A : Recap

We have looked at several approaches to language-learning, including Grammar/Translation, the Direct Method, and the Audio-Lingual Approach. We saw that whereas with the G/T method, formal grammar learning was believed to be central to acquisition, in both the Direct Method and the Audio-Lingual Approach, grammar was believed to be picked up through practice - either, as with the Direct Method, through conversation with the teacher or other students, or, as with the Audio-Lingual Approach, through over-learning, drilling and repetition.

This leads us to consider a question to which we will need to return ; is an L2 learned or acquired? I want you to spend some time asking yourselves how you learned your second language, how many of the different exercises that your teachers asked you to perform, or of the strategies that you used, were actually useful in leading to your present capacity to use the language to communicate with others. How much did conscious learning contribute, and how much of your knowledge was simply absorbed through use?

B : The Structural/Global Audio Visual Approach

While the Audio-Lingual approach was at its height in the English-speaking countries, in Europe - and particularly in France - a rather different mode held sway. This was elaborated by Peter Guberina, at the University of Zagreb, and Paul Rivenc at the Ecole Normale Sup de Saint-Cloud. The first full language learning program - Voix et Images de France - was published in 1962, and was later adapted for Primary school children as Bonjour Line.

As with both the Direct Method and the Audio-Lingual method, language was seen as above all a means of communication. The oral language was more important than the written, which was simply derived from the former. Guberina claimed that language was an acoustico-visual phenomenon, and elaborated a theory of auditive perception that was one of the bases of the method.

To some extent, the SGAV was based upon the same kind of thinking as the Audio-Lingual approach. However, two important changes were made ;

• - the matter to be taught was based not only on a structural analysis of language, but also on the statistical analysis of a corpus of ordinary, everyday language, both spoken and written. The analysis made it possible to construct the program on the basis of the frequency of particular structures and lexical items.
• - the lessons were structured around an opening dialogue, which was accompanied with a film (stills) that contextualized it.

Moreover, the psychology of learning which underlay the method was opposed to the behaviourist model of the Audio-Lingual approach. The basis was what is known as 'Gestalt' theory, that held that the whole was more important than the parts - hence the term 'Global'. Language was to be understood within a sensual context, rather than abstracted from visual reality.

The language to be learned, as we have seen, is determined by forces outside the classroom. The vocabulary is set according to the frequency with which words appear in the spoken language - for French, this was based on research carried out in the early 50s, leading to the frequency list known as Français Fondamental - comprising about 3,000 words, divided into two groups of about 1,500 words each. Basic grammar was founded on a similar analysis of frequency. These elements are presented in a spiral form, beginning with the most frequently used, and moving outwards to the rarer forms, but with care to be taken to reintroduce material regularly.

The learner has no control over the contents of the program, nor over the way the lessons are delivered. A lesson typically follows a foreordained structure :

• 1. First the dialogue is presented, in situation - that is to say with the accompanying pictures. The dialogue is to be repeated, with a good imitation of the phonological form - taken globally, rather than broken down sound by sound.
• 2. Next, the new elements are ritualised in contexts which are slightly different from the one in which they were presented. At this stage, the learners will play out short sketches.
• 3. Finally, the language would be fixed through structural exercises - preferably in the language laboratory. At this stage, the learning process resembles the Audio-lingual approach, with a similar use of drills and 'over-learning'.

In a number of ways, the SGAV approach appears to occupy an intermediary position between the audio-lingual method and the communicative approaches that were to appear towards the mid-seventies and later. There is on the one hand, the idea of a clear progression, determined by an analysis of the language to be used, the presentation of language in specially written dialogues, and the use of structural drills and repetition, while on the other hand, there is the belief that language must be placed within a context within which it will be meaningful.

This method was quite effective in teaching learners to converse with native speakers, but did not allow them to understand natives speaking among themselves, or to read complex material. This appears to have been because the dialogues were kept simple, and concentrated on the language to be learned, rather than offering a realistic sample of what the learner might actually hear if she were to visit the country. It also appears that the programs gave very little insight into the culture or daily life of countries in which the language is spoken.

But how much of this shortfall is due to the method itself, and how much is due to the realities of schools and teaching? Have a look at the document.

The method and the classroom - what theorists say, and what teachers do

Communicative Approaches

Growing dissatisfaction with both G/T and Audio-Aural or Audio-visual approaches, and a growing distaste for the language laboratory, coupled with an ever-growing demand for foreign language learning, both in schools and in Permanent Education, lead, during the 70s and 80s, to a rethinking of how to teach language.

The behaviourist and structuralism foundations of the Audio-Lingual method were put in doubt by the work of the linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky was able to demonstrate that the Behaviourist approach to language learning could not account for the facts ; children do not repeat what their parents say, nor are they rewarded for grammatically correct sentences. In fact, Chomsky suggested that neither linguistics nor psychology were as yet in a position to say anything useful about how to teach languages (1966).

Both in Europe and in the United States, effectiveness studies comparing the Audio-Lingual or Audio-Visual approaches with G/T discovered little or no difference, and similar studies of the use of language laboratories showed that these expensive items made no measurable difference at all to language acquisition - one study concluded that a group of high ability boys 'showed no detectable difference over a period of three years, in either performance or attitude, from a matched group of pupils that did not use the language laboratory' (Oliver & Boyd, 1975), while another found similar negative results with secondary beginners of both sexes, for all levels of ability (Winter, 1982).

