FOREIGN LANGUAGE
TEACHING IN
CURRENT TOPICS AND
TRENDS
1
Communicative foreign language teaching: its successes and failures
2 The
cognitive turnabout in foreign language teaching: raising the learner's
awareness of language
3 The
magic formula of "learner autonomy": fostering the learner's language
learning capabilities
4
"Constructivism" - the latest panacea for all the problems in foreign
language teaching?
7 A look ahead:
what the future may hold in store for foreign language teaching
In this
article I will set out to outline the major strands in the recent history of
foreign language teaching by taking the "communicative era" as a
starting-point. Although the focus of this survey will be on
In the
first part of this paper a brief assessment will be made of both the
achievements and shortcomings of communicative foreign language teaching. This
will be followed by an appraisal of what came to be labelled the
"cognitive turnabout" in foreign language teaching - a step which
took place in the early 1980s. Next, a variety of initiatives in foreign
language teaching will be discussed that are commonly grouped under the heading
"learner autonomy", a designation which was added as yet another
instance to the long list of foreign language teaching catchphrases, which
gained currency during the last decade.
Within this
context, a theory of language learning has been advanced whose proponents claim
that learners "construct" their knowledge creatively, thereby raising
doubts as to the effectiveness of the knowledge which is being
"imparted" to them by the teacher. This "constructivist"
theory, incidentally, has led to more productive controversies among both
educationalists and language teachers.
Consideration
will then be given to a novel approach to the teaching of foreign languages,
which incorporates both the interlingual and intercultural dimension, two
aspects that hitherto have (only) been given short shrift. Finally, the focus
will be on what has to be taken as the most topical issue in German foreign
language teaching, namely the teaching of a foreign language (usually English)
being introduced at primary school level.
As is
common knowledge, the communicative approach to foreign language teaching
originated in
ability to produce and understand
sentences which are appropriate to the context in which they occur - what
[they] need to know in order to communicate effectively in socially distinct
settings. Communicative competence, then, subsumes the social determinants of
linguistic behaviour, including such environmental matters as the relationship
between speaker and hearer, and the pressures which stem from the time and place
of speaking. (Crystal 1980: 73)
Thus,
"communicative competence" is in stark contrast to Chomsky's (1965:
3) notion of "linguistic competence". Whereas the explicit aim of
grammar-based foreign language syllabuses was to familiarize foreign language
learners with the structures and forms of the target language,
communicatively-oriented or, functional-notional syllabuses (Finnochiaro &
Brumfit 1983) placed major emphasis on the communicative
purpose(s) of a particular speech act. They focused on what people want to
do or what they want to achieve through speech. The theoretical foundation of
the communicative approach to foreign language teaching was essentially
two-pronged: on the one hand, approaches based on the sociolinguistic theory
(Hymes 1970) and on the other pragma-linguistic theory such as speech act
theory (commonly associated with
Thus,
communicative competence was conceptualized as a bundle of separate
competences, namely grammatical, sociolinguistic, discoursal and strategic.
According to Canale (1983), grammatical competence refers to syntactic,
phonetic, semantic and lexical knowledge. Sociolinguistic competence is
concerned with the need to adjust one's communicative act to sociolinguistic
factors such as the context, in which an utterance is made, the social status
of the addressee(s) as well as general norms of conversation to mention but a
few factors. Discoursal competence refers to the language user's/learner's
ability to produce both written and oral texts that meet the requirements for
both structural cohesion and thematic coherence. Finally, strategic competence
involves mastering conversational strategies such as learning strategies and
strategies of language use aimed at rendering conversation more efficient. It
also compensates for linguistic deficits on the part of the learner, thus enabling
him/her to realize his/her speech intention successfully.
As is usual
in times of revolutionary changes, new ideas, while enthusiastically welcomed
and taken up uncritically by some, are considered as newfangled by others and
thus meet with scepticism on the part of those who are meant to implement them
in practice. The advent of communicative language teaching proved to be no
exception in this respect. Thus, syllabus designers, textbook authors, language
teachers had to scrutinize the tenets of communicative language teaching and to
draw whatever conclusions they thought relevant to their respective fields. The
new paradigm in foreign language teaching had the greatest and most immediate
impact on foreign language syllabus design.
British
applied linguists as well as foreign language pedagogues were at the forefront
of concerted efforts to conceive a novel type of syllabus reflecting the
concepts outlined above. It came to be known as the
"functional-notional" syllabuses and contrasted sharply with both
"grammatical" and "situational" syllabuses (for an
enlightening discussion, see Bell 1981). The pioneering work was done by van Ek
(1975), Wilkins (1976), Munby (1978), Brumfit & Johnson (1979), and
Finocchiaro & Brumfit (1983), among others. The elements which all these
concepts had in common can best be summarized by invoking Wilkins's (1979)
credo of communicative language teaching:
I would therefore be content if, for the present, notional and
functional considerations were to be regarded as simply providing another
dimension to existing grammatical and situational parameters - a way of
ensuring that general courses do not lose sight of the fact that linguistic
forms provide a means to an end and that the end is communication. Greater
concern should be given to seeing that what is learned has communicative value
and that what is communicative value has learned, whether or not it occupies an
important place in the grammatical system. (Wilkins 1979: 92)
The
communicative approach to foreign language teaching would have been to little
avail had it not been reflected in classroom teaching. Thus, in contrast to the
methods typically employed in the grammar-translation and the audiolingual
foreign language classroom, there were two teaching styles that stood out as
genuinely "communicative": the social-communicative and the
information-communicative style (cf. Cook 1991). In contrast to the academic
(i.e. grammar-translation) and the audio-lingual style of language teaching,
which laid emphasis on grammatical explanation, translation and on drilling
pupils in dialogues and structures respectively, the social-communicative style
made use of information gap exercises, simulations and role plays aimed at
encouraging students to interact in the foreign language. On the other hand,
the information- communicative style adhered to similar principles, but had a
distinctly receptive orientation in that students first and fore-most were
expected to comprehend information in
the L2, the underlying assumption being that the successful processing of
incoming information would eventually lead to the ability to use the foreign
language. The principal method of communicative language teaching was
essentially that the teacher should provide communicative situations that encouraged
learners to express themselves by interacting with both their classmates and
the teacher in the foreign language. Behind this approach lay the overall
rationale of communicative language teaching, which can briefly be formulated
as follows: language use is a necessary precondition for language learning or,
more succinctly, using and learning a language are two sides of the same coin.
