Programmed Instruction versus Guided Learning in Foreign Language Acquisition

Abstract

Seven years ago in a paper delivered at the first Indiana-Purdue Language Conference and aptly titled The Language Laboratory as a Teaching Machine, F. Rand Morton painted in bold strokes a futuristic scheme in which the application of programmed instruction would revolutionize FL learning. Working with carefully programmed electronic equipment, students would acquire all language skills through selfinstruction; the presence of the live teacher would be required only for occasional evaluation of student performance, for diagnosis of errors and remedial guidance. Morton's prophecy has stimulated considerable experimentation in the application of programmed instruction to the preparation of FL materials and several programmed FL courses have been distributed commercially. However, it must be admitted that Morton's utopian LanguageLaboratory-as-a-Teaching-Machine does not abound today and that programmed materials and programmed instruction techniques have had little impact on FL teaching as it is practiced in the average high school and college classroom of today. That we FL teachers have viewed programmed materials and self-instruction with suspicion and skepticism is clearly demonstrated by a recent survey conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics. Of 617 college and university teachers of FL canvassed in the survey, only 64 at 62 institutions reported the use of programmed materials in their departments. In most instances the materials reported in use were being tried out on an experimental basis under the direction of their developers. How can we account for this undeniably lukewarm response? In this paper I propose to show that the general rejection of programmed iinstruction by FL teachers stems from three factors. First, it stems from the inadequacy of Skinner's conception of the structure of human language and the simplistic model he proposes for its acquisition. Second, serious attempts to apply programmed instruction to FL learning were perhaps too ambitious. Rather than addressing themselves to limited and carefully specified FL tasks-for example, the teaching of spelling, the teaching of grammatical concepts, training in pronunciation, the acquisition of limited proficiency within a restricted number of vocabulary items and grammatical features-most programmers aimed at selfsufficient courses designed to lead to near-native speaking proficiency.