Theories

1
Theories Approaches to SLA

• Spanish/French 448
• Fall 2003
• Professor K. Potowski

2
Audiolingualism

• Rooted in behaviorism (conditioning)
• Language seen as a series of habits
• Mistakes are bad and should be avoided, as they
  lead to bad habits
• Contrastive analysis was used features different
  between L1 and L2 were emphasized
• Drills (repetition, transformation, etc.)

3
Problems w/ audiolingualism

• Was not resulting in bilingual speakers
• Ignored learning styles
• Theorists in 60s and 70s rejected behaviorist
  views of language learning

Noam Chomsky
4
Communicative Language Teaching

• Meaning is of primary importance
• The order of materials is determined by the
  content, function, meaning of interest to
  students
• Learning styles are accounted for
• Attempts to communicate are encouraged from the
  beginning.
• The goal of CLT Communicative Competence

5
What is communicative competence?

• According to Canale Swain (1980) it consists of
  four underlying competences
• Grammatical competence (structure form)
• Discourse competence (rules of cohesion
  coherence across sentences)
• Sociolinguistic competence (appropriate rules of
  interaction turn taking, forms of politeness,
  etc.)
• Strategic competence (how to make the most of the
  language skills you have).

6
Basic principles of CLT

• Activities that involve communication promote
  language learning
• Activities that involve the completion of
  real-world tasks promote language learning
• Learners must be engaged in meaningful and
  authentic language use for language learning to
  take place

7
What do these words mean?

• Activities that involve communication
• The completion of real-world tasks
• Learners must be engaged in meaningful and
  authentic language use

8
CLT makes use of real-life situations that
necessitate communication. The teacher sets up a
situation that students are likely to encounter
in real life. CLT often leaves students in
suspense as to the outcome of a class exercise,
which will vary according to their reactions and
responses. The real-life simulations change from
day to day. Students' motivation to learn comes
from their desire to communicate in meaningful
ways about meaningful topics.

• ERIC Digest http//www.cal.org/ericcll/digest/gal
  low01.html

9
How do the roles of the teacher and student
change in communicative language teaching?

• CLT teachers will find themselves talking less
  and listening more, becoming active facilitators
  of their students' learning (Larsen-Freeman,
  1986). The teacher sets up the exercise, but
  because the students' performance is the goal,
  the teacher must step back and observe, sometimes
  acting as referee or monitor. The students do
  most of the speaking, and frequently the scene of
  a classroom during a communicative exercise is
  active, with students leaving their seats to
  complete a task. Because of the increased
  responsibility to participate, students may find
  they gain confidence in using the target language
  in general. Students are more responsible
  managers of their own learning (Larsen-Freeman,
  1986).

10
Does CLT really lead to SLA?

• Experiment (Savignon 1972)
• Three groups of first-semester French students
• Group 1 ALM 1 lab day per week
• Group 2 ALM 1 culture day per week
• Group 3 ALM 1 day of communicative
• training per week

11
Findings

• The communicative group outscored the other
  groups on listening, reading, and oral skills,
  and communicative competence. Their scores on
  communicative competence were significantly
  higher than the scores of Group 1.

12
Other approaches to CLT

• Total Physical Response (TPR) (Asher 1972)
• Belief that listening comprehension should be
  developed fully before students are expected to
  speak
• Utilizes oral commands that students carry out
• Drawbacks _______________________

13
The Natural Approach (Terrell 1977)

• The entire class period should be devoted to
  communication activities
• Explanation and practice w/ forms should be done
  outside of class
• Errors not corrected
• Acquisition vs. learning
• Drawbacks _______________________