The Role of Linguistic Theory in Foreign Language Teaching Development - Literature review Example

The Role of Linguistic Theory in Foreign Language Teaching Development The Role of Linguistic Theory in Foreign Language Teaching Development Introduction From the beginning of the evolution of foreign language teaching, Linguistic theories have played a crucial role to develop the competency of the leaner in the target language. A good command of linguistic theory is not only important for the learners to grab a significant hold on the hideous features of a language, but also imperative for the teachers to be more assertive in identifying the nature of a particular language. Especially on the teachers’ part, an in-depth knowledge of linguistic theory is a must, because it assists a teacher to apply any of the learning methods and approaches in their best effectiveness (Akmajian et al., 2001, p. 28-31). But in spite of the paramount importance of the linguistic theory, it has a little place, on the leaner’s part, in the “Grammar-Translation” method and the “Direct” or “Natural” Method that were introduced by Sauveur and Berlitz during the later half of the 19th century. Yet on the teachers’ part, the role of phonetics is huge in the “Direct” or “Natural” method of teaching, as these methods involve direct oral communication in which knowledge of phonetics is an indispensable part of language competency (Howatt, 1984, p.78 ). Linguistics and Influential Approaches to Language and Language Learning Apart for the “Direct” or “Natural” Methods of Language teaching, the appliance of the science of linguistics gains momentum in the communicative approach to language in the mid 60s of the twentieth century. During the beginning of the twentieth century, “language” begins to be viewed as more of a social phenomenon than a mere natural object (Howatt, 1984, p.78 ). Therefore according to this approach to language, it is to be learnt as a means of communication as well as in a communicative way. Meanwhile this communicative approach infers some other interdisciplinary relationship with other branches of knowledge such as sociology, psychology, etc and gives birth to sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics, as Akmajian et al. (2001) notes, “The field of linguistics, the scientific study of human natural language, is a growing and exciting area of study, with an important impact on fields as diverse as education, anthropology, sociology, language teaching…” (p.6) The central concept that unifies these fields of linguistics is that meaning of language is context-oriented. As the communicative approach solely puts stress on the communication between individuals and groups, it covers all the four aspects of communications: reading, writing, listening and speaking, as it is said in “The Development of Language Teaching”, “The goal of language teaching is to develop a “communicative competence”, that is, the knowledge and ability a learner needs to be communicatively competent in a speech community” (p.3). The subjectivity of the meaning of language necessarily requires the evolution of the branch of semantics. Though the communicative view of language teaching is more of an approach than a method, it depends on the structural analysis of the target language. The communicative approach requires the structural dissemination –such as phonetics, phonology, intonation, grammar- of a language in order to achieve the competence especially in reading and writing (Christopher, 2005, p. 119). Role of Linguistics in Language Teaching How the linguistic theories are related to language teaching is best expressed in the following line, “theories about the nature of language and of language learning are the source of principles in language teaching” (The Development of Language Teaching, n.d.). According to him, the current approaches and methods of language teaching generally evolve from three different theoretical views of language, such as structural view, functional view, and interactional view. The structural view is the most traditional of all these three views. This structural view asserts that language is essentially “a system of structurally related elements for the coding of meaning, and is defined in terms of phonological and grammatical units, grammatical operations and lexical items” (Richards & Theodore, 2005, p.61). The main tenet of both the functional and interactional theory is to deal the communicative purpose of a language. But the difference between the two is that the first one deals functional meaning of language, whereas the second deals with the interactional one. Indeed though linguistics appears to be a dominant feature of the first view, it can be complementary to both of these two main tenets of defining a language in the field of teaching. Phonetics and Language Teaching The role of phonetics in foreign language teaching is of paramount importance, whether language is viewed as “a system of structurally related elements for the coding of meaning” or a social phenomenon that is engaged in communicating individuals and people. Also whether teaching of language is reformist scholars-prescribed “Natural” method or modern communicative approach, it is imperative for a teacher to get a command of phonetics in order to be able to assist his students to gain competency in audio-lingual and oral aspects of language (Howatt, 1984, p.178 ). Indeed Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that is concerned with the “sounds and sound systems of language. It deals with how sounds are produced, their physical properties” (Callary, 2008, p.87). Knowledge of Phonetics is imperative for educators who want to comprehend the challenges that