A Survey of Unanswered Questions in CALL

Linguistics and Second Language Teaching Phil Hubbard Linguistics/English for Foreign Students Linguistics 1 November 30, 2011 Who am I? 2

Outline Overview of linguistics in language teaching Key points from Rothman (2010) Communicative language teaching model Some examples of linguistics in action

3 Linguistics in Language Teaching Structuralist influence (1950s-60s) Audio lingual method Contrastive analysis Transformational grammar I (1970s) Innatism; Critical Period Hypothesis Interlanguage learners language as a system

Cognitive code approach 4 Linguistics in Language Teaching Communicative approaches (1970s-80s+) Influence of sociolinguists (Hymes) Focus on communicative competence Transformational grammar II (1980s) Innatism; Krashens Input Hypothesis; Natural Order

Critical period replaced by affective filter UG approaches (e.g., parameter setting) 5 Linguistics in Language Teaching Interactionist approaches (1990s) Both input and output necessary Noticing hypothesis Processability theory Sociocultural approaches (1990s)

Collaboration & scaffolding Closer links to sociolinguistics 6 Rothman (2010) Relation of linguistics and teaching Types of grammars Prescriptive tells NSs what is right Pedagogical tells NNSs what is right and how to learn it (often by contrast with L1) Descriptive systematizes NS intuitions and data

from language use 7 Rothman (2010) Example: pronominal subjects in Spanish Grammatical distinctions John believes that we/* are good people Juan cree que nosotros/ are good people Pragmatics in optional use Who spoke to Roberto yesterday? I/* spoke to him

Quien habl con Roberto ayer? Yo/* le habl 8 Linguistics in perspective: a standard communicative model Learning goal: develop communicative competence: (Savignon, 2001) http ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_competence Grammatical competence

Sociocultural competence Discourse competence Strategic competence 9 Linguistics in perspective: a standard communicative model See also the SIL classification

10 Useful knowledge for teachers Phonetics and phonology Teaching lexical items: challenges Idioms Synonyms, antonyms, and items in the same semantic fields Speech acts (English is more indirect than students believe)

Verb subcategorization 11 Verb subcategorization The woman boiled the water/*cried the baby.

I am studying/*knowing French. Fred called his friend up/*ran his friend into. She told/*explained me the schedule. They didnt allow/*let him to come 12 Examples For each set of sentences in the handout, try to determine the nature of the problem (if any) and what you might do to help ESL

learners understand it. Work in groups of 2-3feel free to link to outside sources if you have the means. 13 Group 1 Examples Infinitive vs. gerund Gerund after a preposition Test for preposition: can you replace the verb form with a noun phrase while maintaining

the basic meaning? I look forward to the party. Im not accustomed to such treatment. We were used to his complaints. 14 Group 2 Examples Bolinger Principle (from The Grammar Book): To-infinitive = hypothetical, future, unfulfilled relative to the main verb time Gerund = real, vivid, fulfilled relative to the

main verb time 15 Group 3 Examples All the verbs are unaccusative. That is, they have a single argument that is semantically more like what we expect to see as a direct object in a transitive verb (e.g., a patient). Such verbs behave differently in many languages, and thus language learners often produce passive-like structures with these verbs, but

not with agentive intransitives: John was spoke first. 16 Conclusion Knowledge of linguistics is quite helpful for language teaching However, being a linguist doesnt automatically make you a better language teacher If interested, consider Linguistics 191/291

next quarter (shameless plug): www.stanford.edu/~efs/ling291 17