ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ I?d like to comment on two issues raised by Ney?s accompanying article. One has to do with the relationship between theory and practice in FL teaching; the second, with the relationship between various existing theories of language acquisition.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ 1. The Relationship Between Theory
and Practice
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ I have observed that this relationship is treated in the FL teaching literature in two ways. One is in a forward direction, from theory to practice, viz. a theoretical development suggests a practical application in the form of an instructional technique. The other is in a backward direction, from practice to theory, viz. a particular practice in language pedagogy is being justified (or attached) on the basis of new theoretical, developments. As it emerges from Ney?s spirited analysis, it appears clear that I, along with the others h~ mentioned am guilty of having contributed to both directions in the treatment of this problem.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Taking a fresh look at this old issue, I am emboldened to propose a third possibility, which appears to me superior to the other two. It involves a redefinition or rethinking of the notion of ?theory? in its relation to the practice of FL teaching.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ In the current prevalent notion, ?theory? in language pedagogy refers to the work on language and verbal behavior by linguists and psychologists. The essential weakness of the current link between this kind of ?theory? and practice is that actual classroom conditions are not ?controllable? in the same sense as that notion has in research in linguistics and psychology. Attempts at extrapolating laboratory developed techniques, materials, and tests to the classroom ref let the uncertainty of this procedure, and is displayed in the polemical character of the FL teaching literature.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ The resolution I propose avoids this
essential weakness by defining practice as instructional performance and
theory as analysis of instructional performance. By ?instructional
performance? I mean to refer, simply and plainly, to what?s actually going on
in the classroom: the teacher?s performances, the performances of the pupils,
and the instructional transactions between teacher and pupil. In order to
determine what actual instructional transactions do occur in the classroom, or
in order to assess the effects of a particular instructional strategy, it is
necessary to do an analysis of instructional performances. Theory and practice
thus are made to be related in a real rather than a hypothetical way, as in the
current extrapolation process.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ It remains for me to outline tile character of theory in this new conception, which I shall do following my discussion of the second issue raised by Ney?s comments.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ 2. The Relationship Between Theories of Language Acquisition Ney, quoting Grothers and Suppes, favors the possibility of a meta-theory that would resolve current behaviorist and conguitivist ?theories? by asserting that ?the apparent conflict between behaviorist and coguitive theories is...apparent rather than real.? Such a resolution has also occurred to me a few years ago (James, 19), but it is clear to me now that even if such a ?theoretical resolution? was arrived at, it would fail to solve the essential weakness I referred to above.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ 3. The Transactional Engineering Analysis of FL Teaching
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Only a brief sketch is possible here. A fuller treatment is given in a recently published work (James and Gordon, 1974).
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ To
begin with, let us divest ourselves of the principal theoretical prejudices
that have cast the issues in language acquisition and behavior into such
perennial notions as stimulus, response, reinforcement, encoding, decoding,
message, basic syntactic patterns, surface structure, transformation,
automatication of habits, contrastive analysis, interaction analysis, liberated
expression, and so on to the full paraphernalia of linguistic and psychological
theorizing about ?language?. In terms that should appeal to an attitude of
systematic common sense, let us examine the actualities of the FL classroom. A
simple fact to be noted at the outset is that much, if not all of the
instructional process proceeds through the medium of talk. To the
unprejudiced observer, the most visible activity in the classroom is the
activity of talking: teacher talks to the pupils, the pupils talk to the
teacher, teach other, and to themselves (when practicing or studying). However,
common sense tells us that the talking going on in the classroom cannot be, or
should not be, just any kind of talk, so that we arrive at the necessary
conclusion that there are varieties of talking corresponding to the many life
situations of the individual, only one of which is of the variety appropriate f
or the teaching-learning process. Let us refer to the variety of talk used in
the classroom as the instructional register.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ Our
first empirical task, therefore, is to develop a descriptive system for
analyzing the instructional register. Our efforts in this direction is
facilitated by the previous work of Goffman (e.g. 1971) on the ritual idiom,
the work of ethno-methodologists on the organization of conversation
(Schegloff, , Sacks, 19 ), and descriptions of the school language ( ). The thrust
of these empirical attempts at systematic description of talk, has been that
talking as a form of social behavior must be analyzed into the actual
components of talking, rather than through such reductionistic attempts as the
analysis of sentences, their syntactic components, meaning, understanding,
communicating and so on. Thus it is not the case that talking is ?a
communicative exchange?, or ?the expression of ideas,? or ?the encoding and
decoding of sentences? or anything like that. Rather, talking is talking, and
we need to develop ways of analyzing talking, per se.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ A purist and literal elaboration of this attitude, leads us to some elementary but crucial observations about talk. To wit.