their students face in attempting to communicate in their second language and who want to improve their learners’ articulation (Bartels, 2006). As the primary concern of phonetics is the sound system of a language, teachers become competent in finding out the principles and rules of the spoken language, as Callary (2008) says “The idea that letters ‘have’ sounds is not only mistaken but misleading…since it tends to blind us to the principles and Rules of our spoken language” (p.88). Alphabets assist speakers to represent sounds in Print in a common way so that everyone can understand them. They assign permanence to the sounds of speech. HOWEVER: the relationship between Sounds and their spellings is not perfect in any living language. Phonetics endows a leaner with the knowledge of the classification of letters according to their pronunciation, their place of articulation, manner of articulation etc (Bartels, 2006). For example, the Turkish Alphabet contains 8 vowels and 21 consonants. The Turkish vowels are A E I İ O Ö U Ü. Like any other living language, in Turkish also there are letters of which the general pronunciation may differ from the pronunciation in spoken Turkish. The pronunciation of the letter ‘A’ in Turkish normally is ‘ʌ’ according to the IPA, as the vowel ‘a’ is articulated in “card” or ‘bard’ (Chambers, n.d.). The following is a list of some of the problematic letters. Letters in Turkish Pronunciation Example Aa "a" as in "card" or "dark", kan = blood Cc "J" as in "judge" can= life, soul, pronounced like "John” Çç "ch" as in "church" çay= tea, pronounced "chay Ee "e" as in "bed" ekmek =bread Gg "g" as in "get" gelin =bride yumuşak g (Soft g) "y" in "yet" (Never comes at the beginning of a word,) diger =other, pronounced diyer lı( undotted "i" ) "u" as in "radium" or "i" as in "cousin" ışık =ligth, ırmak = river İi( dotted "i" ) "i" as in "sit" bir = one, pronounced like "beer" Jj = "j" "j" as in "azure" garaj = garage, pronounced as in French & English Oo "o" as in "fold" okul =school Öö French "eu" as in "peur" göl = lake, rhymes with furl Ss "s" as in "sing" never pronounced like a "z" as the "s" in "his"( ses = voice) Şş "sh"as in "ship" şey = thing, pronounced "shey" , rhymes with "hay" Uu "oo" as in "boot" buz = ice, pronounced like "booze" Üü German "ü" as in "für" or French "u" as in "tu" gül = rose Zz "z" as in "zoo" beyaz = white (Source: Chambers, n.d.) Phonology and Language Teaching Phonology is another part of linguistics, the knowledge of which helps the teachers in the teaching of a language. During the Reform movement in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, reformist scholars put stress on the natural absorption of language by speaking, and listening to it. But as it was necessary for the second language learners to be familiar with various deceptive features of the spoken form of a language, the science of phonetics was not complete enough to describe the entirety of the pronunciation of language. Rather the knowledge of phonology was needed to reveal the changeability of the pronunciation in context (Howatt, 1984, p. 99 ). Knowledge of Various phonological characteristics of a language such as phoneme, allophone, minimal pairs, syllable, co-articulation effects are helpful enough for the learners to get a clear idea of the spoken form of the target language (Behrens & Parker, 2010). For example, in Turkish, there are two phonemes of ‘A’. When it is preceded by a voiceless consonant, it sounds like /:/. But when it is preceded by a voiced consonant, it sounds like //. Again in the word ‘kan’, the ‘a’ vowel sounds like /:/ but in ‘can’, the pronunciation of ‘a’ is ‘//’, as it is preceded by a voiced sound ‘c’ or /j/. Again when ‘g’ occurs at the beginning of a word, it is voiced, but a ‘g’ in the middle of a Turkish word is not voiceless, as it is in the words, ‘gelin’ and ‘diger’. Whereas in the first word, ‘g’ sounds like normal ‘g’ in English, it sounds like a soft ‘g’ or ‘y’ in the middle of ‘diger’ (Chambers, n.d.). Morphology and Language Teaching Different languages have different word formation systems as well as different structures of words. Morphology deals with these characteristics of language. At the same time, morphology deals with some basic features –such as coinage of new words, transformation of words, borrowing, blending, etc- that most of the living languages have in common (O’Grady, William & de Guzman, 1997). A thorough knowledge of the morphology of a target language can assist both the teachers in teaching and the learners in learning. Especially morphological knowledge is greatly helpful in writing error-free words and also in writing that requires creativity. Moreover, it can help a learner to enrich his or her vocabulary easily if he or she knows various word-formation processes. Indeed the definition of word is merely of analytical taste according to Trash because as to the meaning and its functionality in a sentence it is difficult to define it, as Trask (n.d.) says, “[The decisions related to defining “word”] are not matters of absolute truth: they are merely matters of analytical taste and convenience, and linguists vary in their preferences” (p.5). In Morphology, words are generally divided into five categories: orthographic word, phonological word, lexical word, grammatical word and functional word. The following table provides short definitions and examples of these five types of words: Categories Short Definition Examples orthographic word A written sequence between two white spaces at beginning and end. Ben elmayi yedim. In this sentence, there are three words. But according to orthographic definition, ‘Benelmayiyedim’ is also a word. phonological word A piece of