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Background, theories, techniques, reading grammar; emphasizes translation as an aid in teaching.
Paper Introduction:
Language Development in the Child
Learning and the Malleability of Children
There are as many definitions of learning as there are dictionaries, psychologists, and educators. Ellington & Harris (1986) see learning as "a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from past experience or purposeful instruction." Page & Thomas (1977) stress that "it is important to realize that learning need not be correct, deliberate, or overt." Whatever the school of thought, in modern pedagogy learning is characterized by a change in the stable relationship between a stimulus that an individual perceives, and the response that is made, either covertly or overtly. Learning, in other words, is "behavioral modification especially through experience or
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Not all scientistsshare Plomin's and Head Start's optimism. p. R. One major problem in the application of the concept of malleabilityconcerns the manner in which changes in the child's development can bevalidly and differentially measured. 24). This set of attitudes is due, in part, to Arabs' historical attitudestowards Arabic. 1 3-5). Hawkins (1985). (1965). Compound conjunctions and fancy vocabulary are thekeys to writing. It is in this perspective that we shall nowbriefly look over the processes of native and language learning. There are at least five methodologiesthat might be termed innovative in the language teaching field these days:the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning, theComprehensive Approach, and the Communicative Approach" (Larsen-Freeman,1987, p. 125) believes that human beings have aninnate capacity to acquire language and that much of the languagedevelopment process is best accounted for by biological factors. Truth two: 'Language is segmental.' Thatis, language consists of grammatical units strung together in a specificway and of vocabulary words joined in certain patterns. No other organic life hasproved capable of acquiring language, except in extremely rudimentaryforms. Autistic thought is subconscious: it isincommunicable by language... New York: Seabury.Gallagher, J.J. Vocabulary listsare the key to reading. (1987). but scientists are hard put to identify the varyinginfluences of genetics and environments on gender aptitudes--assuming thesedifferences exist. Facilitating infant andearly childhood development. The directness, dynamism, and robustness of English likewisecannot be translated into Arabic. A pragmatic approach assumes that the world is a spatio/temporal realitywith the properties of wholeness and continuity"( pp. Teaching English to Arabic Teachers. Onceagain, we see that most knowledge is acquired inductively--and thisincludes language. (1987). Itseems like a silly question with an obvious answer, until one is requiredto define capability, i.e. The properprocedure then is to immerse the student in the world in which thislanguage is used, a world inhabited by people about whom he knows andcares... Should it not be taught this way too? Lerner (1987) stresses that a probabilistic combination ofvariables adds up to a complex interaction of genes with biological,psychological, and sociological variables. Contrarilyto what some teachers believe, it is not only written language that resortsto arbitrary coding. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Freire, P. 9-21) observed all these functions of languagein his own son. (1983). Yet, he adds that"genetic effects change throughout development, as genes are turned on andoff, and as their effects interact with each other and with the rest of thephysiological system. In Arabic they may be" (Ibid, p.158). (1978). They are universal and probablybiologically based. The child's predisposition tocommunicate is certainly fashioned by maturation of the brain, vocalapparatus, and body. Books based on learning grammar through dialogsand situations are frivolous. Wewould then concentrate on a holistic, inductive, synthetic, and utilitarianapproach, rather than on a discrete, deductive, analytical, and academicapproach. For Chomsky, language was anabstract activity which could not be molded by external sources. Or, as the studentsexpress it, grammar tells us what we must do in order not to make mistakes. In Annals of the American Academyof Political and Social Sciences, 49 , 194.Holzman, M. An observantmother will easily understand the body and vocal language of her child.However, is the baby consciously and intelligently communicating his wantsor are his body and vocal languages totally reflexive neuromuscularresponses to physiological wants? (1983). 115-145.Taylor, I. pp. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishing, Inc. There is no"Classical English"; there is only the English spoken, written, andunderstood by the very vast majority of all English-speaking people. Scarr and Weinberg (1978) notethe influence of "family background" on intellectual attainment; theydecry the "naive environmentalism" of many Westerners: "The fallacy is thebelief that equality of opportunity produces sameness of outcome. By and large, Arabstudents have been poorly taught in their English classes. In conclusion, Bowen notes his own belief in "a retreat toeclecticism, taking the best of each theoretical possibility in acompromise". "Ourtraditional and popularly held view about how children learn language isthat they do it by imitating their parents and by receiving feedback fromtheir parents who correct their erroneous speech... But what are the limitative parameters? 113). Principles and Practices in Second LanguageAcquisition. (1974). "Language:any means, vocal or other, of expressing or communicating thought orfeeling" (Longman Dictionary of Psychology and Psychiatry). (1982). & C.T. AllBritish people speak an idealized Queen's English. Children subjected to extreme nutritional, intellectual,and emotional deprivations in infancy and early childhood have been foundto recover and even excel once their environments have been improved...The major challenge to developmentalists is not to establish that there issome plasticity everywhere, but to assess how much, in what areas ofdevelopment, and when. Behavioral genetics and intervention. Should it not be inductive rather than deductive, holisticrather than analytical, contextual rather than separate? Gang membership may illustrate thispossibility. At best, great translators--who arealways great authors in their own language--provide their owninterpretation. Chomsky.To Noam Chomsky (1968), for instance, linguistics is "a subfield ofpsychology" (p. 97-1 2.Lee, D.E. Itdiffered from the popular British approach of the 'notional/functional'syllabus. (1971). Before that, communication was random, unstructured,unconscious, physiologically reactive rather than goal-oriented,structured, conscious, affectively and cognitively proactive. Cairo: TheAmerican University. 