Theories of Language and Learning

• Nature of Language

–Structural view of language

–Functional view of language

–Interactional view of language

• Nature of Language Learning

–Process-oriented theories

•What are the psychological and

cognitive processes involved (habit-

formation, induction, inferencing,

generalization)

–Condition-oriented theories

•What are the conditions that need to

be met for these learning processes to

be activated?

Why do we need to know the history of language

teaching?• Key to the understanding of the way

things are and why they are that way.

• Teachers may better comprehend the

forces that influence their profession.

Historyof

Language Teaching

Classical Period (17th, 18th and 19th

centuries)

• The purpose of education is

to teach religious orthodoxy

and good moral character.

Grammar Translation(1850’s to 1950’s)

• Emphasis on learning to read and write.

• Focus on grammatical rules, syntactic

structures, rote memorization of

vocabulary and translation of literary texts.

• Medium of instruction was the mother

tongue.

Direct Method • Posited by Charles Berlitz.

• Second language learning is similar to first

language learning.

• Emphasis on oral interaction, spontaneous

use of language and no translation.

• There was an inductive approach to

grammar.

Audiolingual Method(1950’s)

• Heightened the need to become

orally proficient.

• The “Army Method” (an oral-

based approach to language

learning).

Designer Method(1970’s – 1980’s)

• Chomsky – drew the attention to the “deep

structure” of language.

• Earl Stevick – take account the affective

and interpersonal nature of language

learning and teaching.

• Suggestopedia (Lazanov)

–Used relaxation as means of retaining

knowledge and material.

The Silent Way (Caleb Gattegno)

• Characterized by a problem-

solving approach.

• Develops independence and

autonomy and encourages

students to cooperate with each

other.

Interactive Viewsof

Language Teaching

Communicative Language Teaching

• Learners learn a language through using it

to communicate.

• Authentic and meaningful communication

should be the goal of classroom activities.

• Fluency is an important dimension of

communication.

• Learning is a process of creative

construction and involves trial and error.

History of Language Teaching

Classical

Audio-lingual-Designer- Silent

Direct Method

Grammar Translation

Communicative Approach

Strategy-based

Beyond Form and Function:

An Overview of the Components of the

Communicative Approach

• The paradigm shift in language

teaching started in the mid 60’s

to the 80’s.

• The focus of language teaching

and learning became language

as a means of communication.

Characteristics of communicative

view of language:1. Language is a system for the expression of

meaning.

2. The primary function of language is for

interaction and communication.

3. The structure of language reflects its functional

and communicative uses.

4. The primary units of language are not merely its

grammatical and structural features, but

categories of functional and communicative

meaning as exemplified in discourse.

• Communicative Language Teaching

is commonly regarded as one of the

most popular approaches to language

teaching.

• It has become the accepted “norm” in

the field of approaches to language

teaching.

• The very essence of this approach is

the “language as a means of

communication.”

• Noam Chomsky was among the first ones

to demonstrate that standard structural

theories of language were incapable of

accounting for the creativity and

uniqueness of individual sentences.

Therefore, there was a shift from the

insistence on the mere mastery of

grammatical structures to the emphasis on

communicative proficiency.

• Communicative competence essentially

suggests that teaching learners to form

grammatically correct sentences is not

enough, learners also need to be able to

use language appropriately in a variety of

contexts (Hymes, 1972). Hence, in

essence, the goal of CLT is to teach ‘real-

life’ language.

Basically, the components of this

approach are:

–Basic principles

–Teacher’s role

–Learner’s role

–Material’s role

–Syllabus

Basic Principles

ObjectivesPiepho (1981) discusses the following levels of objectives in a

communicative approach:

1. an integrative and content level (language as a means of

expression)

2. a linguistic and instrumental level (language as a semiotic

system and an object of learning);

3. an affective level of interpersonal relationships and conduct

(language as a means of expressing values and judgments

about oneself and others);

4. a level of individual learning needs (remedial learning based

on error analysis);

5. a general educational level of extra-linguistic goals

(language learning within the school curriculum).

