The Application of Contemporary Linguistics Theories in Language Teaching

By Layth Muthana Khaleel

1. Linguistics and language teaching Until 1960s, when the relationship between linguistics and language teaching was reassessed, emerged two viewpoints: one was to say that linguistics is not so important as it has been thought. Some linguists expressed their disagreement to regard linguistics as the basis of a strategy of learning. What is needed in the field of language teaching are not applied linguists but rather applied psychologists. The other point of view was to recognize the general contribution of linguistics but with the provision that language teaching is not bound to abide consistently by one theory. Different linguistic theories can offer different perspectives on language teaching, and they can be treated as equivalent resources. 2. Schools of linguistics and foreign language teaching 2.1 Structuralism Language was viewed as a system of structurally related elements for the encoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes, morphemes, words, structures, and sentence types. The influence of structural linguistics on language teaching Structural linguistics stresses the importance of language as a system and investigates the place that linguistic units such as sounds, words, sentences have within this system. In association with behaviorism it provided the principal theoretical basis of the audio lingual theory and in this way influence language teaching materials, techniques and teacher education. The audiolingual/audiovisual method grounded in the habit formation model of behaviourist psychology and on a Structural Linguistics theory of language, the emphasis was on memorisation through pattern drills and conversation practices rather than promoting communicative ability. 2.2 Generativism One particular influential school of linguistics is that the school of generative linguistics introduced by Noam Chomsky from the late 1950s onward. In his view, the proper subject matter of linguistics should be the representation of language in the mind (competence), rather than the way in which people actually use language in everyday life (performance). Chomskys claim is that this internal
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language is essentially biological rather than social and is separate from, and relatively uninfluenced by, outside experience. The influence of generative linguistics on language teaching In the late sixties, new developments in language pedagogy occurred which can be regarded as resulting from the impact of TG theory. A typical example is the cognitive theory of language learning. This theory emerged in which TG concepts became associated with a cognitive view of the psychology of language learning. Thus, Learners were encouraged to work out grammar rules deductively for themselves, i.e., grammatical explanations or rules are presented and then applied through practice in exercises. 2.3 Functionalism Linguistics has turned to systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Linguistics has been developed by M. A. K. Halliday. This is a model for analyzing language in terms of the interrelated systems of choices that are available for expressing meaning. From a Hallidayian perspective, language provides members of discourse communities with a system of choices to communicate meaning Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a text-based theory of language. The key questions and applications of the theory revolve not around the syntax of sentences, but around the functions of texts in context. Language is seen as a social resource; meanings are negotiated in social contexts by social beings. Language is structured in response to the social functions it serves. Another key feature of systemic functional linguistics is that the text, not the sentence, is the fundamental unit of analysis. The specific text that emerges from any context of situation relates to three register variables, field, tenor, and mode. Thus, the perspective on grammar taken in SFL is semantic and functional. Grammatical elements are identified and classified in terms of the kind of meaning they are expressing and the grammatical role they are playing, rather than their grammatical class (noun, verb and so on). The influence of functional linguistics on language teaching The concept of communicative competence has been appropriated for language teaching purposes in a series of evolutionary reformulations and this modern approach to language teaching and learning has given rise to the communicative method, which became the mainstream approach to language teaching in the last decades of the twentieth century. Communicative language teaching puts the focus on the learner. Accordingly, knowledge of a language is far more than knowledge of the grammar of individual
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sentences. Instead, knowing a language means knowing how to communicate in the language; it involves acquiring communicative competence, so as to include grammatical, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic competences, all of which are in effect discourse competences, since they account for the ability of members of speech communities to put language to use. In other words, different theories in linguistics have contributed in the rise of the communicative method as illustrated below. Sociolinguistics: Variation in the speech community and its relationship to language change are central to sociolinguistic inquiry. What is incorrect or inappropriate is simply that which is not in conformity with the shared norms of a particular group. In language teaching, the learner is prepared to participate in some other social group, some language community other than his own, to play a part or fulfill a role in that community. Hence , the modern language teaching adopts a more social approach to language and it is concerned with the problems of language communicative function in different social situation. Thus, it emphasizes the notion of presenting language in situation, in dialogue form rather than isolated exemplificatory sentences; in the use of audio-visual materials and in the emphasis on natural linguistic examples. In other words, sociolinguistic perspectives have been important in understanding the implications of norm, appropriateness, and variability for communicative language teaching Pragmatics has implications for language teaching; it defines the goal of teaching a language as prompting the students not merely to manipulate meaningless sound sequences, but to send and receive messages in the language, i.e., grasping some knowledge of pragmatics can indeed help us teach or learn a language well. Hence, the theories and findings reached by the inquiry of pragmatics such as speech act theory, Grices cooperative principles and implicatures and the theory of politeness as well as context; deixis and reference; shared knowledge (presuppositions) and frameworks of interpretation, have been incorporated and appropriated within the new approach in communicative language teaching. Discourse analysis: It involves reference to concepts of language in use, language above or beyond the sentence, language as meaning in interaction, and language in situational and cultural context.

Since the beginnings of communicative language teaching, second language teaching and learning has come to be understood increasingly in terms of discourse. Within such a perspective, learner needs, syllabus aims and content, and task goals and procedures will all be specified primarily in discourse terms. Materials (text or audio/video) are selected and presented to meet criteria of communicative authenticity. Tests are constructed to recreate as closely as possible the conditions under which language will be used in real communication in the defined target situation. For instance, a discourse-based description of grammar a discourse grammar will treat grammar functionally. It will cover not only the possible realizations in grammar of particular speech act functions such as requesting and suggesting (and their mitigation for reasons of politeness and tact), but the way in which grammatical categories such as tense, aspect and modality pattern across texts, the role of grammar in creating textual cohesion (reference, substitution, conjunction, etc.) and information structure (through devices of thematization such as adverbial placement, the use of the passive and clefting). As to conversational analysis in the field of language teaching, talk has been a central issue at least since the 1970s. Conversation and talk in general are the home of language in use. In an overview of CAs relation to language teaching, Schegloff et al. (2002) argue that conversation analysis touches on concerns of language teaching : talk in educational institutions; grammar and interaction; intercultural communication and comparative conversation analysis; and in assessing the implications for designing language teaching tasks, materials, and assessment tasks. One important contribution of conversation analysis is by focusing on what it means for an L2 speaker to be conversationally competent in a second language , i.e. the importance of interactional competence as a collaborative, socially constituted domain of communicative competence.