In this process fluency was given
priority over accuracy (cf. Brumfit
1984). To put it in a nutshell, "getting one's message across" was
seen as the criterion for successful communication.
In an
assessment of both the merits and the drawbacks of communicative language
teaching it is probably fair to draw the following conclusions. Firstly, and
most importantly, to the protagonists of the communicative language teaching
movement we owe the insight that "functions" and "notions",
rather than "structures" and "forms" are conveyed in
"speech acts" as elements of human communication. Secondly, new
teaching practices were steadily gaining ground that were firmly based on the
belief that efficient foreign language learning could best be realized through
intensive classroom interaction. Thirdly, as a consequence of the need for
(more) authentic information about the country of the target language there was
an upsurge in the production of modern textbooks, which, not least, because of
their appealing layout contrasted sharply with the older exercise-laden
textbooks of the grammar-translation and audio-lingual period.
Unfortunately,
the communicative approach to language teaching also produced some negative
effects, which ultimately led to disillusionment with the way in which some of
the communicative tenets were put into practice. The first concerns the
widespread neglect of grammar. This was due to some misunderstanding on the
part of many language teachers with respect to the status of grammar within the
"communicative paradigm". According to communicative language theory,
grammatical structures were relegated to second place and subordinated to
categories of functions (cf. Wilkins 1972, 1976; van Ek 1980) and notions
(Wilkins 1976). In other words: priorities were reset in the sense that,
instead of teaching grammar "for its own sake", it had now taken on
merely a supportive function. The question a syllabus designer had to answer
was not: what grammatical structure/form has to be taught at a particular point
in time? But rather: what grammatical structure(s)/form(s) has/have to be
activated to enable the learner to realize a particular language function?
Since language functions and notions had been given such great prominence, many
language teachers were under the impression that grammar instruction could be
shed altogether. Some language teaching theorists went so far as to argue that,
at least on the issue of grammar, communicative language teaching theory (or:
"Pragmadidactics") had developed into a travesty of its original
ideals:
[...] wenn linguistische
Korrektheit nur dann gefordert wird, wenn das Gelingen von Kommunikation von
ihr abhängt, bedeutet dies keine Vereinfachung oder Erleichterung in bezug auf
die Partizipation der Lerner an fremdsprachlicher Kommunikation; im Gegenteil,
der Anspruch, der an die Lerner gestellt wird, erhöht sich sogar beträchtlich,
denn es wird von ihm die Fähigkeit verlangt, unterscheiden zu können, wann
linguistische Korrektheit unter allen Umständen eingehalten werden muß und wann
nicht.
[....]
Dann muß man wiederum
fragen, wie er dies ohne Kenntnis von Sprachnormen können soll. Kennt er aber
solche Regeln bzw. Sprachnormen, dann kann man - zu- gegebenermaßen überspitzt
- folgern, daß in diesem Fall überhaupt kein Grund mehr besteht, sozusagen
didaktisch legitimiert inkorrekte Sprachformen zu wählen; die didaktische
Abwertung linguistischer Korrektheit ist nicht mehr einzusehen.
(Pauels 1983:
Another
drawback of communicative language teaching ideology resulted from what was
regarded as the overriding principle of the communicative foreign language
classroom: to make students talk in the foreign language "at all
costs". This obsession, along with a widespread "laissez-faire"
attitude adopted by a great many teachers, is to be blamed for certain
classroom proceedings that frequently lacked structure and consistency of
topics. Thus, a common scenario resulted in conversations being centered on
nothing but trivial irrelevancies.
Finally,
communicative language teaching theory was beset with a difficulty of its own
making in that the cognitive side of learning a foreign language was unduly neglected.
The problem simply lay in the fallacious belief that foreign languages could be
learnt through use and interaction alone, provided there is sufficient input
available, thereby implying that L1 acquisition and L2 learning are somewhat
similar. Obviously, in such a context there is but little room for cognitive
approaches to language learning, which are essential for the learning process,
as will be shown in the following section.
The
cognition-based re-evaluation of foreign language learning is closely
associated with such concepts as "consciousness raising" (Rutherford
1987; Rutherford & Sharwood Smith 1985; Sharwood Smith 1980),
"language awareness" (Hawkins 1984; Donmall 1985; James & Garrett
1992; Gnutzmann 1995) and, since more recently, "language learning
awareness" (Bartlett 1990; Gebhard 1992; Gebhard & Oprandy 1999;
Johnson 1999).
