教育硕士英语教学法教案

Foreign Language Teaching Methodology

信阳师范学院外国语学院

2013-2-6

Chapter One

General Introduction to Foreign Language Teaching Methodology

Ⅰ.Key Points (学习要点)

The goal of foreign language teaching — the goal is to help the learner master the target language in the shortest possible time. What do we mean by mastering the target language? — We mean that the learner is able to have successful communications with others in the target language.

1. The Nature of FLTM （外语教学法的性质）

Foreign language teaching methodology (FLTM) is a science which studies the process and patterns of foreign language teaching. Its aim is to reveal (show) the nature and laws of foreign language teaching. It involves (includes) a lot of disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Therefore, we say that FLTM is an inter-disciplinary science and it makes use of many subjects.

2. Theories of Linguistics（语言学理论） 1) Traditional linguistics（传统语言学）

Traditional linguistics has a tradition of more than 2000 years. It was started by the Greeks in the fifth century B.C.

The two controversies on the relations between form and meaning — (A) The naturalists argued that the forms of words reflected directly the nature of objects while the conventionalists thought that language was conventional and there was no logic connection between form and meaning of words. (B) The other was between the analogists （类比推理派） and anomalists（变异派） —the analogists thought that language in general was regular and there were rules for people to follow while the anomalists thought that language was basically irregular and that was why there were so many exceptions and irregularities in the Greek language.

Nature of traditional linguistics — Traditional linguistics was practical in nature. People made a study of language in order to understand the classic words of ancient times and to teach students. They gave often took a prescriptive approach when they discussed rules of language.

2) American structuralism（美国结构主义语言学）

American structuralism started at the beginning of the 20th century in America. It became popular and influential in the 1930s and 40s through the world.

The two forerunners of structuralism are Franz Boas and Edward Sapir. Fronz Boas found that the traditional grammatical model could not be used to analyze the structures of those languages. Sapir found that although Indians‘ languages had no written forms, they were very communities. The father of American structuralism is Leonard Bloomfield. He accepted the theories and principles of behaviourism. He characterized language and language acquisition in terms of behaviorist terminology. He thought language was a habit of verbal behavior which consisted of a series of stimuli and responses. He argued that to acquire a language was to form a habit of verbal behavior and learning a second language was learning a new habit. He thought that speech was primary and writing was secondary.

The structural view of language sees language as a linguistic system made up of various subsystems: the sound system (phonology); the discrete units of meaning produced by sound combinations (morphology), and the system of combining units of meaning for communication (syntax). Each language has a finite number of such structural items so as to be able to understand and produce language. When this structural view of language was combined with the stimulus-response principles of behaviorist psychology, the audiolingual approach to language

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learning emerged.

3) Transformational generative linguistics（转换生成语言学）

The transformational generative linguistics was first put forward by Noam Chomsky in 1957. He wrote a book Syntactic Structures to spread his theory.

His main points — Chomsky assumes that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD). This is made up of general principles called universal grammar. Once the child is born, the particular language environment will trigger the LAD. The child will use and test the principles again and again until his hypotheses agree with the actual grammar of the language. Chomsky has also made the distinction between linguistic competence and linguistic performance. Linguistic competence refers to the internalized knowledge that at native speaker of that language possesses. Linguistics performance refers to the actual utterance produced by the native speakers. Chomskey believes that linguistics should study the linguistics competence, not the performance, of the native speaker so as to set up a system of rules that will generate an infinite number of grammatical sentences. In order to gain the goal, Chomsky argues that we should use a deductive, hypothesis-testing approach should be used.

4) Functional linguistics（功能语言学）

In the 1960s, British linguists developed a system of categories based on the communicative needs of the leaner (Johnson and Marrow, 1981) and proposed a syllabus based on communicative functions. The functional view not only sees language as a linguistic system but also a means for doing things. Most of our day-to-day language use involves functional activities: offering, suggesting, advising, apologizing, etc. Therefore, learners learn a language in order to be able to do things with it. In order to perform functions, learners need to know how to combine the grammatical rules and the vocabulary to express notions that perform the functions. Examples of notions are the concept of present, past & future time, the expressions of certainty and possibility, the roles of agents, instruments within a sentence, and special relationships between people and objects.

5)Interactional linguistics（互动语言学）

The interactional view considers language to be a communicative tool, whose main use is to build up and maintain social relations between people. Therefore, learners not only need to know the grammar and vocabulary of the language but as importantly they need to know the rules for using them in a whole range of communicative contexts.

3.Theories of Psychology and Second Language Acquisition (心理学理论与第二语言（外语）习得理论) 1) Theories of psychology (心理学理论)

The first laboratory of experimental psychology was set up at the University of Leipzig, Germany, in 1897. It announced the official birth of psychology. It was opened by Wilhelm Wundt.

(1) Gestalt psychology (格式塔心理学)

Gestalt psychology was founded by a group of German psychologists in the 1920s. Their research was focused on the area of perception, aiming at the study of the relationship between parts and whole in people‘s perception experience. They found that people perceived objects and scenes as organized wholes before they noticed their component parts. They used the word Gestalt, which means ―organized shape‖ or ―whole form‖ in English, to name their school of psychology. They argued that an object was not the sum of the individual parts. For example, an article is not the sum of individual words that make up the article. So people‘s mind should be understood in terms of a whole.

