Lecture 4

Popular Theories of Teaching Foreign / Second Language

1. The Natural Approach by Stephen Krashen.

2. The Theory of Second Language Acquisition by Roderick Ellis.

This lecture and the subsequent seminar are concerned with a few theories which are considered to be seminal for teaching foreign languages all around the globe. The essentials of these theories are under consideration. The aim of studying these theories lies in the fact of identifying their impact on teaching foreign languages in our context.

1. One of the most controversial theoretical perspectives in Second Language Acquisition in the last quarter of the twentieth century was proposed by Stephen Krashen, an applied linguist of the University of South California and Tracy Terrel, a teacher of Spanish in California, in a host of articles and books (1977, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1992, 1997). They attempted to develop a language teaching proposal that incorporated the “naturalistic principles” of second language acquisition. Krashen and Terrel’s combined statement of the principles and practices of the Natural Approach appeared in their book The Natural Approach, published in 1983.

Krashen and Terrel see communication as the primary function of language, and since their approach focuses on teaching communicative abilities, they refer to the Natural Approach as an example of a communicative approach.

According to the researchers, it is based on an empirically grounded theory of second language acquisition (based on Krashen’s views of language acquisition).

Krashen’s hypotheses have had a number of different names. In recent years the “Input Hypothesis” has come to identify what is really a set of interrelated hypotheses.

1. Acquisition-Learning (Acquisition / Learning) Hypothesis

The Acquisition / Learning Hypothesis claims that there are two distinct ways of developing competence in a second or foreign language. Acquisition is the “natural” way. Acquisition refers to an unconscious intuitive process of constructing the system of a language, not unlike the process used by a child to “pick up” a language. It is a process that involves the naturalistic development of language proficiency through understanding language and through using language for meaningful communication. Learning, by contrast, refers to a conscious “learning” process in which learners attend to form, figure out rules, and are generally aware of their own process. It results in explicit knowledge about the forms of a language and the ability to verbalize this knowledge. Formal teaching is necessary for “learning” to occur, and correction of errors helps with the development of learned rules. According to Krashen, “ fluency in second language performance is due to what we have acquired, not what we have learned ”. Adults should, therefore, do as much acquiring as possible in order to achieve communicative fluency; otherwise, they will get bogged down in rule learning and too much conscious attention to the forms of language and to watching their own progress. Moreover, for Krashen, our conscious learning processes and our subconscious acquisition processes are mutually exclusive: learning cannot “become” acquisition. Thus large doses of acquisition activity in the classroom, with only a very minor role assigned to learning, are recommended.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11