These
initiatives taken together can be considered as a strong reaction to some of
the shortcomings in communicative language teaching theory. In the following, I
shall focus on language awareness,
"Sprach-bewußtheit/Sprachlernbewußtheit" and the "mental
lexicon".
Questions
about the nature of linguistic knowledge, its different features, the ways in
which it is organized, stored and recalled, especially in respect of the
vocabulary are very much at the centre of ongoing research in the fields of
cognitive psychology, second language acquisition/learning and foreign language
teaching.
Language awareness has become a vogue expression ever since it
was coined by Hawkins (1984) and appears under various labels in the relevant
literature.[1] This concept originated within the context of
primary education in
The new element (language awareness) is intended for the age range 10/11
to 13/14 in comprehensive and middle schools to bridge the difficult transition
from primary to secondary school language work, and especially to the start of
foreign language studies and the explosion of concepts of language introduced
by the specialist secondary school subjects. (Hawkins 1984: 4)
From the
plethora of definitions that have been suggested (cf. Gnutzmann 1997), Donmall's
seems to be the most appropriate for our purposes because this definition is
sufficiently general and comprehensive: "Language awareness is a person's
sensitivity to and conscious perception of the nature of language and its role
in human life" (Donmall 1985: 108).
As
mentioned earlier, the concept of language
awareness was originally developed within the setting of British primary
education, and was eventually adopted in
There are
said to be four dimensions pertaining to language
awareness: the affective
dimension is concerned with the ways in which emotions can be expressed by
different linguistic categories. The social
dimension refers to the interrelation between the linguistic code and
social determinants such as class-/peer-group-dependent-language use. The political dimension is concerned with
the influence that a particular language use by an individual exerts on society
and vice versa. The manipulative use of language is another aspect to the
political dimension.
Even if the
principles and aims of the language
awareness concept meet with a general consensus, their application to
classroom teaching is still deficient in several respects. Firstly, language awareness has so far been
adapted to foreign language teaching somewhat half-heartedly. The suggestions
made by Gnutzmann & Köpcke (1988), namely that the teaching of the grammar
of the mother tongue (German) and that of the foreign language (English) should
be combined do not go far enough. In order to sensitise learners to
interlingual as well as to language-specific phenomena and to promoting their
awareness of what could be called "linguistic relativity" the
comparison of only two languages seems to be lacking in scope. What is required
instead are multilingual comparisons
if the aim of overcoming a "blinkered" view caused by fixation on the
native language is to be achieved.
Secondly,
more attention ought to be given to the far-reaching implications that the
implementation of language awareness
in foreign language teaching has for teacher training. Within the British language awareness "movement",
this issue has been discussed for quite some time (while in
The
following passage taken from Wright (1992:
The primary focus of our approach is ultimately on the relationship
between the content and method of language teaching - the analyst/teacher axis.
As minimal requirements, we believe that language teachers need expertise in
the language they are teaching and skills to handle the management of the
learning process [ ... ]. Knowledge about language is first and foremost an
enabling knowledge that provides the teacher with the tools to carry out such
basic tasks as interpreting a syllabus document and translating it into a
scheme of work, explaining code errors to learners, making decisions on behalf
of learners regarding the content of instruction and ensuring that there is a linguistic focus [my emphasis, E. K.] -
either on language skills or language items or both - in any particular lesson.
Thirdly,
there still seem to be myths about the nature of language awareness, which become apparent if one looks at the
relevant literature, where it is emphasised sometimes that language awareness should not be taken as a "revival" of
linguistics, being brought in again by the back door, as it were. This view
seems rather odd, to say the least: of course it is linguistics which provides
the subject-matter as well as the tools that are needed to make language awareness an indispensable
component within the repertoire of foreign language teaching methods. Indeed,
by making the concept of language
awareness work linguistics could gain momentum again and make up for its
loss of reputation among many members of the teaching profession.
The various
issues concerning the organization of the language user's/learner's
"mental lexicon" proved to be of considerable relevance for
cognition-based approaches to foreign language learning. Since the so-called
"Wortschatzwende" (Hausmann 1987), or "vocabulary movement"
around the mid-80s brought into question the "monopoly" of grammar
teaching, there has been a growing interest in the acquisition and learning of
vocabulary, manifesting itself in two main directions. On the one hand,
research has been carried out into the development of the mental lexicon
(especially that of bilingual speakers) (Aitchison 1994) and into issues
related to the memory, storage and recall of vocabulary. In this respect,
Channell (1988) provides an overview of the psycholinguistic processes
governing the acquisition of L2 lexis. On the other hand, there has been
intensive investigation into matters concerning the application of vocabulary
learning theories to a member of domains, such as the design of lexical syllabuses
(according to the principles of structural semantics, Carter & McCarthy
1988), typologies of classroom exercises (Gairns & Redman 1986; Scherfer
1988, 1995) and the role of dictionary work in the foreign language classroom
(Summers 1988). A useful survey of the efforts made in the field of vocabulary
teaching/learning in the 1980s can be found in the collections of articles in
Carter & McCarthy (1988) and in the specialist booklet "Wortschatz und
Wortschatzlernen" of the journal Fremdsprachen
Lehren und Lernen (1987).
Despite the
remarkable results achieved in a relatively short span of time, there still
remains a lot to be done, both for theory-led research and for research
oriented towards concrete teaching requirements. This applies in particular to "integrated"
vocabulary teaching (in analogy to the above-mentioned "integrated"
grammar teaching), the aim of which must be for the learners to acquire a
general "lexical awareness" by means of appropriate communicative processes.
