英语教学术语选摘（138）.pdf

792023十乐期（芯弟200期教师发展ForeignLanguageTeaching&Research in BasicEducation基础教育外语教学研究教师发展英语教学术语选摘（138）本刊编辑部Early InfluencesTwo academic influences on language teachingfrom the end of the nineteenth century onwards,werephilology and phonetics(Howatt,1984:169 81).Inphilology,the discovery of the common ancestry andrelationship of many European and Asian languagesraised doubts about the supposed superiority of Latinand Ancient Greek(Sampson,1980:13 33),and thisin turn initiated a movement away from the study ofthe classics,with its inevitable emphasis on writtenlanguage,as a model for language teaching.At thesame time,the new discipline of phonetics provideda systematic basis for the study of spoken language.Scholars of the self-styled Reform Movement at-tacked GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION teaching infavour of DIRECT METHOD and advocated greaterattention to spoken language(Howatt,1984:169 81).Semiotics and StructuralismFerdinand de Saussure s Course in GeneralLinguistics,first published in French in 1915,profoundly influenced and for many people definesthe scope of twentieth-century linguistics(Saussure,1974).Saussure regarded linguistics as a branch ofsemiotics,the study of signs.His programme assertedthe primacy of speech,and relegated writing to thestatus of a secondary representation(p.23).Thisquestionableprinciplehas foundanechointwentieth-century approaches to language teaching,most of which,in contrast to their classics-nfluenced antecedents,have shared an emphasis ondeveloping spoken rather than written skills.(Thisemphasis echoes popular expressions about languageproficiency which make no reference to writing:canyou speak Hindi?,we need an Arabic speaker,etc.)Saussure argued that the relationship between alinguistic unit(signifier)and its meaning(signified)is usually arbitrary and determined by its place inthe synchronic(i.e.present)system rather than byany resemblance between signifier and signified orby their diachronic(i.e.developmental)history.Saussure s treatment of communication as primarilyan act of encoding and decoding,dependent upon ashared conventional code,has provided a theoreticalunderpinning to the assumption that the central coreof language learning is the acquisition of knowledgeof phonology,LEXIS and grammar rather than thedevelopment of an ability to use these systems incontext.This assumption was shared by almost alltwentieth-century approaches to language teaching802023年第7 期（总第2 6 6 期）教师发展ForeignLanguageTeaching&Research in Basic Education基础教育外语教学研究教师发展beforetheadventofCOMMUNICATIVEMETHODOLOGY in the 1970s.These emphases on speech and the languagecode were perpetuated by the structural linguistics ofLeonard Bloomfield and Charles Fries ascendantfrom the 1930s to the 1950s.Both men publishedworks on language teaching.Structural linguisticsstudied the place and distribution of units within alinguistic system,with lttle reference to meaning oruse.This approach,combined with the acceptance ofBEHAVIOURISM as a theory of learning,had aprofound and long-lasting influence on languageteaching.Learning was seen as the acquisition ofstructural patternsthrough habit formation,besteffectedthroughthespokendrills,repeateddialoguesandpatternpracticesofAUDIOLINGUALISM.Chomskyan LinguisticsThe revolution in linguistics effected by NoamChomsky and his followers from the late 1950sonwards dethroned behaviourism,encouraging thebelief that language learning involves active mentalprocesses and is not simply the formation of habits.Chomsky stated explicitly that he did not believe hisideas should affect language teaching,yet inevitably,in the general change of beliefs about languagewhich he brought about,his work did exert aconsiderable indirect influence.The resultsforlanguageteaching,however,werenotradical.Chomskyanlinguisticssharedwithstructurallinguisticsanexclusiveattention to the formallanguage system,so the new influence did not resultin a movement away from the existing emphasis onphonology and grammar.The shift of attention was amore subtle one,awayfrom surface forms andbehaviour,towardsunderlyingmentalrepresentations,but was not one which had anymajor or long-lasting effect upon the actual practiceof teaching.One significant filter for Chomskyan ideas intolanguage teaching（(which has caused changes inpractice)is second language acquisition theory(SLA).Although Chomskys ideas about languageacquisitionwereexplicitlyconcerned withtheacquisition of a first language by children,manySLAttheoristshaveesuggested1 that thesameacquisitionalprocesses(theprinciplesofUNIVERSAL GRAMMAR,the setting of parameters)may still be activated in learning a second languagein adulthood1(Krashen,1982;Cook，19 9 1).T h eemphasis is thus,as in structural approaches tolanguageteaching,stillupon a knowledge ofgrammar,though this time upon a tacit knowledgewhosedevelopmentisnatural,uunaffected1byconscious explicit learning,internally generated,triggered by a favourable environment and followingauniversal route.Like