Virginia Scott Whither the Language Lab?
Dec 28, 2015
Virginia Scott
Whither the Language Lab?
Army Method During WWII the government turned to the
Bloomfieldian linguists to train the Armed Forces personnel for espionage, prisoner interrogation, and monitoring of radio transmissions.
Army SpecializedTraining Program (Army Method) select bright, willing, young men train 12 hours a day for 9 months use native speaker teachers in small group settingshave well defined objectives: perfect comprehension
and native-like accent
The Army method was successful and made educators rethink FL instruction in American schools.
Post-war (1950-1969)
The Army Method was renamed the American Method and schools tried to duplicate the results of wartime language training.
Psychology was being increasingly accepted as a viable science.Behaviorist camp (Thorndike & Skinner)
Learning occurs through trial and error, stimulus-response, and conditioning
Cognitivist camp (Wertheimer & Kohler)Learning is rule-governed behavior achieved through analysis
Behaviorist theories were most widely accepted and dominated throughout the 1970s.
Audio-lingual Method
ALM = combination of Army Method and Behaviorist theories:inputdrill (rote learning)use of language
laboratories
(The first language lab was installed at Louisiana State U. in 1947.)
Chomsky’s theories(first/native language)
LAD (Language Acquisition Device) This theory states that humans are born with an innate ability to learn a language. Language learning is a cognitive process that comes from within the learner, not from stimuli outside the learner; learning has nothing to do with conditioning and reward.
Competence vs. Performance: competence = knowledge of a language system; linguistic rulesperformance = use of language; production
Cognitive approach
Discovery of socio-cultural theories
in the 1990sSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY
study of child L1 acquisition
full cognitive development requires social interaction
the range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.
Pedagogical Psychology Institute of Moscow
Lev Vygotsky
1896-1934
Thought and Language
(1962)
learner
learner
behaviorist
cognitivist
learner OTHER
sociocultural
Summary of learning theories: 1960-2010
Communicative Language Teaching
CLT grew out of the theories and practices in the 20th century.
It is NOT a method but rather a way of thinking about FL learning and teaching that draws on theories from cognitive science, educational psychology, and second language acquisition.
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