18). Bond & J.M. Early Experiences: Mythand Evidence. Counseling-Learning. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. and "How permanentare these changes?" And the fundamental question is: "How plastic is thedeveloping organism called 'child'?" One wonders also as to the variables that cause or otherwise affectplasticity in the child in terms of behavioral acquisitions--such aslanguage. 119-123.Halliday, M.A.K. Withoutconstraints, there would be no species... 3-15.Stemmer, N. (1983). Yet, one thing is certain:deep structure and function precede surface structure and form in theconscious apprehension of communication--be it gestural, vocal, or graphic. In the cases of "lower" animal species--such as chimpanzees,parrots, dolphins, and whales-- language constitutes but very limited setsof genotypically acquired conditioned responses. A number of authorshave drawn our attention to the fact that "there is evidence for plasticityin animal experiments and human studies that show that normal environmentsfollowing serious deprivations can result in attainment of normalfunctioning... TESOL Quarterly, 11, 4, 441-451. 1 1-112.Brown, H.D. In TheMalleability of Children. (198 ). Theoretical Linguistics, Second LanguageAcquisition, and Language Pedagogy. 7). Learning, in other words, is "behavioral modificationespecially through experience or conditioning" (The American HeritageDictionary). Oneshould warn readers at this point that all these child language analyseshave been conducted in Western countries and, quite often, with thechildren of university students. Nobody knows for sure when children begin to separate deep fromsurface structure, and form from function. Form, in turn,can modify meaning. Brookes PublishingCompany. Truth three: 'English' is better than 'American'. Should not the teaching of language respect this order ofacquisition? 98.Snow, M.A. It is interactional in that it establishes relations withothers. To propose that malleability is more a property ofyounger than older organisms, of behavioral rather than biological levelsof development, is mere conjecture..." (Scarr & Arnett, pp. (1975). Today, they discriminate between la langue--which is the set ofarticulated sounds organized in a system of signs, and le langage--which isthe means and uses of communicating thoughts and feelings. 9 -91). Cognitive competencies or cognitive skills, on theother hand, arise from the different ways different populations use thecommon human cognitive capacities to solve specific cognitive problems theyface in their particular environments and in their historical experiences"(Ogbu, 1987, pp. vi). If the task of learning to speak English wereadditive and linear, as present linguistic and psychological discussionssuggest it is, it is difficult to see how anyone could learn English...Our very knowledge of the fine structure of language constitutes a threatto our ability to maintain perspective in teaching language... the moment a student can reactautomatically... Children can talk in goodgrammatical form without ever having learned grammatical rules in a formalway. Values Clarification Theory in ESL and BilingualEducation. For example, a four-yearold may not know why we call a blackboard blackboard. He argued thatattempts to derive linguistic knowledge from externally observable (hence"experienceable") data were inadequate. Most authorities on evolution acknowledge somegenetic constraints on species' developmental patterns. While English makes a crucial distinction betweenhabitual present and present continuous, both concepts are of an actionwhich is in the present and which is incompleted. This is the time of conscious intense acquisition oflanguage's surface and deep structures. Syntactics refers to therelationship of language forms to each other; semantics refers to therelationship of that syntactic system to the nonlinguistic world ofobjects, events, and ideas that we talk 'about'; pragmatics refers to therelationship of forms and the ideas they express to the people who usethem..."(Cazden, 1972, p. Form is stressed at the expenseof meaning. When this consciousness awakens, isthe child handicapped--at least temporarily--by having to refer his or herexpression of deep structure (meaning) to surface structure (the grammarand selection of words)? (1983). pp. Free conversation isnot based on grammar, but on what people want to say when they are relaxed. Development is internally guided, not determined.Contemporary Psychology, 27, 852-3.Scarr, S. Do Japanese learntechnology faster and/or better than Americans? Preschoolers have very general meanings forcompound words. Mirror of language: The debate on bilingualism. By observingchildren, measuring their competence, and recording their performance, thelikes of Wood may find that "Prosody, sometimes called the 'music of ourspeech', is the earliest dimension of language to be used and understood byyoung children... 194).We are back to square one. potential ability, within the currently observed(and sometimes measured) confines of human endeavors. It is, rather, an expression of socialdiscrimination and ignorance of the incredible malleability of children andof the substantial personal and social contributions they have thewherewithal to make. Languageacquisition, after all, follows speech maturation, but does not directlyrelate to neuromuscular maturation. Parallelism utilizescoordinating conjunctions such as and to relate ideas. Terrel (1983)asserts that the chief aim of the natural approach is to focus on themeaning of genuine communication, and to bring anxiety down to a minimum.In Terrel's classes, comprehension precedes production, and duringacquisition activities direct feedback on errors is not provided by theteacher. To understand how any organismlearns, one must first understand the nature and extent of its malleabilityand the dynamism of its altered state. Surfacestructure is where grammatical and vocabulary relationships take place. Genetic influence is not in opposition tosuch developmental concepts as embeddedness and plasticity" (Ibid., p. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. The concepts ofgood and bad--as exemplified by the strongest environmental influences--areborn, and will be difficult to eradicate or otherwise modify in lateryears. Form takes on increased importancebecause it seems to provide a guarantee of acceptance into the world ofproximate others, i.e. A child learns that lemons are sour by generalizing froma limited number of lemons he has tasted" (Stemmer, 1983, p. As they grow, part of their survival strategies and value systemdevelopment is based on emulation on their proximate paradigmatic objects--usually, the parents and the child's physical and social environments.However, the role of imitation may have been overstressed in theorizingabout how children learn to speak. As Liggett (1983) remarks: "Children donot learn by imitation of correct speech as much as by independentformation of hypotheses about how grammar works and by testing thesehypotheses" (p. The Natural Approach to Language Teaching: AnUpdate. LanguageArts, 64, 196-2 6.Wightwick, J. Plasticity in development: Implications forintervention. Interpreting and adapting Lozanov's philosophy.Methods that Work: A smorgasbord of ideas for language teachers.Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, Inc. p. Eric Lenneberg (1969, p. She found that the grammar of five-year old children differs "ina number of significant respects from adult grammar... Brown (1974) sees three levels of semantic communication inthe child: "(1) The sensori-motor pattern itself as a form of action inthe world. It does not apply to deadlanguages, such as Latin, Classical Greek, and Classical Arabic. To summarize the influence of malleability on learning: Childrendiffer in their genetic heritage which doubtlessly affects their capacitiesto learn. A "compromise", however, need not be a mediocre hesitantcowardly choice. The social psychology ofsecond language learning: Another point of view. Changing Views on Changing Children. Language: Its Origin and its Relation toThought. Using Foreign Languages. James Deese (197 ), inhis analysis of the nature of language, says: "A language is a set ofsentences... 34). As Newmark (1983) points out: "Acquisition cannot be simply additive;complex bits of language are learned a whole chunk at a time... barking and beinglet in, or how far it forms a conception like ours of what it is doing..."(p. This is not a problem with Arab students learning English. A corollary of this proposition is that cognitive activity canbe greatly increased--both quantitatively and qualitatively--in allchildren by appropriate developmental influences, even though there areobviously significant organic differences in intellectual capacities ofindividuals. Thisis the fundamental difference between English and Arabic. The limitations of our memory in producing and understandingsentences constitute one performance factor. Does this imply that nurture is moreimportant than nature? & M. On the other hand, doesthis awareness enrich the child's communicative expression and,interactively, his thinking process? Chomsky is interested in studyinghow the language faculty develops; Wood, how it is expressed. Children and Language. Thereare profound structural--and philosophical--differences between Arabic andEnglish, so that most errors in learning the foreign language are notcaused by interference from the native tongue. it ensures survival of the self. Formal language, furthermore, provides the child with amanipulative instrument--a game with which to learn--that increases hissense of power, an instrument with which to build. If we made alike distinction in English, perhaps we would find less ambiguity inunderstanding how children learn our tongue and how we should teach it. It is this ability of meaningfulcoding that would seem to distinguish man from his other animal brethren.Already in 1865, E/B. By stressingdevelopment, Plomin would seem to limit the nature of behavioral changes,not all of which are related to development, i.e. Form is acquired through meaning. pp. Linguistic performanceconcerns the study of human factors that explain why we use language theway we do. 156-7). Education programs such as the American Head Start are based on justsuch a concept of plasticity: underprivileged children can learn, can behelped to compete successfully with privileged ones. Books which give the rules of the language in gradually building order ofdifficulty are serious. The beautiful arabesques of Arabic script comparedto the utilitarian simplicity of English script might well confirm suchhypothesis and add the aspect of greater aesthetic concern on the part ofthe Arabs. In psychological development, change is just asapparent as continuity, and the subdiscipline of developmental behavioralgenetics explores possible genetic sources of change... It is regulatory in that the child discovers hecan control the behavior of others the moment he differentiates betweenself and others. (1881). These parallels are thus doubtlessly synchronized with brainmaturation. Clarke and Clarke (1976) arenot so sure: "It is unclear whether the limits of personal change are thesame throughout the period of development, or whether, as we rathersuspect, they get progressively smaller as age increases and as personalcharacteristics in adolescence and young adult life begin to achieve anautonomy and self-perpetuation" (p.11). Mastering Arabic. An area of study in language development is the chronological point(or points) at which the child differentiates between deep and surfacestructures. Dictionaries are of little helpin defining language--whether spoken, written, or gestural. Are the French more"cerebral" than the Italians? Of one thing one can be certain in thisarea of perennial controversy: children are much more malleable in termsof learning capability than is commonly believed. p. Hence, the cooing, chuckling, and babbling aredevelopmental steps towards articulate speech. Rowley,Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, Inc. pp. and are aptto give themselves answers which totally lack scientific foundations."Cross cultural differences in human competence are made possible by humanplasticity, and are adaptive responses to differences in cultural tasksrequiring different competencies... Sameness of outcomes isa biological impossibility" (p. Baltimore, MD.: Paul H. and N. pp. 39). As a result, personal meanings are acquired; connotations becomebound by culture and personal experience: they will be unconsciouslytransferred to words and concepts in other languages --whether appropriateor not. Grammar, meaning, and communication aredistinct levels of language and cannot be interchanged. (1865). Two-year olds' impersonation and identification coincide withthe body's readiness to communicate non-verbally and with the imprinting ofthe earliest perception of gender role. However, Arabs do not usually speak or write in Classical Arabic,with the result that Classical Arabic is the first foreign language theArab child meets in this age of interpersonal and social communication, inthis age of television, newspapers, magazines, and technical textbooks.Syrians do not speak as Egyptians. New York:Richards Rosen Press, Inc. 272.Coldwell, B.M. Perhaps these teachers should have been properly"oriented" before embarking on a cross-cultural venture. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Equalityof opportunity is a laudable goal for any society. Press.Clarke, A.M. In The Malleability ofChildren. pp. The differences in points of view between Chomskyand Wood stem from different concerns. Rowley, Mass.: NewburyHouse Publishers, Inc.Piaget, J. it serves to inform.Michael Halliday (1973, pp. Psychologists used to speak of a ten-pointpotential headroom on I.Q. What is of especial interest in the study oflanguage acquisition is the dichotomization between syntactics' surfacestructure and deep structure, and pragmatics' form and function. 