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Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>
wanadoo.es>Hola, buenas! In her review of Green's _New Perspectives on Teaching and Learning Modern Languages_ Dalila Ayoun says, among other things: > The chapters dealing with the actual classroom methodologies all > express their deep dissatisfaction with the way the communicative > approach has taken over foreign language classrooms or rather with > the way it has been implemented, which barely distinguishes it from > the direct method for instance. JLG: Well, it sounds promising. Maybe the destruction of a long-lived myth is approaching. But, alack, alack!: >DA: Thus chapter IX stresses the need for a more meaningful and >challenging communication, in other words a revision of the content of >communication rather than the methodology itself. JLG: Here we go again: it's like a curse! Any idea with strong contagious potential (I would like to know WHY it has this potential, for, as I try to describe below, it is almost senseless in the light of current Linguistic theory) becomes an endemic malady hard to eradicate. But... hear, hear! >DA: these points have been already made elsewhere in the literature along > with the point underlying the need for negotiation of meaning in real-life >interactions as is well supported by some of the empirical research cited >in chapter VII. JLG: As the editor of the book seems to be aware, his NEW PERSPECTIVES on teaching and learning modern languages, are after all NOT-SO-NEW. In fact, they seem to repeat boring ideas that, if anything, misrepresent the real issues one would like to get solved by serious research. I haven't read the book, although the last part of the passage above informs us that the need for negotiation of meaning in real-life interactions is well supported by empirical research. What can this NEED be? I take it that people learn languages, or anything for that matter, in real-life interactions (a language class is, as far as I know, one of these real-life interactions). No problem with that. But how come some people learn languages WITHOUT any interaction AT ALL, real or otherwise (?). Are they geniuses, extraterritorial, ... what? Of course real life interaction is one of the known ways to learn languages! So what? Why do we need empirical research for that obvious fact? I repeat, I haven't read the book and maybe I am missing a revolutionary set of brilliant (old!! or, at least, not-so-new) ideas of which I am not aware of. Unluckily, what follows makes me doubt whether this is indeed the case. >DA: The context of communication, i.e., the > classroom and the curriculum, must be revisited. Again, > Thus, the question is not whether language learners would benefit > from opportunities to use all four skills in a motivating, > challenging communicative environment with a content-based approach > which creates interactive activities during which learners can > notice and correct their errors as they restructure their > interlanguage. The question is how to implement such an approach > and to create such an environment. P. Hood proposes in chapter VII > that these goals may be reached with the help of CALL (computer > assisted language learning). All schools would be online, they > would have networked multimedia packages and use an interactive > whiteboard for a greater availability of current material and > personalized instruction of all four skills. > CALL could also partially alleviate the motivation problem outlined > by Chambers in chapter III, although the study's findings reported > in that chapter indicate that computers and teaching methodology do > not have much importance compared to the students' opinion or > perception of their teachers -- especially at the primary level > where students are less likely to be self motivated. > The communicative approach could also benefit from a greater focus > on learner and teacher autonomy as advocated in chapter II by > D. Little who shows that autonomy is a natural tendency in human > behavior. Autonomy in language learning could lead to more > effective and meaningful communication as the learners would decide > curriculum content in collaboration with teachers as successfully > done in a handful of classrooms (Dam, 1995). > Thus the current state of foreign language learning and teaching is > very clearly described and understood. JLG: I fear I am in complete disagreement with this last optimistic assertion. But my disagreement is not important, really. After all, there are people who believe the earth is flat. Nobody would care about their beliefs nowadays. But what if they had SOME REASONS to believe it? And, more important, what if those reasons gave us a BETTER REPRESENTATIONAL ARGUMENT about the place we are living on? Of course, I don't think there be any reasons for believing the earth to be flat. But I do believe that there are mighty good reasons to forget about the important CENTRAL role of real-life communication or, better and more elusively put, of a "challenging communicative environment with a content-based approach" in the fixing of linguistic structures (i.e., LEARNING) in the minds of potential learners. MIND YOU: I am not (repeat, NOT) saying that exercising your learned stuff is wrong. What I am saying is that this "modern" (?) way of doing is in principle not better than trying to learn vocabulary by rote, although I willingly concede that it might me "more fun" for hardly motivated kids --though this remains to be proved empirically. Let me start a brief summary of the reasons that make me so utterly a miscreant on these "modern" ways: 1) As we all know, and Konrad Lorenz (among others) showed, little ducks are born with a device that IMPRINTS in their minds the "concept" `[MY MOTHER] if certain physical conditions in the environment obtain, giving them the benefit of a protector in their early life. 2) As we all know, and Noam Chosmy (among others) showed, little babies are born with a device that IMPRINTS in their minds the "linguistic representations" of their milieu if certain physical conditions obtain, giving