SAQ 1. 1

Linguistics and Language Teaching

The aim of this unit

· To make you think about what is a language

· To reflect upon what is actually taught and learnt as a language

· To analyze language theories that are used in language teaching

What do you have to do in this unit?

A Input reading

B Self-assessment questions (SAQ)

C Exploratory tasks

D Materials analysis task

E Integrated task

Warming up discussion 0

Agree or disagree with the following statements by marking T (true), F (false) and D (debatable)

Statements	T F D
1. Human language grew out of the animals’ “call” system to mean “Danger!”, “Food!”, “Follow me!” etc
2. Human language is independent of the animals’ cry system and can’t have arisen from the animals’ language
3. Language grammar is getting more and more complex with the evolution
4. Higher animals such as apes can acquire primitive human language
5. Language is a specific human faculty that has a unique biological basis
6. Language is a system of arbitrary signs with rules
7. Human language has a non-random organisation

Input reading 1

Pre-communicative language theories

One of the first language theories was classical normative grammar. It put the emphasis on the studies of correct written language and succeeded in analysing it into the definitive number of forms and rules. Traditional grammar labelled words in sentences as grammatical categories of “Subject”, “Predicate”, “Object”, “Attribute” etc. It dealt with traditional categories of “agreement”, “number”, “person”, “tense”, “voice”, and “gender”. Classical normative grammar was consistent with grammar-translation method (Olendorf) aiming at contrastive analysis of the written samples in the native and foreign/second language (L1 and L2). Grammar-translation instruction was based on deducing the language from the rules. In this instruction setting the learners acquired mostly deductive grammar. Within the framework of classical normative grammar developed direct method of second/foreign language instruction (Berlitz). These were naive and amateur attempts to apply the ideas enlightened by the first insights into the child language learning. Within this method the learners acquired inductive grammar, which was based on the language examples.

SAQ 1.1

Match the concepts in the left-hand column with the features of language teaching in the right-hand column. Two features of teaching are extra. Why?

Concepts	Features
1. Classical normative grammar	A. Fluency
2. Grammar-translation method	B. Accuracy
3. Deductive grammar	C. Cross-language analysis
4. Inductive grammar	D. Exposure to whole language
5. Direct method	E. Communication
	F. Rules
G. Examples

Prescriptive approach to grammar set out rules for the “proper” use of the language. The claim was that the English sentences should be like those in Latin. Some familiar examples of prescriptive rules for the English sentences are: “You must not split the infinitive and therefor you can’t say “to quickly do”, “You must not end a sentence with a preposition”, “You must not begin a sentence with “and” or “but”. Sentences such as “Who did you see?” was corrected by the teachers to “Whom did you see?”.