Overview:
In simple terms, the aim in teaching a language
is to open up its resources to the learner
so that he or she may find the right words
and sentences to convey the meaning intended.
The teaching of languages is by no means
a recent or novel activity and there has
always been a constant search for effective
ways of optimizing learning in various parts
of the world. However, in spite of the seminal
work of scholars like Henry Sweet, Otto Jespersen,
Harold Palmer, Michael West and others, no
accepted and well articulated theory of language
teaching has emerged because a number of
complex factors such as the goals of teaching
aptitude, ability and motivation of learners,
teachers' competence, effective methods and
materials, policy matters, and language planning
are involved in language teaching.
Objectives and Goals:
The goals of teaching language must be defined
within the social-cultural contexts in which
teaching and learning are carried out.
(a) The goals of teaching the mother tongue
or the first language are different from
those of teaching a foreign language or a
second language. In a sense, the first language
is not taught, but caught. This means that the first language is learnt
by the child naturally; he picks it up from
the speakers around him. Any normal child
must learn how to listen understand and speak
the language used in his or her social environment.
Learning the first language is like one of
the basic instincts which cannot be suppressed;
learning the first language depends on the
growth and maturity of the child and exposure
to the linguistic environment. Linguists
say that the innate language learning ability
of the human mind, when it comes into contact
with the socio-linguistic environment, enables
the child to learn the language by constructing
his own grammar of the language in a natural
way. Listening and speaking the first language
are natural processes but not reading and
writing. When the child goes to school, he
or she must be taught how to read and write.
The goals of teaching the first language
may be:
(i) teaching how to read and write;
(ii) teaching the standard language (the child may have learnt a dialect used
in his/her social environment), and its registral
varieties;
(iii) teaching the literature of the first
language and through it the culture and literary
heritage of the language community. |
(b) If, for example, French or German is
being taught to a Bengali-speaking learner,
the goal is limited; the learner is not going
to use French or German for day-to-day communication
in India; if he goes to France or Germany
he has to use French or German in its own
cultural context. So the literary, cultural
and integrative purposes predominate in learning a foreign
language and the instrumental or communicative function is rather limited
and minimized.
(c) In teaching a second language, for example
English, to a Tamil speaker, the goal is
instrumental or communicative and the cultural
and literary goals are minimized. In the
social set up in India, the learner may have
to use English or Hindi for purposes of communication
(oral or written), in his day-to-day life
in the office, in the market place, in the
bank, in social functions, etc.
The difference between teaching English as
a second language and Hindi as a second language
to a Tamil learner will be the degree to
which the languages are related. Hindi and
Tamil, though they belong to Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian respectively, share some aspects
of the culture of the sub-continent; English,
on the other hand, though and Indo-European
language, does not share the culture of the
sub-continent. That makes the learning of
English more instrumental and more a tool
for modernization than the learning of Hindi
as a second language. Thus, the goal is more
instrumental in learning a second language
whereas it is more integrative in the case
of a foreign language though the two may
be present in varying degrees in all language
teaching/learning situations.
The Basic Assumptions in the Cognitive Approach:
(a) Language is not just behavior;
it is
rule-governed creativity. The use of
language
resembles writing a play more than
performing
in one.
(b) Any behavior is controlled by cognitive
processes involving understanding;
skills
are actions that are originally voluntary
and which later become automatic.
(c) Practice without understanding
the underlying
principles will be meaningless and
mere repetition
tends to weaken under-standing.
(d) To teach is to select and to create appropriate
conditions for learning; teaching is not
conditioning.
To learn is to understand valid generalizations,
discriminations, and relationships.
Learning
of any sort is largely a matter of
drawing
out what is innate in the mind; it
is a matter
of growth and maturation of relatively
fixed
capacities, under appropriate external
conditions.
(e) Sentence types and parts of sentences
must be taught in a related way.
(f) Languages do differ, but they also have
a great deal in common. Learning a second
language is always, in some measure, repeating
an old experience though some people like
Krashen [3] feel that native language is acquired and
the second language is learnt.