children acquiringgthegrammar of a first language,learners are regarded aspassing through a number of approximative systems,which are systematic but differ from the adultgrammar.As in first language acquisition,theseintermediate systems(or INTERLANGUAGES)are81教师发展Foreign Language Teaching&Research in Basic Education基础教育外语教学研究教师发展not seen as a phenomenon to be discouraged,but asa natural route to the desired end state,and areregarded as primarily determined by universal factorsand only in a small part by first languageinterference(Selinker,1972).During the 1970s and1980sthesequasi-Chomskyanideasbecameextremely fashionable in language teaching(Krashenand Terrell,1983).Language learning was equatedwith the development of a mental representation ofthe grammar.The reconstruction of aspects of a firstlanguagelearningenvironmentwasfavoured.Grammar acquisition was believed to take placenaturally when the conscious focus of attention wason meaning rather than on form,when theatmosphere was friendly and relaxed,and whenlearners were allowed to remain silent in the initialperiod.In recent years,SLA theorists have modifiedthis rather simplistic approach,incorporating notionsof INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES in SLA,variableroutes and rates and the role of explicit consciousknowledge.FunctionalLinguisticsandCommunicativeCompetenceThe schools and areas of linguistics discussedso far share a belief that language can be idealizedand studied without reference to its use and context.In Chomskyan theory(and the SLA theories whichderive from it)this premise is reinforced by thebelief that the mental representation and acquisitionof language is different and separate from that ofother types of knowledge,and is determined to alargedegreebyinnate,geneticallyinheritedelements.Other schools of linguistics,however,believe that language should not be separated fromits context either as a convenience for the purposesof study or because it is actually separate in themind.Functional linguistics,which is concerned withthe way in which language form is determined by itsuses,has a long history dating back to work by thePrague School in the 1920s,the work of J.R.Firthduring the 1940s and 1950s,and is continued mostprominently today by M.A.K.Halliday and hisfollowers.A functional1 approach is implicit insociolinguistics,whichstudiesttherelationshipbetween language and society.Neitherfunctionallinguisticsnorsociolinguistics,however,exertedmorethanamarginal influence on language teaching before thepublicationofDelHymesstheoryofCOMMUNICATIVECOMPETENCEin1970(Hymes,1970).Influenced by Hymes,advocates ofNOTIONAL/FUNCTIONAL SYLLABUSES(Wilkins,1976)and of the communicative approach(e.g.Widdowson,1978),argued that language learningmust involve not only mastery of the linguistic codebut also knowledge of how to use that codeappropriatelyinsocialcontexts.Languagewasconceived as social action,and the criterion ofsuccess was no longer to be only the production andcomprehension of grammatically correct sentences,but alsoof languageewhichwascontextuallymeaningful and did what the speaker wanted it to do.2023年第7 期（总第2 6 6 期）82教师发展Foreign Language Teaching&Research in Basic Education基础教育外语教学研究教师发展Although the seminal writings on communicationcited above take care to stress that knowledge of thelanguage code remains an essential component oflanguage use,sadly in practice functional syllabusesand1 communicative teaching often ignored thiscaution.In anover-reaction against the earlierpreoccupation withcorrectgrammar,they oftenpromoted immediate communicative effectiveness atthe expense of the development of accuracy.In thisdisdain for conscious focus on form,there is asuperficial coincidence between the communicativeapproach and the natural approach influenced bySLA.The natural approach would tolerate studentlanguagedeviatingfromthestandardasinterlanguage;the communicative approach wouldtolerate it as functional.Neither took adequate heedof the danger of FOSSILIZATION when inaccuratebut successful structures are used by adult learners,nor of the fact that accurate use of the code isessential in any complex effective communication.Inthis and other respects the SLA emphasis on thecrucial role of meaningful interaction appears to fitwell with the communicative approach.Both were inthe ascendant during the 1970s and 1980s;manymaterials and pedagogic practices from this periodare acceptable to both camps.This superficialconcord of practice,however,masks a deeptheoretical divide,for in mainstream SLA attention tomeaning is valuable not in itself but only in so far asit activates the language acquisition device(LAD);the emphasis is still entirely upon the language2023年第7 期（总第2 6 6 期）system as the desired goal of language learning.Insome versions of the communicative approach on theother hand,realizing meaning is seen as an end initself,achieved by deployment of the language codealong with other competences and abilities which areessential for successful language use.The