Further
research is also required in the field of idiomaticity (cf. Alexander 1984,
1985, 1988), which could include an interlingual component, as I argued in
Klein (1995).
The idea
that learners should become more actively involved in the learning process and
be given greater opportunities to co-determine the route to achieving a
particular learning objective is by no means a new element in the history of
education. In fact, it dates back at least to the reform-pedagogical movement
that took root in
The
definition of learner autonomy
suggested by Little (1997: 236) summarises its principal elements:
In formal educational contexts, the basis of learner autonomy is
acceptance of responsibility for one's own learning; the development of
learner autonomy depends on the exercise
of that responsibility in a never-ending effort to understand what one is
learning, why one is learning, how one is learning, and with what degree of
success; and the effect of learner autonomy is to remove the barriers that so
easily erect themselves between formal learning and the wider environment in
which the learner lives.
To what
degree foreign language learners can really achieve "autonomy" in the
above-mentioned sense largely depends on such factors as the age and type of
the learner, his/her language learning aptitude, the learning and communication
strategies adopted, the ways in which the learner "manages" his/her
knowledge, the teaching methods, the objectives set by the curriculum, classroom
variables (e.g. whole-class and sub-group dynamics), to name but a few.
In the
following, I will illustrate how the effective use of learning and
communication strategies and the effective management of the different
knowledge components can help language learners to obtain a higher degree of
autonomy thus facilitating the learning process.
Although it
is sometimes argued that the distinction between learning
strategies and communication strategies
is problematic[2], I will adhere to this duality for
the sake of the argument. Thus, learning strategies can be characterised as
attempts to develop linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target
language. The motivation for the use of any particular strategy is the desire
to learn the target language rather than
to communicate. (cf. Tarone 1981). O'Malley & Chamot (1990: 44 ff) classify
learning strategies into three categories; a) metacognitive strategies, which are seen as higher order executive
skills that may entail planning for, monitoring, or evaluating the success of a
learning activity; b) cognitive
strategies, which operate directly on incoming information, manipulating it in
ways that enhance learning; c) social/affective
strategies, which represent a broad grouping involving interaction with
another person.
Communication
strategies, on the other hand, are seen as an adaptation to the failure to
realize a language production. They serve the purpose of "negotiating
meaning" when either the linguistic structure or sociolinguistic rules are
not shared between individuals or, in more straightforward terms, when the
comunicative act is on the point of breaking down. Communication strategies -
or: as far as vocabulary use is concerned, for example, production strategies
(Tarone 1981) - are predominantly activated with the aim of filling lexical
gaps whenever they may occur in spoken discourse.
They make
use of any of the following techniques: approximation (i.e. getting as near as possible
to the intended meaning of a word), word coinage (i.e. making up new words
impromptu), circumlocution (i.e. paraphrasing the intended concept),
translation from L1, language switch, appeal for assistance, mime, and
foreignizing.
Up to the
mid-90s the discussion about learning and communication strategies centred
mainly on theoretical issues. However, suggestions were eventually put forward
about possible ways of how to bridge the gap between the theoretical bias in
this area of research and the potential it holds for classroom practice. For
example, Tönshoff (1995) proposes models of training these strategies
systematically, whereby close classroom observation, learner introspection
through thinking-aloud protocols, interviews with the learner, self-assessment
by the learner and such like are some of the empirical tools that have proved
useful.
According
to Tönshoff, empirical evidence of the effectiveness of such training schemes
is already available. To implement this approach on a broader basis, the
following requirements will have to be met: firstly, both learning strategies
and communication strategies have to feature in foreign language curricula;
secondly, both learning strategies and communication strategies have to be
formulated in such ways as to make them comprehensible for learners, and
typologies of exercises will have to be used for practising these strategies;
thirdly, teachers will have to create a classroom atmosphere that is conducive
to learning and that encourage learners to self-reflect.
The nature
of linguistic knowledge together with and its different manifestations provide
yet another focus of research into cognitive psychology and (foreign) language
acquisition/learning and are also relevant for the issues under discussion in
this paper. In the following few paragraphs, they will be given brief
consideration. Wolff (1995) draws a distinction between "declarative"
and "procedural" knowledge and characterises the former as the static and the latter as the dynamic
component of linguistic knowledge. "Static" knowledge refers to the
entire inventory of language elements an individual has at his/her disposal
including the interrelations holding between them and the system of rules by
which they are governed. To take an example: the mental lexicon can be
considered a prototype of static knowledge as it is the locus of the vocabulary
along with all the semantic networks, the lexical relations and the rules of
word-formation.
By
contrast, "procedural" knowledge makes use of "planning strategies"
for the productive processing of the declarative knowledge and it represents
the connection between the "language world" and the real world. In
short, one could speak of procedural knowledge as language learning knowledge
that manifests itself both in conscious and sub-conscious language use.
According to Wolff, it is this language learning knowledge which fulfils
important tasks in the process of language acquisition. It also ensures that
new declarative knowledge is added to the already existing body of knowledge,
which by necessity undergoes restructuring.
Incidentally,
if one takes both forms of knowledge into account, a remarkable difference
between L1 acquisition and L2 learning comes to light: whereas the child
acquiring its mother tongue always develops its declarative and procedural
knowledge of the world simultaneously, as happens with its declarative and
procedural language knowlege, the L2 learner already possesses the procedural knowledge, which can then be
used for the acquisition of declarative
foreign language knowledge (Wolff 1995: 221).