them the benefit of a tool that helps them communicate with people during all their life. 3) As we all know, Jerry Fodor considered that this inprintable language acquisition device we are all born with is in fact one of many modular devices we have in our minds that are mandatory, quick and hollow and which help us in sending information from the environment to what he called the central system(s). One of the characteristics of the fodorian modules is that its acquisition follows a universal pattern and sequencing. That is, at a certain age, all babies follow THE SAME path at about THE SAME time of their lives and according to THE SAME temporal span. So far, so good. 4) Now, in the middle of the chomskyan fashion of the seventies, some people got the idea that the ACQUISITION device for learning the mother tongue was somehow responsible for ALL learning of foreign languages' linguistic elements. Accordingly, they made a distinction between LEARNING a language, which is what we, poor oldies, have done in getting a foreign language (more or less!) in our heads, and ACQUIRING a language, which is what our lucky descendants are supposed to be doing in fixing the linguistic elements of the foreign languages they tackle. This distinction is a misrepresentation. There is no universal pattern in anything while one learns a foreign language. The discoverer of the mythical Troy, Schliemann, learnt a foreign language every three months. John Lyons once told me that Spanish was a language one could learnt in 15 days. It took ME four years or so of my childhood! But then, it has taken me more than six years to give up the learning of Chinese in my adulthood. And so on! 5) Moreover, the acquisition of a mother language is indeed natural. But that is because, according to Fodor, our modules are prewired and every single hint we get form the environment is immediately and EFFICIENTLY processed and becomes an asset for the final imprinting. This, of course, IS NOT THE CASE while one learns a foreign language. Or, if it should be the case, it should also be empirically well fundamented --which to my knowledge is anything but. 6) I am a fan of Relevance Theory. According to it, and if interpret it rightly, whenever we process information, we keep in our minds ONLY the one that seems relevant to us. That is the only one that PRODUCTIVELY INTERACTS with our old information in order to give us either (a) totally new information, (b) reinforcement of old information, or (c) weakening and eventually erasing of old information. It is my contention that, during certain stages of foreign language learning, a real communicative content (or whatever!) will be loaded with lots and lots of information that is totally irrelevant to the student. It, therefore, will be processed as NOISE and be subsequently erased, with all the processing effort this certainly requires. As it does not have the benefits of relevant information, it tends to form a concrete wall of irrelevant stuff that slowly by slowly might do away with the (little) motivation the student might have had when he began learning. 7) The defenders of the Communicative Faith tell us that, precisely, by doing natural meaningful activities, this problem should disappear, for the "meaningful" should help new linguistic information to become relevant. I wish somebody in the field would explain to me how this process comes about. Why not teach them directly a few vocabulary and grammatical forms and have them used in "traditional good old exercises"? Why indeed is the "meaningful approach" more relevant than the traditional one? I'm not saying it is not. What I am asking is WHY. I am a miscreant, and I don't believe by faith alone. I need solid reasoning and empirical proof. 8) Lastly and (almost) incidentally, I am pretty sure that our communication ability (or, in Relevance Theory terms, our faculty to "optimize relevance" of information in our communicative interactions) is also a module like device. Which means that it becomes settled and imprinted at a very early age and does not have to be taught again --or better, CANNOT be taught again and again... and again. The foreign language learner will use whatever means he has at her disposal to engage in a communicative interaction with foreigners, as I am doing now with you people. (S)he may not use the right (i.e., native) elements in the appropriate place and time (as I am sure I am not), but (s)he will communicate, never fear! No problem in that angle. 9) An intriguing problem, for which I haven't got an clear answer, is the developping of a module-like functioning of some consciously learned activities (i.e., driving a bike, or playing a piano) and representations (i.e., learning to read, or learning to look at birds professionally). This development of foreign language representations in hollow, quick, (almost) unconscious, and mandatory mental reactions is what I think confused the early advocates of the distinction between LEARNING and ACQUIRING. But, I insist, from a linguistic point of view (in the chomskyan tradition, that is) the similarity ends there. I wish somebody would point out to me whether this has been treated seriously somewhere. 10) One of the authors of Relevance Theory, Dan Sperber, has argued that the human mind might be a lot more modular than what Fodor thought. In fact, it might be totally modular, in which case, to say that some functioning is modular is not to say very much. What he argues, I think rightly, is that there is not a uniform kind of mind modules. There might be a good number of types, ranging from the micromodules which we call "concepts" to macromodules like what I mentioned before could be called the relevance device we use in acquiring information. All this is a very speculative field just now, I agree, but at least it might be a much more "new perspective on teaching and learning modern languages" Hasta otra! Jose Luis Guijarro Morales Facultad de Filosofia y Letras Avda. Gomez Ulla, 1 11003 Cadiz (Espa�a) Tel. +34 956 015526 Fax. +34 956 015501 joseluis.guijarroMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue