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Period: to
Behaviorist View/Environmentalist Approach
Structural linguistics + behaviorist psychology, which saw learning as conditioned by the external environment.
Offered reasonable explanation of how children learn some basic, routine aspects of language and showed the important role played by adults and educators in setting appropriate learning conditions (Uso&Flor,6)
Speaking was merely considered as an effective medium for providing language input and facilitating memorization rather than as a discourse skill in its own right (Uso&Flor 141) -
Structural Linguistics (Bloomfield)
The target of learning was to master all the elements of the system (phonemes, morphemes, words, sentence types) and to learn the rules by which these elements were combined (also the general learning theory dominant in Behaviorism)
(Uso&Flor 5-3; Shrum&Glisan 13). -
Behaviorism (Skinner)
Learning took place by imitating and practicing the same structures time after time and teachers should make it explicitly clear what was to be taught and focus mainly on the structures that were presumably more difficult (habit formation). Practice and positive reinforcement were thought to be key components of language learning (Uso&Flor 5). -
Period: to
Cognitive Theory/Innatist Approach
Concerned with both surface forms of utterances and the abstract structures underlying sentences, thus emphasizing the creative nature of human language (Uso&Flor, 6).
Focused on the child’s output, which was essential in that it provided a description of what was learnt. Though, it failed to account for the functions of language (Uso&Flor, 8).
The speakers’ role changed from merely receiving input and repeating it to actively thinking how to produce language. (Uso & Flor, 141) -
Competence and Performance/LAD and Universal Grammar (Noam Chomsky)
Learning is a mental and cognitive process.Humans are born with an innate “language acquisition device” that helps them process language. Language results from the creative application of a learned set of rules.
Language learning capacity is “hard-wired” into the human brain at birth. When children receive input, they acquire language as a result of their innate ability to discover a language’s underlying system of rules, not because they repeat and imitate language they hear. (Shrum&Glisan 13) -
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Interactionist Approach
This approach highlights the importance of using language for communication purposes. Learning is seen as dynamic and interactive (Uso&Flor 4). The attention lies on discourse or language beyond the sentence (8).
The functions that producing spoken language fulfills are of importance, as well as accounting for the social and contextual factors that intervene in such speech production acts (Uso&Flor 142) -
Communicative Competence (Hymes)
Expansion from Chomsky's Competence.
It accounts for the role of context and social factors involved in language use and interpretation and is not only based on a system of syntactic rules and structures as proposed to Chomsky's theory.
Communicative Competence accounts for those rules of language use in social context as well as the norms of appropriacy (Shrum&Glisan 14-15; Uso&Flor 10,146) -
Interlanguage Theory (Selinker)
Interlanguage is the developing language of the learner.
It is created through interference from the L1, effect of instruction, overgeneralization of L2 rules, learning strategies and L2 communication strategies.
Interlanguages are dynamic and evolve through restructuring and the construction of new hypotheses.
Learners' use of the L2 reflects a system in development; errors occur as a natural part of the acquisition process (Shrum& Glisan 21). -
Jean Piaget
Learning does not affect the course of development since maturation precedes learning. The learner must be cognitively and developmentally ready to handle certain learning tasks (Shrum & Glisan) -
Canale and Swain
Integrative theoretical framework consisting of four main competences: grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse competence.
Important for speaking: discourse competence, which is concerned with the knowledge of achieving coherence and cohesion in a spoken (or written) text. All four components are essential to prepare the learner to face their communicative needs in the L2. (Uso & Flor 11) -
Input Hypothesis (Krashen)
Input Hypothesis: Language classroom should provide comprehensible input at the i+1 level, in a low-anxiety environment in which learners are not required to speak until they are ready to do so.
Acquisition, not learning, leads to spontaneous, unplanned communication. Language user needs to have sufficient time, attend to linguistic form, and know the rule being applied. Error correction should be minimal since it is not useful when the goal is language acquisition (Shrum&Glisan 16-17). -
Interaction Hypothesis (Long)
Learners are active participants who interact and negotiate the input they receive to acquire language. They make changes in their language as they interact or “negotiate meaning” with each other and work toward comprehension.
Input can become implicit, or automatic language, when learners notice specific features of it, compare these features to those of their own output, and integrate the features by restructuring their own developing language system (Shrum&Glisan 22; Gass,MacKey& Pica 300). -
Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky's ZPD)
Language learning is a sociocultural construction. What learners can do with assistance today, they will be able to do on their own tomorrow or at some future point in time.
Social interaction and guided assistance are internalized by learners and contribute to language development. It is about people working together to co-construct contexts in which expertise emerges as a feature of the group (Shrum&Glisan 24). -
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Communicative Approach
The role of speaking is of paramount importance to facilitate the acquisition of communicative competence (Uso&Flor 146). -
Output Hypothesis (Swain)
Besides input, learners also need opportunities to produce output to achieve higher levels of language competence.During speaking tasks, learners engage in pushed output, which allows them to move from what they want to say to how they say it(Shrum&Glisan 22-23, Swain159).“Learners[...]need to have their linguistic abilities stretched to their fullest; they need to reflect on their output and consider ways of modifying it to enhance comprehensibility, appropriateness and accuracy”(Swain 160-161) -
Interactional Competence (Hall)
Input is a necessary but insufficient condition for acquisition to occur. Input must also occur within meaningful contexts and be situated within real communication. Learners need to be exposed to interactive practices (=recurring episodes of purposeful, goal-directed talk). Competent participation requires the development of interactional competence, as learners and teachers participate in “real” conversations (Shrum &Glisan 31) -
Celce-Murcia
Discourse competence is at the core of communicative competence. The linguistic, pragmatic, intercultural, and strategic components serve to build discourse competence which, in turn, also shapes each of the other competencies (Uso&Flor 15)
Students need more than grammatical or linguistic knowledge alone to function in a communicative setting (Shrum &Glisan 15)