As a result
of this type of research, a stronger tendency towards process orientation can
also be seen in foreign language teaching methods. This finds expression in the
contributions to the collection of articles in Multhaup & Wolff (1992),
which spans the spectrum from the investigation of mother tongue production
processes to the concrete application of theoretical knowledge to classroom
teaching. Especially in this last-named field there is a growing need for
action. For example, working techniques as suggested by Wolff (1992) ought to
be made available to the practising foreign language teacher as
contributions which induce and optimise
the learning skills in the various productive and receptive areas of language
activities.
A
considerable number of the ideas discussed so far in this section have been
taken up by textbook authors who streamlined them so as to make them more
manageable for teachers and students alike. Thus, both in
1.
What
do you expect from your course?
2.
What
sort of language learner are you?
3.
Why
do you need or want to learn English?
4.
How
do you organise your learning?
5.
How
motivated are you?
6.
What
can you do in a self-access centre?
(Ellis
& Sinclair 1991: iii)
As can be
seen easily, the above questions are aimed at eliciting students'
self-assessment regarding the factors learner
type, learning objectives, learning techniques, motivation and self-directed learning.
In another
praiseworthy effort Rampillon & Zimmermann (1997) included the concept of language awareness as a module in their training
course. In concrete terms, the "awareness" concept is classified into
four subcategories: 1) "language awareness" (referring to
meta-cognitive reflections on language learning), 2) "linguistic
awareness" (including linguistic knowlege and linguistic skills), 3)
"communicative awareness" (covering communication strategies,
strategies concerning mime and body language, discourse strategies, dominance
strategies, and the ability to interpret and implement these strategies), and
4) "learning awareness" (concerning the knowledge of the ways
language is mentally processed and inference strategies).
(Rampillon
& Zimmermann 1997: 175 ff)[3]
No other
language learning theory in
The
fundamental idea of "constructivist" theory is the following: it is
impossible for a human being to perceive reality in any objective manner; we
rather "construct" reality by means of mental strategies on the basis
of our previous experiences, our prior knowledge and our social interaction. In
brief: reality in the strict sense of the term does not exist. If our ideas,
concepts and theories constructed in this way survive and if they can be
adjusted to our experience, they are said to be "viable". Hence,
"viability" has become the key concept within constructivist theory.
Two variant
forms of "constructivism" have evolved over the years: one
"radical", the other "moderate".
Let us
first give a brief outline of the "radical" variety of
constructivism. The term "radical constructivism" dates back to
neurological, philosophical and psychological research carried out in the
1.
Human
beings have to be thought of as "autonomous" systems, which are not
subject to cause-effect relations. The attempt to perceive objective reality is
not particularly important, whereas the effort to guarantee the survival of the
species is of prime importance.
2.
Human
beings are conceived of as "closed" systems incapable of gathering
information from the outside world by means of symbols. The human nervous
system cannot be manipulated from the outside. Peschl (1990: 26) argues that
perception is the result of activities of the neurons interacting within this
closed system.
3.
Living
beings are attached to their environments. Adapting to these environments is
seen as the only way of survival.
4.
Since
human beings need symbols and concepts to describe the phenomena of their
environments, human cognition is bound to be subjective. Nervertheless, it is
possible to communicate ideas, feelings and concepts to other people through
language. For radical constructivists, language cannot have denotative but only
connotative functions, in other words: in verbal interaction there is no way of
transmitting information. Instead, due to concepts and ideas being exchanged between
the participants, verbal interaction effects constant changes in their
cognition. As Schmidt (1986) puts it, we are dealing with models of reality
which are determined by social conventions.
In contrast
to radical "constructivism", representatives of the
"moderate" version of "constructivism" argue that there is
no insuperable opposition between ontological reality and the reality as we
experience it. Indeed, some scholars believe that despite the fact that the
phenomenal world and the "real" world differ to a certain extent,
they are nevertheless interrelated in the sense that the former can be regarded
as representing the latter. Whereas the proponents of radical
"constructivist" theories assign a decisive role to the human being
in the process of perceiving reality, representatives of the moderate version
of "constructivism" postulate an equilibrium between the perspective
of the "perceiver" and ontological reality, thereby refuting the
argument put forward by the "radicalists" that a human being is a
"closed system".
In
conclusion, one would probably say that there is more convincing evidence to
support the moderate variety of "constructivism". For example, in
most situations we simply do not need any absolute knowledge of the phenomena
of our environment. Under normal circumstances, some intuitive knowledge
resulting from established conventions of human communication is sufficient for
conversing with people about everyday phenomena of the world around us. After
all, there are few discrepancies in the way most people perceive these
phenomena. Obviously, when it comes to reaching consensus on abstract concepts,
"constructivist"ideas take on greater importance.
In the
following section, some examples from the field of language teaching and
learning will be discussed, which, according to the proponents of the
"constructivist" theory, provide ample evidence of the didactic
potential of "constructivism".
First, let
us consider an example taken from phonetics. The sounds of a language are not
pronounced as if they occurred in isolation because in the stream of speech
they are subject to processes such as elision, assimilation, accommodation
etc., and yet we are usually able to identify a particular speech sound the
reason being that during the learning process the learner develops mental
mechanisms which serve as a guide in distinguishing between different speech
sounds. In "constructivist" terminology one could say that the
learner "constructed" the speech sound that he/she had identified as
a sound belonging to the repertoire of a particular language.