H.G.

Widdowson

(1978)

Carrol

Brendan

(1980)

Keith

Johnson

(1981)

William

Littlewood

(1981/1995)

1. Teaching of

language as

communication

calls for an

approach which

brings linguistic

and communicative

skills together.

2. Focus on the use of

sentences for the

creation of

discourse.

1. Language is

essentially a tool for

communication.

2. Focus on testing

communicative

performance.

1. The structurally

competent

student produce

grammatically

correct sentences

yet unable to

perform simple

communicative

tasks

2. Know the right

thing to say at the

right time.

3. Teaching of

communicative

competence.

(Hymes, 1970)

1. CLT pays

attention to

functional and

structural

aspects of

language.

2. Focus on pre-

communicative

and

communicative

activities.

3. Everyday use of

language focus

on meaning than

on form.

4. Opportunities to

express their

own

individuality.

Cristopher

Brumfit/

Finocchario

(1983/1985)

Marianne

Celce-Murcia

(1991)

H. Douglas Brown

(1994/1997)

David Nunan

(1989/2000)

1. Language learning

is learning to

communicate.

2. Contextualization is

important.

3. Communicative

competence is the

desired goal.

1. Language is a

system of

communication.

(Hymes and

Halliday,

1972;1973).

2. The goal is the

ability to

communicate in the

target language.

1. Learning to

communicate

through

interaction;

Link classroom

language learning

with language

activation

outside.

(Nunan, 1991)

1. Language is a

system for the

expression of

meaning. The

primary function

is interaction and

communication.

2. Activities

involve real

communication.

3. Objectives

reflect the needs

of the learner.

Teachers’ Role

• The teacher has two main roles: the first

role is to facilitate the communication

process between all participants in the

classroom, and between these

participants and the various activities

and texts. The second role is to act as an

independent participant within the

learning-teaching group.

H.G.

Widdowson

(1978)

Carrol

Brendan

(1980)

Keith

Johnson

(1981)

William

Littlewood

(1981/1995)

1. Language

teachers need

not assume

passive roles

but can explore

possibilities of a

communicative

approach to

teaching for

himself.

1. The teacher’s

role in the

learning

process is

less

dominant.

2. The teacher’s

role as ‘co-

communicator’

places him on

an equal basis

with learners.

Cristopher

Brumfit/

Finocchario

(1983/1985)

Marianne

Celce-Murcia

(1991)

H. Douglas Brown

(1994/1997)

David Nunan

(1989/2000)

1. They help

learners in

anyway that

motivates them

to work with the

language.

1. Facilitates

communication

and correcting

errors is just

secondary.

2. Should be able

to use the target

language

fluently and

appropriately.

1. Facilitator of

the

communica-

tion process.

2. Needs analyst.

3. Counsellor

4. Process

Manager

NEEDS ANALYST

• The CLT teacher assumes a responsibility

for determining and responding to learner

language needs. This may be done

informally and personally through one-to-

one sessions with students, in which the

teacher talks through such issues as the

student's perception of his or her learning

style, learning assets, and learning goals.

COUNSELOR

• Another role assumed by several CLT

approaches is that of counselor. In this role,

the teacher-counselor is expected to

exemplify an effective communicator

seeking to maximize the meshing of speaker

intention and hearer interpretation, through

the use of paraphrase, confirmation, and

feedback.

GROUP

PROCESS MANAGER

• CLT procedures often require

teachers to acquire less teacher-

centered classroom management

skills. It is the teacher's responsibility

to organize the classroom as a setting

for communication and

communicative activities.

Learners’ Role

• The emphasis in Communicative

Language Teaching on the

processes of communication,

rather than mastery of language.