(1) Talking is a practical accomplishment on the part of participants. It is a joint, coordinated activity that requires participants to orient to common, sanctioned, and priorly agreed upon features of conversation. Learning to talk involves the practical mastery of the rules of conversation that govern normatively the practices and dealings of members of a speech community.
(2) The
activity of talking consists of a structured series of verbal exchanges
performed by participants in the form of alternating talking turns
organized through time in segments, which we call a conversational
episode. Each episode is organized into clearly identifiable sections,
such as ?opening section?, ?middle part? and ?closing section.? The speech
community?s practices specify what sorts of speech acts may occur in different
sections of conversational episodes. Thus, in our speech community, opening
sections require an exchange of greetings, closing sections require an exchange
of leave-taking, and middle sections require topicalization work
(e.g. raising a first topic after the greeting exchange, topic switching,
announcements of foreclosing the episode, etc.).
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ (3) The exchange-taking place in a
particular conversation is governed by transactional norms as
displayed in the standard practices of the relevant speech community. Fellow participants
see a participant as an individual having a legal identity and having face work
obligations and rights. Thus, much of the give-and-take of conversation
revolves around the ritual of maintaining the face reputation of the involved
participants: assertions are legitimized or disagreed with, requests are
granted or denied, justifications are elaborated according to common
understandings of practical reasoning, apologies are trade to offenses and
remedies are provided, invitations are extended, acknowledged, accepted, or
denied, relationship rituals are exchanged, and so on.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ (4) Contextual features of conversation select the appropriate normative register governing the events that may take place in particular conversations. These include such contrastive features as the relationship of the participants and the sanctioned purpose of the interaction. In the instructional register, which is our primary concern here, both the relationship among participants and the official purpose of the interaction are specified in terms of the instructional goal and the rights and obligations attendant to the tale of teacher and pupil.
ÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀÀ From the teacher?s point of view,
classroom talk serves the purpose of engineering successful instructional
transactions. What is needed now is the development of an analytic tool
f or identifying the components of instructional transactions. This is what we
have attempted in our work on transactional engineering analysis.
The method in its current form involves the empirical analysis of written
transcripts based on tape recordings of classroom interactions. It allows the
identification of the exchanges in terms of on-going transactions: what happens
in explanations, elaborations, and justifications; in asking leading questions;
in Legitimizing requests; in disagreeing; in loud-talking; in enactments of
the pupil role; in reporting and its structure; in verbal problem solving; and
so on.
Thus the teaching-learning process is described, evaluated, and assessed in concrete transactional terms referring directly to the objective, actual forms of exchange. From this perspective, the language teacher is freed from the perennial controversies attendant to linguistic and psychological ?theorizing?, competing methodologies, and paradoxical pronouncements. It puts pedagogic theory back to the practical sticking place, where it belongs.
Goffman,
E. Relations in Public. New York Basic Books œ71
James, L. A., Mediation. Theory and the œsingle stage? S-R
model: Different? Psychological Review, 1966, 73, 376?382.
James, L.
A., Foreign L. Lg., New. 1970.
James,
L. A. and Gordon, Barbara. The Context of Foreign Language Teaching.
Newbury House Publishers: Rowley, Mass., 1974.
Sacks, H.
Transcribed lectures (mimeo.), 1967.
Scheglogg, E. A. The first five seconds: The order of conv. openings. PhD Diss., Dof Soc., University of California, Berkley., 1967.