Our next
example concerns lexical meaning. As is common knowledge, the signification of
a word is by no means fixed but depends on the context in which a word occurs.
Furthermore, words are subject to polysemy: for example, table has at least the following two meanings in German: a) Tisch, b) Tabelle. In addition, words often carry special meanings depending
on the cultural context in which they are used. An obvious example is
democracy, which understandably has a different connotation in a country with a
long democratic tradition than in a country that lacks such a tradition. These
phenomena are usually dealt with in terms of fuzziness.
As regards
the "constructivist" approach to such cases of fuzzy meaning, one
would probably argue that the language learner constructs the sense of a
particular word/expression by tapping his/her experience in order to find
contexts in which it had preciously been encountered.
Another
argument that "constructivists" often advance in suppport of their
theory is the following: The presentation of grammatical phenomena by the
teacher does not necessarily mean that they are incorporated successfully into
the learner's cognitive system. The various language elements are acquired in
fairly fixed sequences, and the successive phases of the teaching process do not correlate with the different phases of the acquisition process.
Cook (1989)
gives the following succint explanation:
It must be recognized that one does not learn the grammatical structure
of a second language through 'explanation' and 'instruction' beyond the most
rudimentary level for the simple reason that one has not enough explicit
knowledge about this structure to provide explanation and instruction.
For many
foreign language teachers the following situation is quite common: although the
production of a speech sound has been demonstrated by the teacher, students,
when asked to produce that sound keep make the same mistake. For Bleyhl (1998),
a leading German "constructivist", the explanation is
straightforward. He claims that in the above-mentioned situation the student
has not yet developed a "mental programme" which would enable him/her
to produce the linguistic structure required. This theory throws doubt on the
widely-held belief that people learn by imitating models of language which are
provided by the teacher. According to Bleyhl, one can only imitate those
structures, forms etc. that are already integral parts of the learner's
competence.
Finally,
according to "constructivist" theory, the transmission of linguistic
signs in itself does not guarantee the correct interpretation of the message by
the learner. It is the learner himself/herself who has to assign an
interpretation to the signs that he/she has received. Therefore, the assignment
of meaning to a word/phrase/sentence is a subjective process because it implies
the successful effecting of "construction" processes by the learner.
The theory
of "constructivism" itself as well as its application to language
learning has met with criticism.
1.
The
neurophysiological evidence that is often invoked to justify (radical)
"constructivist" theory seems to be based on an unsound foundation
(cf. Reinfried 1999: 169 ff).
2.
The
"viability" concept is too reductionist in the sense that it only
applies to human perception rather than to general ideas. As Nüse u.a. (1995:
175) points out, theories and ideas are not directly relevant for people's
survival; clearly, people can survive even when entertaining the most abstruse
ideas.
3.
The
absolute dichotomy between any kind "objective" reality and a
"subjective" reality as perceived by the language user/learner fails
to do justice to complex phenomena such as language and culture, which cannot
be accommodated at the level of strict objectivity but rather are subject to
being "negotiated" by the people concerned.[4]
4.
Finally,
contrary to claims put forward by adherents of "constructivist"
theories that only learner orientation guarantees successful learning,
empirical evidence suggests that learners normally do not formulate
(grammatical) rules themselves but incorporate the rules explicitly formulated
by the teacher (e.g. in the course of grammar instruction) into their body of
existing knowlege (see East 1992: 210). This supports the necessity for
instruction in foreign language teaching thus rendering the
"constructivist" - "instructivist" dichotomy vacuous.
The topics
of particular importance in this domain of language teaching include the
following: various aspects of early childhood bilingualism, the didactic
concepts of primary school foreign language teaching, including their
consequences for the curriculum, primary school-specific teaching methods and
problems in connection with the continuation of foreign language teaching in
the first years of secondary school.
Various
points of view including second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and
multilingualism and concerning the postulate that language awareness should be developed at an early age, the
principle of bringing forward the start of foreign language teaching to the
third (or even the first school year) has generally been accepted by now[5] (cf. Bliesener 1993; Gogolin 1995;
Gompf & Karbe 1995; Kierepka 2000, Schrand 1993; amongst others). In
contrast, questions concerning the didactic concept optimally suited to the
primary school remain subject to controversy. This controversy has (unfortunately)
been reduced to the dichotomy between "systematic foreign language
teaching" and "incidental encountering of foreign languages"
("Begegnungssprachenkonzept"), which has been amply documented in the
literature (Brusch 1993; Doyé 1991; Hellwig 1992; Pelz 1991; Rück 1994; Sauer
1992, 1993, 2000).
On the
whole, we have been witnessing a vacuous discussion between the proponents of
the two opposing concepts of teaching a foreign language to young children.
Teaching English - or any other foreign language - to children cannot be
anything but "systematic". Going about this task in a non-committal,
casual manner would run counter to anything we know about the predisposition of
6-10 year-old children to learning. After all, the other subjects are also
taught systematically. However, with respect to primary school foreign language
teaching, "systematic" has a somewhat different meaning than in a
secondary school context. On the one hand, foreign language teaching at primary
school level does not follow a fixed progression (as is the case in secondary
school), but on the other hand, the foundation has to be laid for the various
levels of the language which can be built on in secondary school. Thus, in
phonetics, for example, the children have to be familiarized with the basic
inventory of speech sounds. In the field of vocabulary, however, one has to
teach them those words and phrases that are of direct relevance to their
environment and that meet their immediate requirements. As regards syntax and
pragmatics, those basic sentence patterns and speech functions ought to be
taught that satisfy children's most basic communicative needs.
