Some theoretical aspects of language learning and language teaching

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THEORETICAL ASPECTS 
O F
LANGUAGE LEARNING AND 
LANGUAGE TEACHING
Diffeerences and similarities between (a) the child's acqui-
sition 
of 
his f i r s t language, (b) the child's acquisition 
of 
a second
language, and (c) the adult's acquisition 
of 
a second language. 
The
infant-child a c q u i r e s h i s
f ir s t language in th e m ost 
natural o r l e a s t
a r t i f i c i a l m a n n e r possible. T h e r e
is norm ally nothing in h i s mind
t o p re v e n t h im f r o m ultim ately le a rn in g a native language; on th e
c o n tra ry , 
if
Chomsky is c o r r e c t in h i s
20th 
c e n tu ry v e r s i o n of th e
16th c e n tu ry notion of innate ideas: 
t h e infant b r a i n
is p re d isp o se d
tow ards th e acquisition of t h e g r a m m a r of n a tu ra l language. On t h e
b a s i s of h is contacts with 
parole--the 
outer, s u r f a c e m anifestations
of th e s p e e c h of h is home and community-and 
r e g a r d l e s s of how
fra g m e n ta ry , uninventive, o r d e g e n e ra te t h i s c o rp u s may be, th e child
in te rn a liz e s
a highly complex, a b s t r a c t
set 
of i n t e r r e l a t e d s y s t e m s ,
m inim ally 
a phonological sy ste m , a sy n ta c tic sy ste m , and a s e m a n -
t i c s y s t e m . Vygotsky2 h a s shown how th e s p e e c h function and th e
thought function have two s e p a r a t e o rig in s in the developing infant,
s p e e c h having 
its 
ro o ts in babbling and emoting through sound, and
thought deriving f r o m p ro b le m solving and t h e
use of tools. Vygotsky
concludes that a p e s a r e capable of both types of behavior, but that
only human beings l e a r n t o
fuse th e two s e p a r a t e functions into 
a
s in g le
use, i.e., that combination of vocalizing and thinking which
l e a d s t o th e c re a tio n of sym bolic language and eventually t o the f o r -
m ation of concepts. Vygotsky show s e x p e rim e n ta lly how th e child's
thinking develops f r o m
(a) a n initial p rim itiv e m ental organization
of th e environm ent into "heaps" o r unorganized c o n g e rie s through
(b) s e v e r a l different types of thinking in com plexes (s till 
a p rim itiv e
type of thinking) until 
it 
r e a c h e s in about th e twelfth y e a r of th e
child's life the final s ta g e (c) w here a b s t r a c t concepts a r e under-
stood and used.

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Once the child re a c h e s this age of linguistic puberty and is
capable of handling t r u e concepts, he has completed the language
learning cycle. This does not imply that he h a s stopped learning h is
native language; even 
if 
the lexicon of e v e ry language w ere not
open-ended, 
a s
indeed 
it 
is , the child sim ply could not in a life-tim e
of learning exhaust the lexical wealth of any language, nor could he
put into actual practice the infinite possibilities available to him
fro m the re c u rsiv e devices of the syntax.
The notion of linguistic puberty is useful because 
it 
provides 
a
natural linguistic dividing line between the child and the adult. The
adult 
is 
aware 
(unconsciously, to be s u r e ) of the nature and 
use 
of
language in the se n se that he has completed the language learning
cycle, w hereas the child, 
at 
any point in h is linguistic development
is s till 
not linguistically m ature. Furtherm ore, the adult has de-
veloped, in the c o u rse of his maturation, 
a 
general overall psycho-
logical consciousness equipped t o deal in generalizations and ab-
stra c tio n s 
as 
well 
a s 
with linguistic concepts. This may explain in
p a r t why 
a child will quickly and accurately acquire 
a 
second lan-
guage "unconsciouslytt fro m playmates in the s t r e e t o r fro m
a nan-
ny, w hereas the s a m e child may acquire only 
a 
v e ry im perfect
knowledge of 
a second language in many y e a r s of "conscious" c l a s s -
room study. The adult, on the contrary, may through "conscious"
d r i l l acquire a n excellent command of 
a 
second language, although
the s a m e adult, in 
a 
natural situation, such 
as 
that of an immigrant
in a n alien speech community, may acquire only 
a 
"broken," im -
perfect fluency 
after 
many 
y ears 
of 
natural exposure. 
It 
would ap-
p e a r that few adults can l e a r n
a 
language in the 
street 
and that few
children can l e a r n
a 
language artificially. Although th e re may be
elem ents acquired unconsciously by the adult in his learning of 
a
(second) language and although t h e r e may be elem ents consciously
learned by the child in his acquisition of 
a 
(second) language, broadly
speaking, 
a child acq u ires 
a 
language (his firs t o r
a 
second) uncon-
sciously and a n adult l e a r n s
a language consciously. Until the e le -
m entary c la ssro o m abandons adult "conscious" learning procedures
and 
is
converted into 
a m ore natural street-lik e situation, 
it 
will
continue t o be the c a s e that adults in school l e a r n languages much
f a s t e r than children in school; and, since 
few 
adults retain the flexi-
bility of mind required t o acquire linguistic knowledge "uncon-
sciously," the converse of this statem ent 
is 
a l s o true: the child 
will
l e a r n
a language much fa s te r than the adult in a natural situation.
Language acquisition by the adult is , then, a n a rtific ia l p ro c e ss.