2). The need to teach language in relation to social andcultural values affects educational choices with respect to curriculum,materials, and approaches, and should be central to national planning andprograms for professional development and the improvement of teaching".Newton (1979) remarks that "The trend toward a more active use of thestudent's mental powers probably represents the most important effort ofthe cognitive theory of language acquisition" (21). New York: Free Press. Meaning precedes form. Correction, where it occurs, is quite indirect, throughexpansion, reiteration, and the like (p. They use thedictionary's denotational definitions of words and the grammar's strictrules to understand the target language, and are puzzled when the text doesnot make sense. Directed thought is conscious. Doingsuch drills outside of a contextual situation only compounds the problems:two separate and seemingly interchangeable forms for what is in the mindsof our learners the same thing... (1986). 49.Katzner, K. Baltimore, MD: Paul H.Brookes Publishing Company. Again, to what extent the limitsare embedded in the DNA or/and in the brain's physical structure orelectrochemical functions constitutes an interesting area for speculation.Learning has also qualitative aspects. 123). 47-8).Cultural awareness is a prerequisite to linguistic acquisition. The Lozanov Method and its American Adaptations.Methods that Work: A Smorgasbord of Ideas for Language Teachers.Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, Inc. He notesparallel stages of development between physical coordination and languageacquisition. "Oral language is necessarily composed of arbitrarysigns..." (Englefield, 1977, p. "Arabichas remained largely unchanged since the 7th century" (Katzner, 1975, p.158). The Languages of the World. However, what develops depends on cultural requirements,resulting in patterned adaptive cultural outcomes that vary cross-culturally... (1975). While 'discrete-point'teaching tries to get students to synthesize a whole language system out ofthousands of isolated bits and pieces presented one at a time,'integrative' teaching presents holistic communicative events and allowsstudents to resolve them analytically into usable elements... This is used to maintain continuity ofideas in English, but words and formula phrases should not be followed byexact repetition in good English style. As Haskell (1987) well says:"Cultural adjustment and relational effectiveness ratings are significantlypositively correlated with each other... To what extent they can doso is still a debated question. Tylor remarked that what distinguishes human fromanimal language is the fact that animals can make signs but do not knowsigns. 34). & Gafaar (199 ). Some sources of reading problems for foreignlanguage learners. 222). & J.B. Plomin (1987) defines malleability as "the extent to which the courseof behavioral development can be altered" (p. Longman Dictionary of Psychology andPsychiatry. To what are errors in learning due, then? Rubin (1979). Could it imply that Arabs tend towards theemotional, English people towards the rational--as brain lateralizationmight make us believe? Brookes PublishingCompany. Can young children learn faster than older ones?Lerner (1987) notes that "the potential for change exists across life" and"as a consequence of active people reciprocally interacting in a changingworld, the life course is always characterized by the potential forplasticity." He further states that "development is probabilistic-epigenetic in character" (p.8). The question mightbe better put thus: How much of the child's intellectual potential isbeing used and how much more can be developed? This hypothesis would still not explain any parallelismbetween neuromuscular coordination and language acquisition. The central question aboutplasticity is: How much experience is necessary, and when, for each aspectof development... score does not necessarilyindicate a change in formal cognitive ability. 27-31.Wood, B.S. Seen from another tack, "The study of children's verbal language isbased on competence-performance distinction... Holobow (1983). "Perhaps the most critical source of problems for learners of Englishis caused by the fact that... 43). scores; yet, there are countless examples ofmuch greater--and lesser--attainments. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. This constitutes, after all, an additional andinterfering stage between thought and expression. 54). Therefore they have thesame form in Arabic. 49-51) To conclude this discussion, it must be stressed that the majorpurpose of learning a language is to communicate, not to learn the abstractscience of linguistics, and that a natural approach cannot be matched byany other for effectiveness, efficacy, and relevancy. 5). "One of the major differences between Arabic and English isthat modern Arabic rhetoric, derived from the Qu'ran, stresses parallelism,whereas English rhetoric stresses subordination. Krashen's 'sethypothesis' and his concept of 'stage i + 1' countered such arguments. adaptability,tractability of the organism subjected to internal or external forces whichmodify its active and reactive status. pp. 1 9). "Ahumanistic approach to language study recognizes the necessity of learninga language in its social and cultural contexts, encompassing the ecologyand the material, social, religious, and linguistic cultures of thelanguage studied. It may instead be due tochanges in achievement and/or maturation" (Zigler & Freedman, 1987, p. 152). This is true of all living languages. Deepstructure is the seat of semantic relationships--of meanings. 146-178.Edwards, E.W. [The]language exponentiates as the number of chunks increases additively, sincea very complex chunk makes available a further analysis of old chunks intonew elements each still attached to the original context upon which itsappropriateness depends... 198.Englefield, F.R.H. "Most interlanguage errors are not caused by the nativetongue, or interference, but by misapplication of the rules of the targetlanguage" (Liggett, 1983, p. Language appears to be species-specific. Rowley,Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, Inc. Semantic intention,of course, can only exist where knowledge has been acquired. He noted that a dog barks for the door to be opened, but "it ishard to say how far the dog's mind merely associates... All teachers are aware of the difficulty of thisdistinction. 13). It worked in the classroom, however... InMethods that Work: A smorgasbord of ideas for language teachers. 