Toward a Synthetization of Teaching Methodologies for Second Languages

Abstract

AFTER REPORTING on experimentation comparing the audio-lingual habit theory and the cognitive code-learning theory, Chastain states The implication here is that the best of both methods be combined into a synthesis for all students . . .1 Similarly, Simon Belasco has asked if cognition and conditioning can co-exist in the foreign language classroom and his answer has been that they can and should be used together in the foreign language class.2 In the same vein, John B. Carroll states: Our field has been afflicted, I think, with many false dichotomies, irrelevant oppositions, weak conceptualizations and neglect of the really critical issues and variables.3 He then goes on to point out that such terms as stimulus and response designate concepts that are indispensable in the field of psychology and should not be treated lightly in the area of foreign language teaching methodology. In a similar vein, Ney suggests in a previously published article that, since the surface structures of languages differ from one another, conditioning of language forms in the cultural-linguistic milieu might be used to account for these differences. Certainly, the differences in surface structures can hardly be attributed to the effect of innate neurological mechanisms or to the theory of innate ideas even though the deep structures of languages may well operate from a universal base which may well be determined by the structuring of the language acquisition device. As a result, in that article the suggestion is made that pattern practice, a teaching device based on conditioning, be used to give students a grasp of the surface structure of languages and that the facts of univeral grammar be used to aid the students in this task by giving them cog itive control of the features of languag which they learn through pattern practice and other conditioning tactics.4 That this explanatory strategy may be theoretically valid can be deduced from the fact that, although current transformatio al theory has rejected behaviorism as an explanation for all facets of language learning, has not been argued that behavi istic conditioning cannot account for some facets of learning a language. Chomsky himself in his review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior states: it seems quite beyond question that children acquire a good deal of their verbal and nonverbal behavior by casual observation and imitation of adults and other children.5 And again he states that Reinforcement undoubtedly plays a significant role'6 in the learning of language. It is of course difficult to ascertain the exact theoretical framework suggested by the use of the terms reinforcement and imitation but both these terms invoke concepts which have been associated with behaviorism and conditioning theory. Imitation seems to be a simple case of a child receiving a stimulus and then emitting a response on the basis of this stimulus. Similarly, reinforcement may indeed have a place in nonbehavioristic psychologies, but certainly has been associated with behaviorism for some time. So is that there is at least a possibility that Chomsky does not exclude conditioning for the learning of some aspects of language. John Lyons has enlarged on this possibility in his study of Chomsky stating that: Chomsky's criticisms of behaviorism are undoubtedly valid. It does not follow, of course (and as far as I know Chomsky has never claimed