The Transformationalists and ESL Teachers, 1972

Abstract

The dichotomy between the audio-lingual behavioristic method of teaching foreign languages developed by the structural grammarians and a approach advocated by the generative-transformational grammarians is not as great as many of the critics of the audio-lingual method indicate. Many of these criticisms attack the extremes of audiolingualism or pattern practice poorly handled, and are criticisms with which many users of the audio-lingual method would agree. There is a recognition by structuralists of a process in language learning in their admonition to formulate the rules for the language inductively based on examples given, and to generalize by analogy. Deduction and induction may both play a role in language learning, and the differences in the points of view of the structuralists and the transformationalists may lie in part in the point at which they are describing the learning process. Since many of the techniques implied in generative theory are devices good teachers have always used, rather than demand of the transformationalists that they offer us a new approach or new systematized body of methodology, we might do better to make use of the insights into language that they offer us to support the techniques we use. The advent of structural grammar revolutionized the teaching of foreign languages. Structural grammarians, adopting behaviorist theories of language learning, developed the audio-lingual method to supplant the grammar-translation method of the traditionalists. In the 60's the generativetransformational grammarians challenged the tenets of the structuralists and offered new theories of language design and language acquisition. These developments were expected to have an impact on the teaching of languages similar to that of the structuralists earlier. Moulton said, in 1961, Transformational grammar should have far-reaching effects, in improving textbooks and learning grammatical structures. Since that time much has been written to point out the fallacies in behaviorist theories of language learning and the shortcomings of the pattern practice upon which the audiolingual method is based, as well as to indicate where structural grammar falls short as a description of language. Wilga Rivers' excellent book The Psychologist and the Foreign Language Teacher assesses the audio-lingual method point by point both in its strengths and its weaknesses. Yet, while criticisms are many, no new transformational or cognitive method comparable to the audio-lingual method of the structuralists has appeared. Shall we assume that generative-transformational grammar, in spite of the insights on language that it offers, has not had an impact on language