Hymes described (1975: 11-17)

seven basic functions that language

performs for children learning their

first language:

1. the instrumental function: using

language to get things;

2. the regulatory function: using language

to control the behaviour of others;

3. the interactional function: using

language to create interaction with others;

4. the personal function: using language to

express personal feelings and meanings;

5. the heuristic function: using language to

learn and to discover;

6. the imaginative function: using language

to create a world of the imagination;

7. the representational function: using

language to communicate information.

H.G.

Widdowson

(1978)

Carrol

Brendan

(1980)

Keith

Johnson

(1981)

William

Littlewood

(1981/1995)

1. They contribute

their personality

to the learning

process.

2. Has to perform

both pre-

communicative

and

communicative

activities.

Cristopher

Brumfit/

Finocchario

(1983/1985)

Marianne

Celce-Murcia

(1991)

H. Douglas Brown

(1994/1997)

David Nunan

(1989/2000)

1. They are

expected to

interact with

other people or

in their

writings.

1. Works in groups

or pairs. They

use the target

language in

situations.

1. Negotiator

and Interactor

Materials’ Role

• A wide variety of materials have been used to

support communicative approaches to language

teaching. Unlike some contemporary

methodologies, practitioners of Communicative

Language Teaching view materials as a way of

influencing the quality of classroom interaction

and language use. Materials thus have the primary

role of promoting communicative language use.

We will consider three kinds of materials currently

used in CLT and label these text-based, task-

based, and realia.

CristopherBrumfit/Finocchario(1983/1985)

MarianneCelce-Murcia(1991)

H. Douglas Brown(1994/1997)

David Nunan(1989/2000)

1. There must be linguistic variations.

1. Authentic to reflectreal life situations.

1. Support for language instruction; must be used creatively.

2. Promotes communicative language.

3. Task-based.4. Authentic.

1. Authentic.2. Task-based.

TEXT-BASED MATERIALS

• There are numerous textbooks designed todirect and support Communicative LanguageTeaching. Their tables of contents sometimessuggest a kind of grading and sequencing oflanguage practice not unlike those found instructurally organized texts. Some of these arein fact written around a largely structuralsyllabus, with slight reformatting to justifytheir claims to be based on a communicativeapproach.

TASK-BASED MATERIALS

• A variety of games, role plays, simulations, and

task-based communication activities have been

prepared to support Communicative Language

Teaching classes. These typically are in the form

of one-of-a-kind items: exercise handbooks, cue

cards, activity cards, pair-communication

practice materials, and student-interaction

practice booklets. In pair-communication

materials, there are typically two sets of material

for a pair of students, each set containing

different kinds of information.

REALIA

• Many proponents of Communicative Language

Teaching have advocated the use of "authentic,"

"from-life" materials in the classroom. These

might include language-based realia, such as

signs, magazines, advertisements, and

newspapers, or graphic and visual sources around

which communicative activities can be built, such

as maps, pictures, symbols, graphs, and charts.

Different kinds of objects can be used to support

communicative exercises, such as a plastic model

to assemble from directions.

Syllabus/Curriculum

• Discussions of the nature of the syllabus have

been central in Communicative Language

Teaching. One of the first syllabus models to

be proposed was described as a notional

syllabus (Wilkins 1976), which specified the

semantic-grammatical categories (e.g.,

frequency, motion, location) and the

categories of communicative function that

learners need to express.

H.G.

Widdowson

(1978)

Carrol

Brendan

(1980)

Keith

Johnson

(1981)

William

Littlewood

(1981/1995)

1. Uses the

curriculum

triangle which

illustrates the key

role played by

communicative

needs in the

development of

language curricula.

1. Semantic

syllabi and

Notional-

Functional

Syllabi.

Cristopher

Brumfit/

Finocchario

(1983/1985)

Marianne

Celce-Murcia

(1991)

H. Douglas Brown

(1994/1997)

David Nunan

(1989/2000)

1. Language

courses

include

semantic

notions.

1. Semantic

syllabi and

Notional-

Functional

Syllabi.