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Artific ia l p r o c e s s does not excuse the many p ra c tic e s common 
in language teaching today which run counter to the nature of 
true 
lan- guage behavior. The necessity f o r a rtific ia l language learning 
situ-
ations and techniques does not imply 
a corresponding 
necessity 
for
distorting o r changing the nature of what is being 
learned. P e rh a p s the most widespread textbook technique f o r
needlessly increasing th e
artificiality of language learning in the 
adult 
is 
the use 
of 
d r i l l s and e x e r c i s e s which fo rc e the student to 
lie . 
These seemingly h a r m l e s s sentences 
are, 
fro m the point of view 
of
th e
real 
life situation of the te a c h e r and the student, probably a ll
untrue. F r o m the point of view of t r u e linguistic communication
they b o rd e r on the nonsensical; 
after 
a ll, 
who is r e f e r r e d to by
"John" 
o r 'rCharlesT'o r "Mary"? 
Certainly no one in the environ-
ment of the te a c h e r and the student. The evil in this type of 
re -
peated lying is that 
it 
produces 
a deadening effect in th e mind of th e
student and reduces him to
a p arro t-lik e existence where repetition
of fo rm o c c u rs in the vocal but repetition 
of 
meaning does not occur
in the mind. This 
runs exactly counter to the insight into the nature
of language provided by the g re a t linguists of the l a s t 100 
years 
o r
so. 
Pike c a l l s language 
a "form-meaning composite, 
a unity which
cannot be sp lit up in theory and certainly not in practice. In this 
r e -
sp e c t Pike follows Bloomfield, who s t a t e s that "in language, f o r m s
cannot be separated fro m th e ir 
meaning^."^ 
Chomsky has

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characterized language a s being "rule-governed creativity."s We
a r e
not engaged in language behavior 
unless we 
a r e expressing our-
selves syntactically 
as 
well as semantically 
by 
saying what 
we 
want
o r need to s a y (the creative aspect) and, 
at 
th e sa m e time, saying 
it
correctly (the rule-governed aspect). Humboldt has said that lan-
guage "makes infinite use of finite means,"6 which is t o sa y that
th e re is no limitation on creativity (in Chomsky's sense) 
or
meaning
(in Bloomfield's sense), although the means, the grammar, Chom-
sky's rule -governed aspect and Bloomfield's form aspect, a r e finite,
limited--in short, teachable and learnable. ("Teaching" in the p r e s
-
ent context r e f e r s t o the contribution of the teacher and "learning"
refers 
t o that of the student; there is no single t e r m in English fo r
this process, thus forcing 
us 
to talk about language learning and/or
language teaching. 
It is
a single process, however, in which the
teacher perhaps goes 
50% 
of the way and the student the other 50%
of the way. The teacher cannot put something into the student's
mind without some degree of receptivity 
or 
cooperation on the p a rt
of the student, nor can the student le a rn
a 
language completely on
his own without any external stimulus 
or 
force.) One important way,
then, in which adult language learning can be considerably improved
is
t o eliminate from the classroom the necessity for continual lying.
Only by talking factually about things and events inside and outside
of the classroom 
will 
te a c h e rs and students really be engaged in
true, undistorted language behavior, that is , in rule-governed c r e
-
ativity o r in making infinite use of finite means. 
P a rt 
of the purpose
of this paper, a s well a s seen below, 
is
t o showhow this may bedone.
Another 
common way in which the subject m a tte r of 
elementary language courses is unnecessarily distorted is through 
the technique of 
memorized dialogs. 
If 
language behavior is 
rule-governed c r e - ativity, students reciting a memorized dialog a r e
not engaged in lan- guage behavior, since there is no originality 
or 
creativity involved in this type of recitation; the student obviously 
does not in such a c a se express himself naturally. 
It 
might appear 
at 
f ir s t 
glance that the rule-governed aspect of language behavior 
does occur accurate- l y in the recitation of a memorized dialog, 
but one must not be de- ceived into believing that because the 
student is producing, say, Spanish sentences without syntactic e r r
o r s he h a s thereby internal- ized the syntax and the vocabulary he is
displaying. The student 
w ill
not be able to use the syntactic and 
lexical elements of a memorized dialog 
a s
p a rt of his active 
linguistic corpus7 unless these elements .

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