Дипломная работа: Ways of teaching foreign languages
The 'Get it right from the beginning' proposal for second language teaching best describes the underlying theory behind the teaching practices observed in Classroom A. Indeed, it is the proposal which probably best describes the way in which most of us were taught a second language in school. It reflects the behaviourist view of language acquisition in assuming that learners need to build up their language knowledge gradually by practising only correct forms. Teachers avoid letting beginning learners speak freely because this would allow them to make errors. The errors, it is said, could become habits. So it is better to prevent these bad habits before they happen. Here are some more examples from classes based on this approach.
Example 1
(The teacher and students from Classroom A. This time the exercise in based on the simple present of English verbs.)
S1 And uh, in the afternoon, uh, I come home and uh, uh, I uh, washing my dog.
T I wash.
S1 My dog.
T Every day you wash your dog?
S1 No.
S2 He doesn't have a dog!
S1 No, but we can say it!
Clearly, in this case, the student's real experience with his dog (or even the fact that he did or did not have a dog) was irrelevant. What mattered was the correct use of the simple present verb.
Example 2
(A group of 12-year-old learners of English as a foreign language.)
T Repeat after me. Is there any butter in the refrigerator?
Group Is there any butter in the refrigerator?
T There's very little, Mom.
Group There's very little, Mom.
T Are there any tomatoes in the refrigerator?
Group Are there any tomatoes in the refrigerator?
T There are very few, Mom.
Group There are very few, Mom. (etc.)
Pure repetition. The students have no reason to get involved or to think about what they are saying. Indeed, some students who have no idea what the sentences mean will successfully repeat them anyway, while their minds wander off to other things.
Research findings
There is little classroom research to support this proposal. In fact, it was the frequent failure of traditional grammar-based methods to produce fluency and accuracy in second language learners which led to the development of more communicative approaches to teaching in the first place.
Supporters of communicative language teaching have argued that language is not learned by the gradual accumulation of one item after another. They suggest that errors are a natural and valuable part of the language learning process. Furthermore, they believe that the motivation of learners is often stifled by an insistence on correctness in the earliest stages of second language learning. These opponents of the 'Get it right from the beginning' proposal argue that it is better to encourage learners to develop 'fluency' before 'accuracy'.
Recently, some researchers and educators have reacted to the trend toward communicative language teaching and have revived the concern that allowing learners too much 'freedom' without correction and explicit instruction will lead to early fossilization of errors. Once again we hear the call for making sure learners 'get it right from the beginning'.
Unfortunately, little research has been carried out to test the hypothesis that an early and exclusive emphasis on form will, in the long run, lead to higher levels of linguistic performance and knowledge than an early and exclusive emphasis on meaning. The widespread adoption of communicative language teaching in recent years has meant that researchers in some settings have not been able to find classrooms which are exclusively form-oriented in order to make direct comparisons with classrooms that are exclusively meaning-oriented. None the less, there are findings from second language classroom research which are relevant to this issue. These include descriptive studies of the interlanguage development of second language learners in audiolingual programs (Study 1), and studies of the development of second language proficiency in classroom learners who have received different amounts of form- and meaning-based instruction (Studies 2 and 3).
Study 1: Audiolingual pattern drill
In the late 1970s, Patsy Lightbown and her colleagues in Quebec, Canada, carried out a series of longitudinal and cross-sectional investigations into the effect of audiolingual instruction on the second language interlanguage development of francophone ESL learners, aged eleven to sixteen[2] (Lightbown 1983, 1987). Students in these programs typically participated in the types of rote repetition and pattern practice drill we saw in Classroom A.