Contrastive Linguistics and Error Analysis:
In learning the first language the learner's
mind tries to understand only one linguistic
system and he is exposed to the first language
all the time. When he starts learning a second
language, there is a clash between the system of the first language
and that of the second. When one language
system becomes more or less a habit, the
learning of a second language becomes rather
difficult. The mistakes made in the second
language are often due to:
(i) the gravitational pull of the first language/mother
tongue;
(ii) internal analogy and overgeneralization
(e. g., childrens, furnitures, teached, bringed,
a milk, etc., are created on the basis of other items like boys, tables,
walked, worked, a man, etc.);
(iii) pronunciation according to spelling;
(iv) bad teaching;
(v) exposure to the non-standard variety
used outside the classroom;
(vi) the attitudes of community, those in
power, the policy of the government and such
other factors;
(vii) failure to understand the nature of
the second language;
(viii) lack of adequate vocabulary; and
(ix) the cultural gap between the two systems. |
The comparison of two or more linguistic
systems as they exist today (i. e., a synchronic
comparison) is known as contrastive linguistics.
The diachronic comparison of two or more
linguistic systems with a view to classifying
languages into families and finding out or reconstructing a parent
language from which related languages have
developed, is known as comparative or historical
linguistics. Contrastive linguistics is only
a predictive technique. This means that by
looking at the structure of two or more linguistic
systems we can predict the difficulties the
learner is likely to encounter; it does not
mean that for all the mistakes a learner
makes in the second language, the first language
habits alone are responsible. Contrastive
linguistics explores both the dissimilarities
and similarities of the linguistic systems
compared. The similarities can be properly
exploited.
Contrastive studies are undertaken not necessarily
for language teaching purposes alone; contrastive
studies may be useful in discovering language
universals, studying problems in translation,
studying language types, etc. The synchronic
comparison of languages may be undertaken
at any or all levels phonological, morphological,
syntactic, semantic, cultural, etc. If the
languages are compared, it is called inter-lingual (i. e., contrastive) comparison; if two varieties
of the same language are compared, it is
intra-lingual comparison. Any linguistic model-traditional,
structural, transformational, etc.-can be
used for comparing languages.
For example, if we use the transformational
framework, we may compare the Ps rules and
the transformational processes in the two
linguistic systems compared. The advances
in linguistics and the new insights have
made it possible for us to be more methodical
in our comparison on languages.
Contrastive linguistics is not a teaching
technique. It can only help the teacher or
the materials writer to plan and grade teaching
materials. Even native speakers make mistakes; they may be just slips; The mistakes in the case of a native speaker do not become
part of his linguistic habit. There may be
lapses, slips, stylistic oddities in his
speech or writing.
Conclusion:
Second language learners commit errors; mistakes that get fossilized are errors. As Pit Corder
points out in Introducing Applied Linguistics(1973),
learning a second language [1]
can be so regarded in exactly the same way
that an infant learning his mother
tongue
can be counted to posses a language
of his
own at each successive stage
of his learning
career. A learner's so-called
errors are
systematic, and it is precisely
this regularity
which shows that the learner
is following
a set of rules. These rules are
not those
of the target language but a
transitional
form of language similar in many
respects
to the target language, but also
similar
to his mother tongue, or indeed
any other
language he may already command
(p. 149).
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Some applied linguists like Selinker
call
the transitional form inter-language and some call it the intermediary language. Some linguists say that the first
language is caught and a second language is taught; the first language is acquired and a second
language is learnt. There are others
who
argue that the processes of learning
the
first or the second language are the
same.
Syllabus makers can make use of the
descriptions
of languages and contrastive studies
in grading
the items to be taught from known to
unknown,
similar to dissimilar, general rules
to exceptions,
and from universals to language-specific
items. Not all the rules or habits
of the
first language will result in errors
and
it is the job of contrastive analysis
to
determine how far this is the case
and how
much of the first language that is
considered
transferable facilitates the learning
of
the second; Error analysis too has
both practical
and theoretical uses.
The learner, through his errors, provides
examples of negative learning. The applied linguist can understand through
the negative instances (i. e., errors)
what
is going on when people learn languages.
Errors provide feedback and tell the
teachers
about the effectiveness of the teaching
materials
and the teaching techniques.
Notes & References:
1. Corder, Pit. S. (1973), Introducing Applied Linguistics, Penguin
2. Widdowson, Henry, G. (1979), Explorations in Linguistics, Oxford.
3. Krashen, S. D. (1981), Second Language Acquisition and Second Language
Learning, Pergamon
4. Mackey, W. F. (1965), Language Teaching Analysis, Longmans.
5. S. K. Verma& N. Krishnaswamy,
(1989,2000),Modern Linguistics- An Introduction, Oxford University Press
6. Bright, J. A. and McGregor, G. P.
(1970),
Teaching English as a Second Language, ELBS and Longman
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