There seems
to be a general consensus that this aim can best be achieved within an
"holistic" approach, which, for Maier (1995), is an essential feature
of primary school-specific foreign language pedagogy.
Selbstverständlich geben wir
uns nicht der Selbsttäuschung hin, daß die ganzheitliche Methodik, die sich auf
die [...] Erkenntnisse der Bezugswissenschaften und der Fremdsprachendidaktik
stützt, alle Faktoren des komplexen Bedingungsgefüges der gesteuerten
Fremdsprachenvermittlung berücksichtigen oder gar in den Griff bekommen könnte.
Trotzdem scheint uns ein solches Vorgehen am ehesten geeignet, die
größtmögliche Zahl von Sprachaneignungsprozessen in Gang zu setzen, der
Unterschiedlichkeit der Lernvoraussetzungen und Lerntypen Rechnung zu tragen,
dem Sprachvermittler in fachlich bestimmten Grenzen die freie Wahl der ihm am
meisten zusagenden und in der konkreten Unterrichtssituation am geeignetsten
erscheinenden Mittel einzuräumen, [ ... ] das eine Lernende und Lehrende
lähmende Langeweile verhindert. (Maier
1995;
The heated
arguments of the early and mid-90s between the proponents of the
"systematic" approach and those favouring the "incidental
encountering" approach have now given way to a more sober assessment of
the situation. We are now witnessing attempts to "unify" all the different
experiments in early English instruction in
To conclude
this section, I will mention three aspects which should be given our fullest
consideration; first, the concept of language
awareness (see section 2) holds considerable potential also for foreign
language teaching in primary schools as long as it is adapted to the
requirements of young children.
Secondly,
given the fact that a first foundation of foreign language competence has been
laid in the primary shcool, the problem of the "didactic linkage" at
the juncture between primary and secondary school inevitably arises. Secondary
school teachers can no longer argue (as many of them still do) that it is in
the fifth form, i.e. at the beginning of secondary education, that the
"real thing" (i.e. foreign language teacher proper) starts - as if
they were starting teaching the foreign language "from scratch". It
is all too obvious that the transition from primary to secondary school affects
issues such as teaching methods, EFL syllabuses, teaching material, and - above
all - teacher training.
Thirdly, as
we saw earlier, foreign language/English teaching at primary school level is
not merely secondary school teaching "brought forward" by a few
years, but rather has its own distinctive features, which require a number of
specific qualifications for primary school teachers. Rück (1994: 153) lists the
following:
-
a
good command of the foreign language, particularly of the oral mode
-
a
thorough knowledge of phonetics that enables teachers to explain and
demonstrate correct pronunciation
-
familiarity
with the main principles of second/foreign language acquisition/learning
-
familiarity
with primary school-specific teaching methodology
-
awareness
of the didactic potential of primary school-specific media
-
a
good knowledge of the target language country
-
knowledge
of the different concepts of primary school foreign language teaching.
Ever since
Lado (1957) the question as to what effect the knowledge of one's mother tongue
(or an already acquired foreign/second language) has on the learning of further
foreign languages has been a central theme in the discussion of second language
acquisition. According to the behaviourist theories of language learning of the
1950s and 1960s, it was claimed that identical (or similar) structures in L1
and L2 always resulted in positive
transfer thereby facilitating the learning task, whereas structural differences
resulted in negative transfer (i.e. interference) thus making learning
harder. This hypothesis, formulated and somewhat modified by Wardhaugh (1970), eventually
gave way to a more differentiated view of the issues involved. On the whole, it
is still accepted that a second/foreign language is learnt in quite a different
way from the first language, in other words: some sort of language transfer takes place. This has qualified the so-called
"identity hypothesis" of the 1970s (Dulay & Burt 1974, 1975). In
just this connection, some questions relevant to classroom foreign language
learning arise: how does foreign language knowledge taught in class influence the
learning of a further foreign language? (Bausch u.a., 1995). In what ways do
learning and communication strategies acquired during the learning of a first
foreign language positively influence the acquisition of a further foreign
language? What role does the type of the foreign language learnt first have on
the learning of (a) further foreign language(s)? To answer questions like
these, research has been conducted by Barrera-Vidal (1995), who investigated
the question of "dual contrastivity" on the example of German natives
having learnt French as their first foreign language (L2) and subsequently
learning Spanish as their second foreign language (L3), and by Königs (1995),
who is concerned with the more general question of what mental mechanisms guide
"learning by contrast."
In
However,
there is a need to include English, which is after all the first (obligatory)
foreign language in the German educational context (as is the case in most
other European countries) and thus the learning of English forms a basis for
any language to be learnt subsequently. First initiatives to this effect have
already been made (e.g. Klein 2002).
The general
objective of a multilingual theory of foreign language learning is to develop
methods which would facilitate the learning of a third/fourth etc. foreign language
by making use of the knowledge of languages already mastered by the learner,
or, in brief, to find "short cuts" on the way to learning further
foreign languages. In order to achieve this aim, one has to resort to concepts
which are central to the multilingual approach to foreign language teaching,
namely transfer, interference and inference. Transfer is to be understood
in a more neutral sense without the negative connotations that make us equate
the term with interference.