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(2) Psychoanalysis (精神分析)

Psychoanalysis is theory of the mind put forward by Sigmund Freud. Freud found that many of his patients‘ mental problems were caused by some disturbing events in their early childhood. But the patients could not remember these disturbing events. The part of the mind which is out of the reach of consciousness was called by Freud the subconscious mind, which was the most important concept in psychoanalysis. Freud divided the mind into conscious and unconscious mind and he was the first to study unconscious mind. Freud believed the contents of the unconscious mind consist of buried memories and instinctive wishes and will influence the activities of the conscious mind. The basic approach of Freud was to analyze the irrational behavior of the patients, including their dreams and slips of the tongue.

(3) Behaviourism (行为主义)

The behaviorist theory of language learning was initiated by behavioral psychologist Skinner, who applied Watson and Raynor's theory of conditioning to the way humans acquire language (Harmer, 1983). Based on their experiments, Watson and Raynor formulated a stimulus-response theory of psychology. In this theory all complex forms of behavior - motions, habits, and such - are seen as composed of simple muscular and glandular elements that can be observed and measured. They claimed that emotional reactions are learned in much the same way as other skills. The key point of the theory of conditioning is that “you can train an animal to do anything (within reason) if you follow a certain procedure which has three major stages, stimulus, response, and reinforcement”(Harmer, 1983:30).

Based on the theory of conditioning, Skinner suggested that language is also a form of behavior. It can be learned the same way as an animal is trained to respond to stimuli. This theory of learning is referred to as behaviorism, which was adopted for some time by the language teaching profession, particularly in the U.S. One influential result is the audio-lingual method, which involves endless 'listen and repeat' drilling activities. The idea of this method is that language is learned by constant repetition and the reinforcement of the teacher. Mistakes were immediately corrected, and correct utterances were immediately praised. This method is still used in many parts of the world today.

(4) Cognitive psychology (认知心理学)

The term cognition means knowledge and ―cognitive psychology‖ can be defined as the study of people‘s ability to acquire, organize, remember and use knowledge to guide their behaviour. The most important factor that has made cognitive psychology the dominant approach is the development of the computer technology. The brain works in a similar way to process it and sends it out as behaviour actions.

The American linguist Noam Chomsky greatly influenced cognitive psychology. In his book Syntax Structure (1957) Chomsky argued that language should be viewed as a system of mental rules which are wired into the brain as a result of evolution. Cognitive psychologists maintain that all the relationship among stimuli, responses and consequences are learned and are integrated into the animal‘s knowledge.

There are two principal types of cognitive structures — schemas and concepts. Schemas refer to sets of rules that define particular categories of behaviour. Concepts are rules that describe properties of events and their relation with one another. Children acquire schemas and concepts by interacting with their environment with the help of two processes — assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation refers to the processes by which new item are added to a concept or schema. Accommodation refers to the process by which the existing concept or schema is changed on the basis of new information.

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（5）Constructivism

The constructivist theory believes that learning is a process in which the learner constructs meaning based on his/her own experiences and what he/she already knows. Although constructivist theory was not developed for the understanding of language learning, it is widely applicable to learning in general. It is believed that education is used to develop the mind, not just to rote recall what is learned. John Dewey provided a foundation for constructivism. He believed that teaching should be built based on what learners already knew and engage learners in learning activities. Teachers need to design environments and interact with learners to foster inventive, creative, critical learners.

Therefore, teachers must balance an understanding of the habits, characteristics as well as personalities of individual learners with an understanding of the means of arousing learners' interests and curiosity for learning (Archambault,1964).

Similar to constructivist theory, socio-constructivist theory represented by Vygotsky (1978) emphasizes interaction and engagement with the target language in a social context based on the concept of ?Zone of Proximal Development' (ZPD) and scaffolding. In other words, learning is best achieved through the dynamic interaction between the teacher and the learner and between learners. With the teacher's scaffolding through questions and explanations, or with a more capable peers' support, the learner can move to a higher level of understanding and extend his/her skills and knowledge to the fullest potential.

2) Theories of Second Language Acquisition (第二语言习得理论) (1) The habit-formation theory (习惯形成说)

The habit-formation theory comes from the behaviourist psychology and was very popular in the 1950s and 60s. According to behaviourists, learning a second language means the formation of a new set of linguistics habits. Imitation and practice play an important role in the process of habit-formation. According to the habit-formation theory, the old habit — mother tongue of the learner — will either facilitate or get in the way of the second language learning. Negative transfer means the learner transfers the ways of expression in the mother tongue to the target language. This will cause errors.

(2) The hypothesis of linguistic universals (语言共性说)

It is believed that there exist certain linguistic properties which are true to all the natural languages in the world. The hypothesis of linguistic universals is born of the study of linguistic universals. Core grammar and peripheral grammar: Chomsky divides the grammar of a natural language into core grammar and peripheral grammar. According to him, human beings are born with a language acquisition device which consists of a set of general principles. The core grammars of nature language aggress with the inborn set of general principles while the peripheral grammar can not be governed by the language acquisition device. The core grammar agrees with the inborn general principles and is much easier to learn.

(3) The acculturation theory (文化认同说)

The meaning of the theory: By acculturation they mean that individuals of one culture have to go through the process of modification in attitudes, knowledge, and behaviour in order to function well in another culture. It involves social and psychological adaptations.

The relation between acculturation and second language acquisition: The degree of acculturation will control the degree of second language acquisition. Factors which determine the degree of acculturation success: The social and psychological distance plays a decisive role in acculturation success. Negative psychological factors

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