and psychology, have inspired many approaches to the teaching of second and foreign languages. The study of these theories and how they influence language teaching methodology today is called applied linguistics.
Pulling habits out of rats
In an article published in the early part of the twentieth century, two psychologists, Watson and Raynor (1920), their experiment led on the theory of Behaviourism – had a profoud effect upon teaching of all kinds. This is especially true of language teaching where, arguably, Behaviourism stull exerts a powerful influence.
In Behaviourist theory, conditioning is the result of a three-stage procedure: stimulus, reponse, and reinforcement. For example, in a classic experiment, when a light goes on (the stimulus) a rat goes up to a bar and presses it (the response) and is rewarded by dropping of a tasty food pellet at its feet (the reinforcement). If this procedure is repeated often enough, the arrival of the food pellet as a reward reinforces the rat’s actions to such an extent that it will always press the bar when the light comes on. It has learnt a new behaviour in other words.
One of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition was provided by Skinner (1957). As one of the pioneers of behaviorism, he accounted for language development by means of environmental influence.
Skinner argued that children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words with meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases. For example, when the child says ‘milk’ and the mother will smile and give her some as a result, the child will find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child's language development (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011).
Language learning will take care of itself
A major issue in language learning theory has been whether traditional techniques normally associated with language teaching – drills, repetition, controlled practice of specific language items, etc.- actually have any benefitcial effect.
In his book, Deschooling Society, the educational theorist Evan Illich questioned the whole purpose of formal education. We may think, he suggested, that the more input we are exposed to, the more we learn. We may even go so far as to assume that we can measure knowledge with tests and grades. But all this is delusion.
Perhaps, then, all that anybody needs to learn a new language are those three elements: exposure, motivation, and opportunities for use. This was certainly the view of Dick Allwright and his collegues who had the task of improving the English language skills of students from overseas who were soon to study on postgraduate courses at the University of Essex in England in the 1970s.
The teachers at Essex reasoned that the ways they had been teaching did not seem to have much effect, they wondered, if they abadoned all that and instead devoted all their efforts to exposing students to English and getiing them to use it, particularly given that they were highly motivated to learn. The hypothesis they were working on was, in Allwright’s words, that:
“.... if the language teacher’s management activities are directed exclusively at involving the learners in solving communication problems in the target language, then language learning will take care of itself....” From R Allwright (1979:170)
In the course which followed, students were given tasks to do outside the classroom which involved them in speaking and reading. Students also took part in communication games where the only objective was to complete the task using all and/or any language at their disposal. A student had to draw the same picture as their partner without looking at the partner’s picture. The results, although not scientifically assesed, were apparently favourable. Everyone enjoyed the process far more (especially the teachers) and the students’ progress appeared to have been more impressive than in the previous years.
Stephen Krashen, The American applied linguist, devided language ‘learning’ into acquisition and learning he was being far more specific. Language acquired subconsciously is used in spontaneous conversation. In other hand, language learnt check our spontaneous communication.
Dave Willis describes as a fallacy the idea that controlled practice leads to mastery of grammar (Willis 1996: 48)
Much of problem in discussing acquisition and learning occurs when the discussion in divorced from the age of students, the level they are at, their motivation, their educational culture, and the places in which the learning is taking place. There is some “convert teaching” going on as they acquire not only the language itself but the social routines in which it is used.
However, many of the theoritical considerations discussed in this section have influenced popular methodology, especially the Communicative approach and its aftermath and Task-based learning.
Noticing
Steven Pinker’s word, students often depend upon their ‘considerable intellects’ (1994: 29) then one of the teacher’s main tasks is to make students ‘aware’ of language as an alternative to teaching it. In this approach, often reffered to as ‘consciousness raising’, the teacher does not expect students to produce new language immediately but instead makes them aware of certain of its features. This awareness will help their acquistion of the language so that when they need to use it, the knowledge thus gained will help them to produce iot accurately and fluently.
Richard Schmidt uses the term ‘noticing’ to describe a condition which is necessary if the laguage a student is exposed to is to become language that he or she kaes in (language intake) (Schmidt 1990). According to Schmidt, if teachers draw their attention to it. Of course, whether or not a teacher is present, students need to have already reached a level where they can notice the language feature in question.
Rob Batstone suggests that structuring and restructuring of ‘noticed’ language will necessary to adjust the hypotheses that the learner has formed (Batstone 1994: 40-43). This menas learners trying the language out, often in controlled classroom condition, to test out its boundaries and characteristics. Creative language use will proceed in due course.
The affective variable
Abraham Maslow, for example, suggested that self-esteem was a necessary ‘deficiency nee’ which had to be met before cognitive or aesthetic needs could be engaged with. This idea, that the learner’s state of mind, his or her personal response to the activity of teaching methods and materials writing. This Area of theorising has been called the humanist approach and it has given rise to a spesific set of teaching methods.
Theorists who are concerned with humanism say that the learner’s feelings are as important as their mental or cognitive abilities. The American wirter Earl Stevick calls these states ‘alienations’ and suggests that to counter these states, humanist approaches are called for (Stevick 1996). Stephen Krashen claimed for the beneficial value of comprehensible input depends upon the students being relaxed, feeling positive, and unthreatened.
The psychologist Carl Rogers, whose impact upon this line of thinking has been profound, suggested that learners needes to feel that what they were learning was personally relevant to them, that they had to experience learning (rather than judt being ‘taught’) and that their self image needed to be enhaced as part of the process (Rogers 1994) Education should speak to the ‘whole person’, in other words, not just to small language-learning; they are encouranged to reflect on how learning happens, and their creativity fostered. The teacher can achieve this by keeping criticism to a minimum and by encouranging them, in plain terms, to feel good about themselves. In a humanist classroom learning a language is a much an issue of personal identity, self-knowledge, feelings and emotions as it is about language.
Discovering language
One school of thought which is widely accepted by many language teachers is that the development of our conceptual understanding and cognitive skills is a main objective of all education. Indeed, this is more important than the acquisition of factual information (Williams and Burden 1997: 24). Such conceptual understanding is arrived at not through ‘blind learning’, but through a process of exploration which leads to genuine understanding (Lewis 1986: 165). The things we discover for ourselves are absorbed more effectively than things we are taught.
The pratical implications of this view are quite clear: instead of explicitly teaching the present perfect tense, for instance, we will expose students to expamples of it and then allow them, under our quidance, to work out for themselves how it is used. Instead of telling them about spoken grammar we can get them to look at transcript and come to their own conclusions about how it differs from written grammar. What we are doing, effectively, is to provoke ‘noticing for the learner’.
Discovery learning may not be suitable for all students, however, especially if it conflicts with their own learning culture. One student in a piece of research by Alan Fortune which compared discovery activities with more traditionally taught grammar said that ‘I feel more secure with rule because my intuition does not tell me a lot’(Fortune 1992: 168). Nor is it clear whether such techniques work equally well with all items of grammar or lexis. If the language students are exposed to is over complex, they may find it difficult to make any meaningful analysis of it on their own, even if they understand more or less ehat it means.