72-3). Acquiring versus learning a second language.Canadian Modern Language Review, 34, 455-472.Terrell, T.D. "Happily, the trendin language teaching these past few years has been more along the lines ofthe practical efforts. pp.3-14.Liggett, M.L. Joffa (Eds). pp. Liggett'sperspective is that language is a dynamic process, rather than a staticproduct. Scarr and Arnett (1987) remark that "plasticity is a double-edged sword [Sigman, 1982]: if development is amenable to environmentalimprovement, it is also susceptible to environmental damage" (p. (1987). Liggett (1983) taught English in Egypt and found that the "Arab'popular beliefs' about English may be summarized as follows: Truth One:'Grammar should be prescriptive, not descriptive'. Instead of counting the words in a child's vocabulary toobtain an estimate of the potential meanings at the child's command,researchers are taking a more penetrating look at meanings children ascribeto the words they use... "One of themost basic methods of acquiring knowledge about our world is by inductivegeneralizations. There are well-documenteddifferences in what one child learns easily and the other with difficulty--even though both may score equally on an I.Q. Hannover, NH: University Press of NewEngland. Krashen (1983) stresses thedifference between formal "learning" and natural "acquisition". London:Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.Plomin, R. Waugh & M. pp. Children communicate todiscover and make sense of the world as well as to satisfy their wants, toformulate their belief system as well as to survive. Students are encouraged to speak and 'real life'situations are often created in the classroom to force students to cope"(Edwards, 1982, p. London: Edward Arnold Publishers.Heny, F. (1983). The psychobiological foundation forhuman development is probably present cross-culturally, as is humanmalleability. Their early meanings do not reflect an understanding ofboth free morphemes." (Wood, 1976, pp. pp.71-84.Scarr, S. (3) The semantic intention tomake a sentence expressive of the pattern" (p. Others include shifts ofattention, distractions, and the like. (1983). pp. Ellington & Harris (1986) see learning as "arelatively permanent change in behavior that results from past experienceor purposeful instruction." Page & Thomas (1977) stress that "it isimportant to realize that learning need not be correct, deliberate, orovert." Whatever the school of thought, in modern pedagogy learning ischaracterized by a change in the stable relationship between a stimulusthat an individual perceives, and the response that is made, eithercovertly or overtly. The Concept of Plasticity in Development. Reprinted inRobinet & Schachter (1983).Schumann, J.H. Thecurrent approach to children's acquisition of words is different from thatof earlier years. The most basic idea in the whole of the study of language isthat of the sentence. Americans 'eat' their words and the British donot. Ghetto children, children of deaf-mute parents, isolated children,retarded children, and normal children of more or less verbal and/oreducated cultures would stack up differently on, for example, word countanalyses. 1-3). ReferencesBancroft, W.J. Essentially tointerference caused by the student constantly referring back to his ownlanguage, translating from the source language to the target language--afundamentally wrong learning strategy. and so must be the Queen'sEnglish "dialects". For example: at 4 months, the baby holds his head up whilehe coos and chuckles; at 6 to 9 months, he sits alone and stands up(holding to an object) while he babbles; at 12 to 18 months, he walks whilehe utters a few words; etc. 19) andthen attempting to plan a syllabus around the 'semantic demands of thelearners', a pragmatic approach goes directly to the world of experience... Gingras (Ed.) Arlington, VA: Center for AppliedLinguistics.Sigman, M. Already in 1935, George K. The common mistake of teachers is to drill "he wrote" and "hehas written", and "he writes" and "he is writing" as contrasts... Children start to communicate formally with gestures andvocalizations. We need therefore study languages as one facet oftotal organic behavior. If one asks, hemight answer: "Because!"--a common explanation at that age. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Why do children talk? Noam Chomsky disputed these views. Applied linguistics has been eclectic and has seldom appliedpure linguistic research... "Another feature of discourse analysis is the very different role ofrepetition in Arabic and English. Zipf noted that "speech is but a form ofhuman behavior" (p. pp. (1977). Rowley, Mass.: Newbury HousePublishers, Inc. Brookes Publishing Company. At the time of this writing, the Communicative Approachseems to be gaining the upper hand--at least within an eclectic context. Talk is instrumental: It is a way of satisfying one'sactual or perceived needs. It is representational, i.e. The behaviorism-based audio-lingualmethod and its techniques such as memorization, dialogs, and patterndrills, are much to blame for immobilizing the Arab student in asuperficial learning of English--an English which, being out of context,does not communicate beyond the tourist-guide English. Clarke (Eds) (1976). 1st ed. A compromise is a well thought-out decision to select thebest elements from the available methodologies, and to fashion them into apragmatic whole based on a humanistic philosophy and a respect of culturaldifferences. Can intelligence limit the capability of the child to learn? It is personal inasmuch as it helps the child discover the self,its agency, and its power. The language of children: Development in homeand school. Given the wide differences in environments and possibly genotypicalbackgrounds between one culture and another--such as those of Indo-Europeans and Semites, one may wonder whether there are also differences inlearning capability--in plasticity, and, if so, whether such differencesare absolutely quantitative or relatively qualitative. How not to interfere with language learning. The trend today is towards eclecticism in learningand teaching methodologies with stress on learner-centered strategies."Since the demise of the Audio-Lingual Method in the early 197 s, no singlemethod has assumed its stature... pp. The universal factor in the equation, however, is the species-determined brain development, viz. A four-year old, on the other hand, may produce well overtwo thousand different words and probably understands many more... to a given situation identified with his own experience,he 'knows' the foreign language used in that situation. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press.Celce-Murcia, M. (1983). Moreover, ifmalleability gives added opportunities for learning, one is entitled toconsider the fact that one can learn organically and socially destructiveas well as constructive behaviors. the simple present and the present continuousare the same in Arabic. The Malleability of Children. New York: St Martin'sPress.Stevick, E. 139). Monville- Bunton (Eds). Thus, grammar is best learned by memorizing rules. Headvocates "the input hypothesis" and the notion that acquisition willprogress optimally when comprehensible input is provided just a littlebeyond the student's present stage of development (at "i + 1"). It wouldbe rash to conclude that there is progression, with grammar developing outof meaning and communication. Methods that Work: A smorgasbord of ideas for language teachers. 284). Some Arab students have difficulty in accepting a humanistic approachto learning. 19 -2 4.Walsh, C. We would be concerned with the communicative aspectof language a lot more than with the system of language. Methods that Work: Asmorgasbord of ideas for language teachers. So were imperativeswith attached pronominals as well as subjunctive forms). The French have a different slant on the concept of language. The role of social- psychologicalfactors in second language learning. Lenneberg and his successors fail toelucidate this problem. Thus, based on contrastive and moreparticularly on error analysis, we can conclude that the most importantrelative clause errors which teachers should help the students remedy arethe punctuation problems related to the restrictive-nonrestrictivedistinction" (Liggett, 1983, p. & A.D.B. 78). Are "gifts" or"talents" genotypically transmitted or culturally conditioned? Weinberg (1978) The influence of "family background"on intellectual attainment. Ramcy (Eds) (1987). 21-22). However, their problem emphasizes the difficulty ofacculturation--if not of assimilation. Brainneurologists' viewpoint would be other again, viz. "They learnedto treat English piece by piece and chunk by chunk and phrase by phrase, avery dangerous sort of 'constituent analysis' when compared to the morenatural input available in a communicative methodology-based classroom.Our students and trainees place commas between constituents because theythink of these units as separate parts that are not really included in agreater syntactic whole... London: OxfordUniversity Press. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. (1976). 155-169.Oller, J.W., jr. An implication forinterventionists is that heritability should not be equated withdevelopmental stability; genes can be responsible for change as well ascontinuity in development. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching.Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.Brown, F. pp. 115-125.Curran, C. Yet, Classical Arabic makes it inaccessible to the masses. The acculturation model for second languageacquisition. Some reservations concerningerror analysis. and B. (1987) Cultural Influences on Plasticity in HumanDevelopment. We must start the investigation of language bycharacterizing the nature of the sentence rather than trying to find howindividual sounds or words combine to compose sentences" (p. Methodsthat Work: A smorgasbord of ideas for language teachers. 15-24.Scarr, S. (March 1987). C. They have learned them inductively; they have never categorizedparadigms or developed linguistic nomenclatures consciously. Cognitive capacities--the ability to remember, formconcepts, generalize, operate with abstraction, reason logically--are foundin all human populations in all cultures. When it comes to school-age children,however, substance prevails over form, meaning comes before grammar whichshould derive from context rather than from memorization. In Arabiancountries, grammar is associated with religious orthodoxy and life-determining school-leaving examinations. (1982). Should the child not be made aware of such deep-structuredifferences when learning the foreign language, so that he or she can morereadily acquire a feel for the foreign language and its cultural context? Alreadyin the last century, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) distinguishedbetween la langue--which is the grammatic and semantic system ofcommunication, and la parole--which is the actual vocal output of thespeaker. pp. 14-15.Newmark, L. Doubtlessly, there are limits to malleability. Of course, this is a perennial controversy notabout to be settled. Whether thesecorrelations represent actual interdependence between maturations of thesefunctions or whether the parallelism is coincidental is a moot question.High correlations do not necessarily imply causative relations. It is heuristic in that it mediates learning.It is imaginative as the child discovers the pleasures of creative andaesthetic imagining. Cerebral dominance, lateralization, coincides with two-wordutterance. & J. Today, we would speak of conditioned responses versus"thinking". There seem to be little if any differences in thisprocess from race to race, culture to culture--unless retarded oraccelerated by specific environmental influences, such as nutrition,culture, or parental caring practices. (1987). Malleability. Brookes PublishingCompany. "Language:any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like,used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotions, etc." (TheRandom House Dictionary of the English Language). They can no longer accept to be free. Learning Arabic and English: Contrastive and Methodological Analyses "There are no exceptions to a complete grammar of any language; thereare only incomplete grammars" (Liggett, 1983, p. Language, meaning, and voice. A First Language: The Early Stages. "Grammar is an artificial description of a natural phenomenon"(Liggett, 1983, p. New York: ColumbiaUniversity.Chomsky, C. We want Arabic students to think likeEnglish speakers--to eliminate indirectness, repetition, longintroductions, and flowery vocabulary" (p. On the southern coast of the ArabianPeninsula, the people speak a number of dialects known collectively asSouth Arabic. Human beings are a complex combination ofemotional, intellectual, and physical subsystems that are intricately co-evolved and are constantly in a state of interaction with one another"(Ibid, pp. progress or growth. This is why it is notrecommended to use contrastive analysis to learn a foreign language,although there are moments when contrastive analysis is called for inteaching the foreign language. In behavioral genetics, 'environmental' means'nongenetic', that is, all influences that are not encoded in DNA... Once all is said and done, from the point of view of the teacher oflanguage, there is more that is not known, or is ambiguous, than is known.Frank Heny (1987) says it this way: "For three decades, theoreticallinguistics has had little impact on language teaching, althoughsociolinguistics has been employed in curriculum design and testconstruction. To what extent early speech expresses intelligent thought was one ofPiaget's concerns (Piaget, 1965, p. New York: Funk andWagnalls.Krashen, S. & R.A. People often ask themselves such questions... (1978). Or,is it that psychological differences were at the origin of these opposeddirectional scripting modes? The acquisition of a nonnative language isprobably subject to biological constraints that are clearly related tothose factors that guide and control first language acquisition" (p. At what point(s), in other words, does the child become awareof the formal structure of language and communicates with a consciousrealization of grammar and vocabulary? 