1. Include:

- structures

- functions

- notions

- themes

- tasks

• Wilikins (1972) claimed that a functional

and communicative definition of language

could actually help develop

communicative syllabi for language

teaching, while Firth (1950) suggested that

a broader sociocultural context, which

included participants, their behaviour and

beliefs, objects of linguistic discussion and

a word choice, should also be taken into

consideration while teaching any language.

• Other theorists (Canale and Swain 1980;

Widdowson 1989; Halliday 1970) also

stressed the importance of communicative

approach to language teaching, particularly

the communicative acts underlying the

ability to use language for different

purposes and the relationship between

linguistic systems and their

communicative values in texts and

discourses.

• A theory of language as communication

lies at the very core of the CLT. Hymes

(1972) advanced the notions of

"competence" and "performance"

introduced by Chomsky in the 1960s and

stated that the goal of language teaching

was to develop "communicative

competence", which implied acquiring

both an ability and knowledge to use

language.

Howatt distinguishes between a "strong" and a "weak"

version of Communicative Language Teaching:

• There is, in a sense, a 'strong' version of the communicative

approach and a 'weak' version. The weak version which has

become more or less standard practice in the last ten years,

stresses the importance of providing learners with

opportunities to use their English for communicative

purposes and, characteristically, attempts to integrate such

activities into a wider program of language teaching.... The

'strong' version of communicative teaching, on the other

hand, advances the claim that language is acquired through

communication, so that it is not merely a question of

activating an existing but inert knowledge of the language,

but of stimulating the development of the language system

itself. If the former could be described as 'learning to use'

English, the latter entails 'using English to learn it.'

(1984: 279)

The Contributions of the

Communicative Movement

1. Goal of Language Teaching: Communicative Competence that can best serve the needs

of the learner.

Communicative Competence (Canaleand Swain, 1980)

Grammatical Competence Sociolinguistic

Competence

Strategic Competence

(knowledge of lexical items

and of rules of morphology,

syntax, sentence- grammar

semantics, and phonology)

Socio-cultural

Competence

(knowledge of the relation

of language use to its non-

linguistic context)

Discourse

Competence

(knowledge of rules

governing cohesion and

coherence)

(verbal and non-verbal

communication strategies

that may be called into

action to compensate for

break-downs in

communication due to

performance variables or to

insufficient competence)

The list of communicative competences

proposed by Hymes (1972), and

complemented by other theorists includes:

a) linguistic or grammatical competence;

b) sociolinguistic or pragmatic competence;

c) discourse competence,

d) strategic competence (Richards and

Rogers 1986; Hedge 2000), and e)

fluency (Hedge 2000).

• Linguistic or grammatical competence is

commonly referred to as a set of

grammatical rules that guide sentence

formation.

• sociolinguistic competence addresses the

extent to which utterances are produced

and understood appropriately in different

sociolinguistic contexts depending on

contextual factors.

• discourse competence is related to the

ability of speakers to put language

structures together coherently and

cohesively.

• strategic competence mediates between

the internal traits of the user's back-

ground knowledge and language

knowledge and the external characteristics

of the situational and cultural context

(Douglas 2000).

2. A New Type of Syllabus:

Notional/Functional Syllabus

• A notional/function syllabus is one "in which the

language content is arranged according to the

meanings a learner needs to express through

language and the functions the learner will use the

language for... A notional syllabus contains (a) the

meanings and concepts the learner needs in order

to communicate (e.g. time, quantity, duration,

location) and the language needed to express

them. These concepts and meanings are called

notions. (b) the language needed to express

different functions or speech acts (e.g. requesting,

suggesting, promising, describing)." (Richards,

Platt, and Weber, 1985, p. 196)

3. A New Category of Classroom Activities:

Meaning Focused Activities

Information transfer

-- is a type of communicative activity that

involves the transfer of information from

one medium (eg., text) to another (eg form,

table, diagram). Such activities are

intended to help develop the learner's

communicative competence by engaging

them in meaning-focused communication.

