Virginia Scott

Whither the Language Lab?

Army Method During WWII the government turned to the

Bloomfieldian linguists to train the Armed Forces personnel for espionage, prisoner interrogation, and monitoring of radio transmissions.

Army SpecializedTraining Program (Army Method) select bright, willing, young men train 12 hours a day for 9 months use native speaker teachers in small group settingshave well defined objectives: perfect comprehension

and native-like accent

The Army method was successful and made educators rethink FL instruction in American schools.

Post-war (1950-1969)

The Army Method was renamed the American Method and schools tried to duplicate the results of wartime language training.

Psychology was being increasingly accepted as a viable science.Behaviorist camp (Thorndike & Skinner)

Learning occurs through trial and error, stimulus-response, and conditioning

Cognitivist camp (Wertheimer & Kohler)Learning is rule-governed behavior achieved through analysis

Behaviorist theories were most widely accepted and dominated throughout the 1970s.

Audio-lingual Method

ALM = combination of Army Method and Behaviorist theories:inputdrill (rote learning)use of language

laboratories

(The first language lab was installed at Louisiana State U. in 1947.)

Chomsky’s theories(first/native language)

LAD (Language Acquisition Device) This theory states that humans are born with an innate ability to learn a language. Language learning is a cognitive process that comes from within the learner, not from stimuli outside the learner; learning has nothing to do with conditioning and reward.

Competence vs. Performance: competence = knowledge of a language system; linguistic rulesperformance = use of language; production

Cognitive approach

Discovery of socio-cultural theories

in the 1990sSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY

study of child L1 acquisition

full cognitive development requires social interaction

the range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.

Pedagogical Psychology Institute of Moscow

Lev Vygotsky

1896-1934

Thought and Language

(1962)

learner

learner

behaviorist

cognitivist

learner OTHER

sociocultural

Summary of learning theories: 1960-2010

Communicative Language Teaching

CLT grew out of the theories and practices in the 20th century.

It is NOT a method but rather a way of thinking about FL learning and teaching that draws on theories from cognitive science, educational psychology, and second language acquisition.

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