new attention to language function andmeaning opened the way for influence from twodisciplines concerned with the systematic study oflanguage in use:pragmatics and discourse analysis.The former has elaborated principles to explain howspeakers achieve meaning and how hearers interpretit by relating utterances to their non-linguisticcontext.It has also considered why people do notspeak directly,explicitly and fully,but allow theirinterlocutors to infer their meaning from context andshared knowledge.As such,pragmatics has providedlanguage teaching with a basis for consideration ofthe contextual appropriateness of utterances(whichtogether with possibility,feasibility and attestednessisoneof thefourpparametersofHymesscommunicative competence)rather than only theirgrammaticality and semanticity.It also illuminates,cross-cultural communication by considering thesimilaritiesanddifferencesinnotionsofappropriateness in different societies.Discourseanalysisalsooffers iinsightintoappropriateness and inference,analysing not onlyhow utterances relate to their non-linguistic context,but also how they relate to each other,and take onmeaninginsequence.This too is relevant to83教师发展ForeignLanguageTeaching&Research in Basic Education基础教育外语教学研究教师发展language teaching in that it allows learners toconsider how text becomes coherent and meaningful,both through its interaction with factors outside thetext,and through the deployment of linguistic signalswithin it.Here too there is insight into cross-culturalsimilarities and differences,revealed by such areasof discourse analysis as conversation analysis,interaction analysis and the study of GENRE.Corpus LinguisticsAlthoughHymes hadpresentedthefourcomponents of communicative competenceas equal,early communicativemethodologyyhadfocuseddisproportionately upon appropriateness,often at theexpense of the other three parameters.Knowledge ofwhat is possible was felt to have been over-emphasized by structural approaches;feasibility wasfelt to have little relevance to language learning;asfor attestedness(what is actually done),there was infact little evidence to distinguish this aspect oflanguage knowledge from the other three.From the1980s onwards,the rapid development of CORPUSLINGUISTICS(inwhich largecollectionsofoccurring language running into millions of words areanalysed by computer to demonstrate frequenciesand patterns of occurrence)has made possible aprincipled study of what languageisactuallyperformed.Thefindingsof corpuslinguistics,however,have done far more than flesh out thefourth of Hymess parameters;they have changedperceptions of language and language knowledge ingeneral.Theevidencethatmanypossiblecombinations do not in fact occur,while others occurwith disproportionate frequency,has engendered afundamental reassessment of the relation of lexis togrammar,and to the acquisition and representationofnative-likelanguage.Corpuslinguisticssuggests that grammatical rules cannot be statedwithout reference to particular lexical items,norword meanings without reference to the particulargrammatical constructions into which they may enter(Sinclair,1991).Knowledge of language is no longerseen as involving only parsimonious rules operatingelegantly to generate grammatical utterances but alsoto involve substantial knowledge of ready-madechunks of language which are often retrieved partlyor wholly lexicalized from memory(Pawley andSyder,1983).Theimplicationsof corpuslinguisticsforlanguage teaching are immense,and its influence isalready substantial.It remains to be seen,however,whether this influence will result in a more balancedview of the knowledge which is needed to use alanguage successfully,or whether the structuralistover-emphasis on grammar and the communicativeover-emphasis on appropriateness will merely besucceeded by an over-emphasis on attestedness.Such a development would be unfortunate,for it isnot the case that every learner needs to be native-like,nor that the only effective use of a foreignlanguage is one whose processes and productsimitate those of native speakers.As with any otherrevolution in linguistics,what is needed is aan2023年第7 期（总第2 6 6 期）842023年第7 期(总第2 6 6 期）教师发展Foreign LanguageTeaching&Research in Basic Education基础教育外语教学研究教师发展integration of the theoretical and descriptive insightsof corpus linguistics with pedagogic criteria and theconsideration of learners needs(Aston,1995).One area of language teaching in which corpuslinguistics has already had a considerable impact isVOCABULARYTEACHING.Althoughpopularwisdom has always acknowledged the importance ofknowing a lot of words,vocabulary teaching has inmost methodologies been a haphazard.affair,withsyllabuses structured around grammar,notions orfunctions rather than around lexis.Corpus linguisticsinsight into lexical frequency and collocation hascontributed to the emergence of more principledapproaches to vocabulary teaching.In grammarteaching,the analysis of transcribed spoken data willmake possible a more systematic description of thegrammatical p