Information Gap

-- is a type of communicative activity in

which each participant in the activity holds

some information other participants don't

have and all participants have to share the

information they have with other

participants in order to successfully

complete a task or solve a problem.

3) Problem Solving

4) Role-Playing and

Simulation

Communicative Approach(Wilkins, 1970s)

• Using language rather than learning

more about the structure.

• It is such a misunderstanding that

communicative approach has come to

replace the structural approach.

• Hymes's theory of communicative

competence was a definition of

what a speaker needs to know in

order to be communicatively

competent in a speech community.

In Hymes's view, a person who acquires

communicative competence acquires both

knowledge and ability for language use with respect

to:

1. whether (and to what degree) something is formally

possible;

2. whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in

virtue of the means of implementation available;

3. whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate

(adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in

which it is used and evaluated;

4. whether (and to what degree) something is in fact

done, actually performed, and what its doing entails.

Claims of Communicative

Approach

• Students learn to use the appropriate

language they need for communicating in

real life.

• It gives the students opportunity for

thorough and meaningful rehearsal of the

English which they will need for effective

communication.

• It teaches the students to communicate

effectively by understanding and

controlling the relationship between

language forms and functions.

Implications of the

Communicative Approach

for Teaching Purposes

• Communicative implies semantic, a

concern with the potential meaning of

language.

• There is a complex relationship between

language form and language function.

• Communicative is relevant to all four

language skills.

• Communicative can both refer to the

properties of language to behaviour.

• Your understanding of what

language is and how learner learns

will determine to a large extent, your

philosophy of education, and how

you teach English: your teaching

style, your approach, methods and

classroom techniques.

Strategies that can be used in Communicative Approach

• Use of dialogues (role-playing)

• Greeting, inviting, asking permission,

or making offers.

• Reports

• Pictures

Types of learning and

teaching activities

• The range of exercise types and activities

compatible with a communicative approach

is unlimited, provided that such exercises

enable learners to attain the communicative

objectives of the curriculum, engage

learners in communication, and require the

use of such communicative processes as

information sharing, negotiation of

meaning, and interaction. Classroom

activities are often designed to focus on

completing tasks that are mediated through

language or involve negotiation of information

and information sharing.

Development that this approach brings…

• The activities come to greater

resemblance to communication

situations that learners might encounter

outside the classroom.

• There is increasing opportunity for

learners to express their own

individuality in the classroom.

Choosing what to teach

• Teacher should give emphasis in the

limited time available and he should

give priority to those which seem to

offer greatest value on widening the

learners’ communicative repertoire.

Students should have:

1. Ability to understand the language

form and vocabulary.

2. Knowledge of the potential

communicative approach or

understanding of the function.

3. Relate the forms to functions and

interpretation of meaning.

Checklist for predicting communicative

needs

1. What situations might the learner

encounter?

2. What language activities is the learner

most likely to take part in?

3. What functions of language are likely to

be most useful?

4. What topics are likely to be important?

5. What general notions are likely to be

important?

Should CLT be considered either an

approach or a method?

• Richards and Rogers (1986) claim that it

is an approach rather than a model, since

methods are considered to be fixed

teaching systems with prescribed

techniques, while approaches are held to

be teaching philosophies that can be

applied in various ways in the

classroom.

Language is a system of structurally related elements for the coding of

meaning.

What dimension of language is prioritized?

- grammatical dimension

What needs to be taught?

- phonological units

- grammatical units and operations

- lexical items

Language is a vehicle for the expression of functional

meaning.

• What dimension of language is prioritized?

–Semantic and communicative dimension

of language.

• What needs to be taught?

–Functions, notions of language

Language is a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal

relations and for the performance of social transactions between

individuals.• What dimension of language is prioritized?

–Interactive dimension of language.

• What needs to be taught?

–Patterns of moves, acts negotiation and

interaction found in conversational

exchanges.

Thank youfor listening!