28 ). test. In Second language acquisition and foreign languageteaching. (1983). 9 ). Chomsky (1969) explored the disparity between adult and childgrammar. that the unit ofspoken language is the phoneme, and that of written language the morpheme.Methodologically language has been taught in discrete units rather than inwholistic segments--such as the contextual sentence. The problem is in identifying the levelsof consciousness and thought. pp. 18). In L/A. Rogers, & N. "Achild learns the syntax of his language when he is able to (1) join wordsinto sentences and (2) understand multiple-word sentences said by others.Consequently, syntactic ability relates to the production and comprehensionof relationships and expressed in sentences (Wood, 1976, pp. The Roots of Knowledge. By definition, then, learning infers malleability, i.e. A pragmaticapproach goes considerably further than a 'notional/functional' syllabus.Instead of analyzing 'concepts and functions' (Wilkins, 1976, p. Errors are also due toovergeneralization, wrong communication strategies, transfer of trainingmethodologies, lack of opportunities to perform--all normally induced bypoor teaching. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.Jakobson, R. American Sociological Review, 43, 36, 674-692.Schachter, J. (Note that they are not likely to make theeffort to talk if they can obtain what they want with less effort. (2) The ability to represent or think about the pattern withoutnecessarily intending to speak about it. Methods that Work:A smorgasbord of ideas for language teachers. Nature would appear to be strongerthan nurture. A five-yearold, however, might well explain the use of the blackboard: "We write onit." A six-year old is likely to have more insight and answer: "It's ablack thing we write on." The older child has assigned a meaning to thefree morphemes ("black" and "board") in explaining the compound word. The teaching approach of Paulo Freire. In Beyond Basics: Issues andResearch in TESOL. Hence,Classical Arabic grammar is descriptive and prescriptive in the extreme. (1969). Sustaining Intervention Effects. "For the purpose of analysis, language is divided into three aspects:syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, Inc. 8). 17). They have been drilled into accepting vocabulary lists andgrammar rules. Because both are semitic in origin, do Arabsand Jews have like intellectual plasticity--quantitatively andqualitatively? Every language has its own genius which is theexpression of the culture it expresses. Their linguisticcompetence is faulty if it was not acquired through immersion in the target-language culture. Learning capabilities, however, have quantitative aspectsdetermined genetically within certain limits. 25). The beauty of Arabic poetry andthe delicacy of the indirectness of the language cannot be translated intoEnglish. Celce-Murcia (1977). Shapira (1985). & P.A. In TheMalleability of Children. (February 1987). I.Q, scores, for example, havedominated the fields of psychology and education for many decades.Unfortunately, "a change in a child's I.Q. (1982). Doubtlessly, statistics of word usagesand language development reflect this particular cultural and social group. Anthology. pp. 74-5). Plomin (1987) observes that"For IQ scores and some personality traits, the data converge on theconclusion that as much as half of the measured variance can be accountedfor by genetic difference among individuals" (p. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, Inc. all children belong to the humanspecies. The stress on language learning today is on its use--unless thestudent is doing post-doctoral studies in linguistics. Linguistic interference increases as languages resemble each othermore. New York: Pergamon Press.Lazar, I. Statisticswill even prove that there are specific aptitudinal differences betweenboys and girls... Linguistic patterns emerge from use in meaningfulcontexts. The Early Thinking of Mankind. where and how in thebrain the language faculty originates and takes place. Isolationand abstraction of the learner from the contexts in which that language isused constitutes serious interference with the language learning process,because it requires the learner to attach new responses to old stimuli,this kind of interference may in fact increase the interference thatapplied linguists like to talk about--the kind in which a learner'sprevious language structures are said to exert deleterious force on thestructures being acquired" (pp. By this age also, the child is betterable to learn the signs and symbols, the semeiotics of language. Once we have characterized thestructure and form of children's utterances, we can begin to explain whythe child speaks as he does--we can study his linguistic performance"(Wood, 1976, pp. 71). 63, 267.Lerner, R.M. Finally, with regards to contributions to self and society, it isclear that the human mind is a long way from having exploited itspotential. Methods that Work: A smorgasbord of ideas for languageteachers. London: 1881.Wallerstein, N. (1982). 267). 7). A common assumptionamong students of child language has been that the child has mastered thesyntax of his native language by about age five..." Indeed, by age five"the rate of acquisition of syntactic structures has decreased markedly,and differences between the child's grammar and adult grammar are no longerso readily discernible" (pp. Children's Talk. The objective was 'immersion' not into a sea of utterances butinto full-fledged contexts of living where utterances have values andmeanings by virtue of their integration into the purposes, the conflicts,and the relationships of people... Ifthis is true, then so-called "traditional" methods of languageteaching/learning are based on a false premise, viz. Richard-Amato (Eds) (1983). In TheMalleability of Children. (1983). 156). p. 36). (1976). Language Development It is strange that all of us (with few exceptions) use language andyet never stop to think about what it is. 7). Arabic is written from right to left; English, from left to right.This very directional difference may have psychological consequences. "An eighteen-month old child communicates with as many as fiftydifferent words. The very reason for the existence of a static Classical Arabic isprecisely to prevent the language from evolving and thereby riskingmisinterpreting the Qu'ran and the classical literary works. (197 ). Oller and Oller (1983) note that" language on the useful everydaylevel is situational and sequential and... We would be more concerned with semantics than with syntactics.We would teach children how to communicate rather than how to pass aridacademic examinations. Two questions spring to mind: "Whatdoes it take to cause behavioral changes in the child? "One reason that a dictionary and a grammar book bythemselves are not sufficient is that most words in a language, and many ofits grammatical sequences, have more than one meaning: theirinterpretation depends in some measure upon the linguistic context..."