The
definition suggested by Odlin (1989) seems to be the most adequate in this
respect:
Transfer is the influence resulting from similarities and differences
between the target language and any other language that has been previously
(and perhaps imperfectly) acquired. (Odlin 1989: 27)
For a
multilingually-based approach to foreign language teaching to be efficient, a
more positive attitude towards cross-linguistic phenomena will have to be
adopted. Thus, instead of placing undue emphasis on interference when dealing with grammatical, semantic and lexical
phenomena of the various languages involved, we should enable students to put
forward hypotheses about the target language(s) in the sense of Ellis (1985:
298):
Inferencing is the means by which the learner forms hypotheses by
attending to input. It involves forming hypotheses about the target language by
attending to specific features in the input, or by using the context of
situation to interpret the input.
Thus, the
overall aim of a multilingual theory of language teaching can be summarised as
follows:
[ ... ] die "fördernde
Kraft, welche zwischensprachliche Prozesse für das Erlernen neuer Fremdsprachen
darstellen" (Meißner 1999: 62), optimal zu nutzen, d.h. in letzter
Konsequenz solche Lernstrategien für Lernende erfahrbar zu machen und solche
Übungsformen zu entwickeln, die sie dazu befähigen, "von den Vorteilen des
Interlingualen Transfers [zu] profitieren und seine Nachteile, nämlich
interferenzbedingte Fehler, möglichst [zu] vermeiden." (Reinfried 1998: 23) (Klein 2002: 58).
In general,
making inferences of the kind described above is possible on all linguistic
levels. However, due to the particular types of languages which are at issue
here (Romance languages plus English with its considerable substratum of words
of Romance origin in its vocabulary), it is lexical inferencing that holds the
greatest didactic potential. The following example is a case in point:
Spanish French English German
1) ironía ironie irony Ironie
occidente occident occident Okzident
urbano urbain urban urban
2) valentía vaillance valour Mut
coraje courage courage Kourage
bravura bravoure bravery Bravour
3) baloncesto basket-ball basketball Basketball
política realista politique
réaliste realpolitik Realpolitik
guerra
relámpago guerra éclair blitzkrieg Blitzkrieg
4) apisonadera rouleau com- steam roller Dampf-
presseur
à vapeur walze
reactor
rápido surrégénérateur fast breeder schneller Brüter
The above
word lists from Spanish, French, English and German show that there is a
continuum ranging from situations which allow inferring from any of the
languages concerned to any of the remaining languages (example [1] to
situations in which no inferences are possible (example [4]), with intermediate
stages that permit drawing inferences from particular languages to particular
other languages only.
Incidentally,
it should be borne in mind that lexical inferences, as described in the
foregoing paragraph, are restricted to language perception on the graphemic level. If one were to add the
dimension of language production and
also include the phonetic/phonological
level, a number of problems would arise, which, however, are outside the scope
of this article.[6]
Although it
is notoriously difficult to predict future developments in disciplines that are
subject to many imponderables, there is some evidence in the current state of
foreign language teaching that provides some clues as to the course our
discipline may may take in the years to
come.
First, the
teaching of foreign languages in primary school will certainly gain momentum
and, hopefully, will include languages other than English to an increasing
extent. The current tendency for extending foreign language instruction to
pre-school will probably intensify. If these aims are to be achieved, teacher
training will have to be given top priority.
Second, the
growing tendency towards further internationalisation in the fields of
politics, business, culture and education will necessitate an increasing need
for multilingualism - both on a collective and an individual level. This, in
turn, calls for even greater efforts to implement efficient teacher training
schemes for primary school teachers.
Third,
content-integrated language teaching (avoiding the misnomer "bilingualer
Sachfachunterricht" that has established itself in the German foreign
language teaching profession) is an up-and-coming branch of foreign language
teaching. It refers to a setting in which non-language subjects such as
history, politics, geography, physics, biology etc. are taught through the
medium of a foreign language. Research has shown that this approach leads to
better learning results as the language is used as a "vehicle" rather
than as an end itself, thus being in line with task-based approaches to foreign
language teaching. Coherent didactic concepts and appropriate teaching
materials and textbooks are the main desiderata in this particular field.
Finally,
all forms of foreign language teaching that make use of electronic media
(e-mail, internet, etc.) will undoubtedly gain in importance. However, in view
of the breathtaking development in computer technology and its consequences for
international communication it is difficult to forecast in which concrete
guises they might appear.
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ONLINE 2002
[1] "Metalinguistic
Awareness", "Linguistic Consciousness",
"Sprachbewußtheit", "Sprachbewußtsein", "Métacognition",
"Conscience Linguistique", amongst others.
[2] To avoid having to distinguish
between the two, some authors use the term learner
strategies (e.g. Tönshoff 1995), others specify that communication strategies should be termed production strategies because they are essentially used in verbal
interaction (e.g. Ellis 1985).
[3] Besides offering the above
classification, Rampillon makes some useful suggestions for applying these
different strategies to practical classroom work.
[4] In contrast, physics, chemistry,
biology etc. are subject to higher degrees of "objectivity".
[5] Most German Länder have already passed legislation to the effect that foreign
languages (English as a rule) are a compulsory component of primary school
curricula. Those which have not already done so will soon follow suit.
[6] Further examples from the field of
lexis can be obtained from Meißner (2000). Examples of
"interphonetics" are discussed in Klein (2000, 2002).