One commentator concludes :

Teachers mesmerized by the technology made little or no attempt to set up classroom situations where the overlearned structures might be needfully, autonomously used (this is the most difficult and often the most neglected part of foreign language teaching anyway). The accent, speed, the intonation, the impressive Frenchness of the language learned were all there to prove that it worked ... But gradually it became clear that a year or longer spent on (one of the basic audio-visual courses) meant little more than a command of only those snippets of language that had been overlearned in the classroom. There was no transfer, no ability to develop or recombine them, no ability to generate further language. A small part of the language-learning process involving often neglected skills had been concentrated on without the realization of how small a part this was and how much more there was to language teaching and learning than this ; how much had in fact been neglected. Gradually this was realized and the audio-visual 'method' was dropped.

Audio-visual methods did respond to some of these criticisms - to an extent, the new approaches of the 70s can be seen as marking an evolution, rather than a complete break. However, we find that there is a marked change of emphasis ; from concentrating upon the language as a set of structures, language teaching began to emphasize more and more the use of language as a means of communication. Language now was to be analysed functionally rather than structurally.

The theoretical underpinning of Communicative Approaches is to be sought more in socio-linguistics than in pure linguistics. Taking Chomsky's word for it that there was little to be expected from linguistics itself, didacticians turned to the work of Dell Hymes.

Hymes - referring to Chomsky's concept of linguistic competence - states that for language to be used to exchange information, ideas, or feelings, the speaker must possess both the capacity to construct grammatically correct sentences - linguistic competence - but also the competence to produce socially pertinent utterances. Communication then, depends on communicative competence - and communicative competence can be seen as inclusive of :

1. A linguistic component
2. A discursive component - a knowledge and understanding of different types of discourse and of their organization as a function of the situation of communication within which they are produced.
3. A referential component - a knowledge of the domains of experience and the objects in the world and of their relationships.
4. A sociocultural component - a knowledge of the social rules and norms of interaction between individuals and within institutions, including a knowledge of cultural history, and of the relations between social objects.

To which we need to add a strategic component ; this refers to the speakers ability to repair damaged utterances, either through the use of language - sentence fillers, such as 'you see what I mean', or open words, such as 'thing' or 'stuff' - or through the use of extra-linguistic means - gesture, pantomime, body-language in general.

Learning a foreign language, then, will include acquisition of the syntactic, phonological and semantic rules that we refer to as grammar, but will also include acquiring the ability to distinguish between formal and semi-formal discourse styles, for example, learning about the world as it is in those countries in which we are likely to speak the language, and also learning about the socio-cultural rules - the distance to be maintained between interlocutors, for example, or the loudness of voice which is appropriate to particular settings and situations.

If we situate language within a social context, we then see utterances as not simply specific syntactic and phonological realizations, but as an integral element of social interaction. When we speak to someone, we are not simply representing the world, or painting pictures of it with our mouths - we are engaged in an attempt to change it, in however minute a fashion. Language, then, is used as a tool, and its use can be seen as active. This leads us to the concept of the Speech Act (acte de parole).

The English philosopher, J.L. Austin, in his book How to Do Things with Words (1962), pointed out that certain verbs constituted acts in that they had what he referred to as a performative force. Thus, if I say "I bet you £50 pounds that the Queen will abdicate before 2005", my enunciation in itself constitutes the act of betting. If the Queen, smashing a bottle of champagne against the hull of a ship, declares "I hereby name this ship the 'Princess Diana', and may God bless her and all who serve in her", she actually achieves the end that she announces.

This insight was taken further by John Searle, who classifies speech acts into five broad classes :

1. Representative Assertions - information - the descriptions of states of affairs.
2. Directive Orders, requests, questions or permission - these put the interlocutor under the obligation of performing an act in the future.
3. Commissive Promises, offers, contracts - these put the speaker under an obligation to perform an act in the future.
4. Expressive Congratulations, excuses, thanks and greetings - these express a psychological state.
5. Declarative Declarations, condemnations, baptisms - these are Austin's performatives.

This kind of classification lies at the basis, as we shall see, of modern communicative approaches - if you look at a text-book, you will find a list of the different functions that each chapter covers - these lists derive from one or another variation upon Searle's list.

The communicative approach, then, does not reject grammar, but sees it as being only one element amongst others in the social use of language. Language teachers cannot simply reduce their practice to teaching the code ; they must also aid their pupils to acquire the other forms of competence that contribute to the production of any successfully accomplished social interaction.

We will need to return to these matters, and look more closely at what we mean by 'Communicative Language Teaching'. We will also need to extend some of the same skepticism towards this approach as we have to its forerunners - you will, in the next thirty years or so during which you will be teaching English, probably see other approaches come and go. There can be no guarantee that the techniques that seem to suit the moment now will still be well-regarded in the year 2010 - and even now there are - as we shall have occasion to see - criticisms that can be made of 'CLT'.

(If you wish to comment or ask a question, please write to tmason@timothyjpmason.com))