Re: Grassroots efforts
Martha, you are the person who can make the
most important contribution to this person's quest for
information. Jean
LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3032. Thu Oct 20 2005. ISSN:
1068 - 4875.
Subject: 16.3032, Qs: Method Comparison Research;
Intro Ling Classes
The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan
University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and
publishers.
Editor for this issue: Jessica Boynton <[log in to unmask]>
================================================================
We'd like to remind readers that the responses to
queries are usually
best posted to the individual asking the question. That
individual is
then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This
policy was
instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so
we
would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems
appropriate.
In addition to posting a summary, we'd like to
remind people that it
is usually a good idea to personally thank those
individuals who have
taken the trouble to respond to the query.
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 11:08:35
From: Ronald
Sheen < [log in to unmask]
>
Subject: Method Comparison Research of the 60s and 70s
The following is an appeal to "senior" members who were in any
way
involved in the method comparison research (MCR) of the 60s and 70s
and/or
to any members who have looked into it in any depth. I first
give my
requests and then provide the relevant background..
(1) Are there any members who were involved in the MCR of the past
who
could provide relevant feedback on what is below.. (2) Are
there any
members who have delved into this same research who could provide
relevant
feedback. (3) Does anyone know if Philip Smith is still
active and if he
has an e-mail address. I have tried in vain to find
it.
The 50s and 60s saw the implementation of the audiolingual method
(ALM)
for the teaching of foreign languages (henceforth used to include
second
languages) and the use of language labs. This provoked
much discussion on
the relative merits of ALM and traditional FL teaching and
then extensive
CMR on the relative merits of various exponents of both
options. The most
well-known major research of this type was the
1970 "A Comparison of the
Cognitive and Audiolingual Approaches to
Foreign Language Instruction" by
Philip Smith. a book of some 370
pages.
Though there is much to discuss in the research design etc., the
overall
findings were in favour of traditional FL teaching. This
provoked a
firestorm of protest on the part of proponents of ALM seeking to
demonstrate
such flaws in the findings that they could not be regarded as
reliable.
However, Von Elek & Oskarsson (1973) in a thorough review of the
relevant
research including a study of their own, describe 22 such projects
19 of
which produced such similar results that they concluded that
typical
components of traditional deductive methods should be integral parts
of FL
instruction (p. 145). More recently, Decoo (2001) has provided
support for
these findings.
However, all this controversy ultimately proved to be something of
a
sideshow for Chomsky's 1957 demonstration of the sterility of
Skinner's
behaviourism and the establishment in linguistics of his ideas had
by the
60s filtered down to the world of applied linguistics and caused
the
subsequent rejection of ALM. There then followed in the 70s and 80s
the
acceptance of strong communicative language teaching (SCLT) which
outlawed
the teaching of grammar on the assumption that exposure to
understood
language would result in acquisition. (Krashen's Input
Hypothesis).
To cut a long and protracted story short, in the late 80s and early
90s,
following the failure of SCLT, Michael Long published articles which
sought to
do what was hardly necessary given the available literature.
That is to demonstrate that classroom instruction had a positive effect
on
learning. The acceptance of this principle came, however, with a
price -
the rejection of the value of traditional language teaching his
argument
being based on the false assumption that the CMR proved inconclusive
because
different methods produced more or less the same results.
Now, though Long's claim was demonstrated in the literature to be
unfounded, it
is that claim which has become the contemporary wisdom of the
current mindset in applied linguistics. Thus, one finds Doughty (2004)
claiming ".two "methods" of instruction were pitted against each other and the
findings were always the
same: no difference between the two (see e.g.,
Smith, 1970), notably without
page reference..
This claim is so inaccurate (see above) that one can only conclude it
has
become one of those myths which editors appear to publish without
submitting
them to critical scrutiny.
This issue is of some moment for many applied linguists continue to use
it
as a means of stigmatising an approach to language teaching and
learning
which has been a major component in helping countless FL learners to
be
successful.
I will, of course, provide a summary of the content of replies to
the
above requests.
Ron Sheen
University of Quebec,
Trois Rivieres, Canada.
References:
Decoo, Wilfried, (2001) "On the mortality of language learning
methods",
given as the James L. Barker lecture, 8 November 2001, College
of
Humanities, BYU.
Doughty, C.J. (2004) "Effects of instruction on learning a
second
language: A critique of instructed SLA research" in (Eds.) B.
VanPatten, J.
Williams, S. Rott & M. Overstreet Form-Meaning Connections
in SLA. London:
Lawtrrence Erlbaum.
Smith. P.D. Jr. (1970). "A comparison of the cognitive and
audio-lingual
approaches to foreign language instruction" The Pennsylvania
Foreign
Language Project. Philadelphia: The Center for Curriculum
Development.
Von Elek, T. & Oskarsson, M. (1973). Teaching Foreign Language Grammar
to
Adults: A comparative study. Almquist & Wiksell: Stockholm.
Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST
List: Vol-16-3032
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/