(Kolers, 1973, p. One cannot discuss language without referring to C. Notional Syllabuses. Each has its owncourse of development, and it is still unclear how they are related to eachother" (Hakuta, 1985, p. Wilkins' distinctionbetween 'synthetic' and 'analytic' approaches paralleled the dichotomies of'discrete-point' vs 'integrative' teaching as well as Krashen's distinctionbetween 'learning' and 'acquisition' (1981-82). It can becommunicated by language. Profound cultural differences clearly exist and haveled some to postulate racial differences in both quantitative andqualitative learning potentials. (1983). Against this rigid tunnel-vision conception, Arabsare apt to remark that their dialect is superior to those of other Arabs."Popular attitudes that one's dialect is superior (or inferior) tend tolegitimize the idea that there is a superior dialect of each language"(p.15). On language. Rules and Representations. Genetic influence, in short, is "probabilistic, not deterministic" (Ibid.,p. The elements of prosody--pitch, pause, loudness, andtempo--are varied to produce meaningful signals in our messages" (Wood,1976, p. In TheMalleability of Children. New York:Hippocrene Books.Wilkins, D.A. Language Development in the Child Learning and the Malleability of Children There are as many definitions of learning as there are dictionaries,psychologists, and educators. The language and thought of the child. Language Learning, 33,2 9-224.Goldenson, R.M. 127-8). 2,3.Genesee, F., P. pp. New York: Longman.Green, K. Brookes PublishingCompany. The Malleability ofChildren. pp.6 -75.Chomsky, N. Children and communication: Verbal and nonverballanguage development.Yorio, C. It had tobe derived from knowledge that was already resident in the child. (1984). Isthere not negative or short-term adaptive malleability? 49-51.Ogbu, J.V. L.R. Therecould also be specific brain maturational stages which act as centralcoordinators. Kolers (1973) remarked that "the late Albert Schweizer,who was Alsatian, grew up speaking German and French; he once remarkedthat when he wanted to be allusive and philosophical he wrote in German,and when he wanted to be precise and direct he wrote in French" (p. Learning how to mean: Explorations in thedevelopment of language. Genesdo not determine one's destiny; genetic influence does not imply hard-wiredcircuits that create a specific response... 179-189.Hakuta, K. Brookes Publishing Company. This view is consonantwith empiricist philosophy (the philosophical basis of the work of WernerLeopold and Madorah Smith) and its psychological disciple of behaviorism(Hakuta, 1985, p. There is ample evidence toshow that individuals, being genetically endowed, can modify their learningcapabilities through environmental influences. Greater social immersion led toan increased awareness of conflicting values and lifestyles" (pp. For example, Spanish-speaking people hardly ever manage to speakPortuguese correctly--and vice versa, because their languages are verysimilar. & R.C. Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press. at least by verbal language. NewYork: Basic Books. The word came before the sign. (199 ). No racial differences have been validly documented inlearning capability. 267-294.Tylor, E.B. Witnessthe mother who anticipates her child's every demand.) Garvey (1984)believes that "the ultimate reason is that they are biologically designedto do so" (p. Belmont, CA:Wadsworth Publishing Company. What influences the child mostin his or her capacity for change: age, maturation, environment, genes?Lerner (1987) remarks that a number of studies "indicate that features ofthe person's historical setting often shape personality, and social andintellectual functioning, to an extent often much greater than maturationalor age-associated changes" (p.3). Speaking about Head Start, the authors point out that "Rather thanincreasing intelligence, per se, intervention programs can provideexperiences that enable children to make better use of the cognitiveability they already possess... (Lenneberg, 1968, p. Clearly, cultural values differ between Arabs and Westerners.Teachers of English in Tunisia, for example "become frustrated,ineffective, and alienated because of a lack of understanding andorientation to the cultural values of the Arab students they teach"(Friberg, 1985, p. Arnett (1987). Americans speakdialects incomprehensible to even fellow Americans, to the British andcertainly to the Arabs. 37). Rowley, Mass.: Newbury HousePublishers, Inc. [Utterances] do not arise in vacuo...This pragmatic approach met with resistance from the structural linguistswho emphasized contrastive analysis and syntactically motivated drills.Objections were made to the little interest in structural sequencing (F.i.irregular verbs were used from the very beginning. 2 9). Does this mean that the human beingevidences the same plasticity at all ages? For children, acquiring language is a way of "learning communicationstrategies: verbal and nonverbal language choices appropriate for variouscommunication situations" (Wood, 1976, p. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Genetic influences are indeedjust influences--propensities, or tendencies, that nudge development in onedirection rather than another... pp. The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from 5 to 1 .Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Linguistic rules are inferred from what people sayand write; they are known non-consciously. ix-xiii.Garvey, C. If this is true, then the "problem" of substantialdifferences in intellect and capacity for learning is a "non-problem" formost practical purposes, such as standardized public school education orthe acquisition of language skills. (1984). 1-2). The communicative approach believes that "when words start gettingcombined, child language is best described in terms of meaning... Psychoanalysts distinguishedbetween directed or intelligent thought, and undirected or (as Bleulercalled it) autistic thought. Arabs believe that grammar is "God's command", that therules of grammar are immutable and associated with religious orthodoxy;that language can only be described in the form of its segments; thatoriginal dialects of Arabic are degenerated... Contrastive Analysis, ErrorAnalysis, and Interlanguage Analysis. Language Learning, 21, 1 8-9.----------------------- 1 Subordinationrelates causes, and results through the use of dependent phrase markerssuch as although, based on, since, etc." (Ibid, p.
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