speech which behaves as a unit of pronunciation ‘bluebird’= one word ‘blue’, ‘bird’= two word lexical word An abstract unit of the lexicon having a readily identifiable meaning ‘ben’, ‘kim’, ‘kos’ grammatical word An abstract unit of the lexicon that serves grammatical purposes ‘tu’. ‘du’ ‘dum’ functional word The smallest free forms found in a language (O’Grady, William & de Guzman, 1997) Ali kos-tu. In this sentence both ‘Ali’ and ‘kos’ are functional words, but ‘tu’ is not a word, because it is not a free form. Also Turkish language follow more or less all the process of neologism, that is, word-formation process of morphology such as Coinage, Compounding, borrowing, claque, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, acronyms, derivations etc. Grammar and Syntax of Turkish Language Like all living languages of the world, Turkish also follows a particular grammar and syntax. The language evolves from the Turkic branch of Atlantic language family. The basic sentence structure in Turkish is ‘Subject + object + verb’ (Gibson, Green & Cagnina, n.d.). But it does not always possess a verb. Therefore Turkish sentence are divided into two groups: verbal and non-verbal. For example, Ben elma-yi ye-di-m I apple+ACC eat+past+1st.ps.aggr Sub obj verb Case System in Turkish The subject is normally a noun phrase that has a nominative marker and the direct object is associated with accusative morphology. In the following example, the object ‘kim’ is followed by accusative marker ‘i’, while in the sentence, ‘Ben elma-yi ye-di-m’ the object is associated with the accusative marker ‘yi’ (Ziegelbaum, 2007). Ben kim-i gordum I whom+ ACC see Subject-verb Agreement and Tense In Turkish the agreement system indicates both tense and person. In the sentence, “Ben elma-yi ye-di-m” ‘m’ indicates to the first person of the subject and ‘di’ functions as the past marker, whereas in the sentence ‘Ali kos-tu’, the verb ‘kos’ has a third person null marker and a ‘tu’ past maker (Ziegelbaum, 2007). The following is a list of persons of the subject and their agreement system: Sub/Persons Markers Examples First person -m Ben elma-yi ye-di-m Second person - - Third Person null Ali kos-tu-null The following is a list of tense markers: Tenses Tense Suffix Example Definite Past Tense -di (-ti), -dı (-tı) , -du (-tu), -dü (-tü) yaz-dı, koş-tu Indefinite Past Tense -miş, -mış, -muş, -müş yaz-mış, gül-müş Present Continuous Tense -(i)yor, -(ı)yor, -(u)yor, -(ü)yor, -yor yaz-ı-yor, anlı-yor, gör-ü-yor Simple Present Tense -r, -ar, er, -ir, -ır, -ur, ür bekle-r, yaz-ar, gör-ür, gel-ir Future Tense -ecek (-yecek), -acak (-yacak) yaz-acak, gid-ecek, anla-yacak (Source: Kipi, 2010, Turkish Verbs and their Moods and Tenses) Conclusion Indeed the study of linguistics receives a new twist towards the end of the 19th century when the Grammar-Translation method was challenged with the Reform Movement. Due to a lack of wider disseminations of various linguistic features of a language, the reformist scholars intensely felt the need of a more analytical approach to language (Howatt, 1984, p. 65). As a response to the need, linguists like Wilhelm Viëtor (1850-1918) in Germany, Henry Sweet (1845-1912) in England, and Paul Passy in France come forward with an applied linguistic approach including the new science of phonetics (Bartels, 2006). One of the primary concerns of the reformist scholars was that grammar should be learnt inductively, translation to be avoided, and therefore the learning of a language is to be started with hearing it first. In this regard, it is said in “The Development of Language Teaching” , “These principles provided the theoretical foundations for a principled approach to language teaching, one based on a scientific approach to the study of language” (p.4). Indeed around these years, the discipline receives a new starting in the field of foreign language teaching. References Akmajian et al. 2001, Linguistics and Introduction to Language and Communication, London: Edwin Bartels, N 2006, Applied linguistics and language teacher education : Educational linguistics v. 4 Chapter 12: Whats Phonetics Got to Do with Language Teaching? Behrens And J. A. Parker 2010, Language in the real world : an introduction to linguistics 1st ed.[electronic resource] Chapter 3 Teaching Pronunciation: Using Phonology in the ESL and Foreign Language Classroom Callary, E 2008, “Chapter 6: Phonetics”, Language, (7th ed), in “Phonetics: the Sounds of Language”. Viewed 27 October, 2010, Chambers, R. (n.d.). “Some notes on the Turkish Alphabet and language”, Turizm.net. Viewed 27 October, 2010, Christopher, J. H 2005, An introduction to language and linguistics: breaking the language spell, Newyork: Bentham Publications. Gibson, W., Green, J. and Cagnina, B n.d. “Turkish Syntax”,….. Howatt, A1984, A history of English Language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press Kipi, F. (22 Oct 2010). “Turkish Verbs and their Moods and Tenses”, Viewed 27 October, 2010, O’Grady, William & de Guzman, V. P 1997, “Morphology: the analysis of word structure”. In O’Grady, W., Dobrovolsky, M. & Katamba, F. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Longman: Harlow, Essex Richards, Jack C. and Rodgers Theodore S. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. “The Development of Language Teaching. Current Trends in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language”, Scribd. Viewed 27 October, 2010, < http://www.scribd.com/doc/27112024/The-evolution-of-language-teaching-Current-trends-in-the-teaching-of-English-as-a-foreign-language-EFL-The-communicative- Trask, W. “What is word”, Viewed 27 October, 2010, Ziegelbaum, M. (2007). “World of Language Syntax Paper”, Read More