The field of second and foreign language teaching has now matured to the point where a shift in approach or methodology no longer automatically entails the rejection of all that went before. The field still, however, manifests a marked tendency to propose and accept the implementation of new approaches without the necessary support of trialling and empirical evidence. A shift presently being mooted is related to consciousness raising. Although its advocates, Rutherford & Sharwood Smith (1988), have advised caution before the implementation of the principles thereof, Ellis (1991) has proposed that consciousness raising in the form of problem-solving should be used in the Japanese school system without offering any empirical support for the efficacy thereof. The study reported herein attempts to evaluate the efficacy of problem-solving as compared to an orthodox deductive approach. The results indicate that although both approaches enable the students to understand the grammatical rules, the time-consuming problem-solving procedure results in little time being available for practice and a consequent lack in oral proficiency. The implications of these findings are discussed.Problem-solving brought to task As the field of foreign and second language teaching has matured over recent decades, the shifts in orientation have become less extreme and, mercifully, a more balanced view of the relative advantages and disadvantages of alternative approaches and methods' has begun to prevail. Despite this advance, however, a major failing of the field persists. This is the marked tendency for proposals for innovation to be accompanied by much hypothesising and speculation but left bereft of substantial evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of the innovation in the classroom situation for which it is proposed. One has only to look at the works of a number of prominent advocates of methodological innovation to establish the validity of this statement.(1988) might be regarded as exceptions to this generalisation for they do cite the findings of empirical studies in support of their proposals. However, such studies do not demonstrate the relative superior efficacy of the proposed methods in normal educational establishments.This failure to fully trial methods before proposing their implementation has been allowed to pass largely unscathed by critical comment in the literaat MCMASTER UNIV LIBRARY on June 29, 2015 rel.sagepub.com Downloaded from 45 ture. Notable exceptions to this are Hammerly (1989), Richards (1984) and Long (1988) who make the following succinct but apt comment: &dquo;Most teachers assumed that the people making the pronouncements had taken the trouble to test them, that we knew how people learned second languages in classrooms and how best to teach them. In fact, of course, this was, and still is, simply untrue.&dquo; (p. 115).A variety of reasons explain this failing to base proposals on empirical evidence. Foremost among them is surely the major difficulties involved in carrying out large scale field research ov...
Certains chercheurs dans le domaine de l'analyse des fautes, et notamment ceux qui suivent une methode de Psychologie evolutive, ont une tendance a contester Fimportance de l'interference avec la langue maternelle (= negative transfer) pour les fautes commises par les eleves apprenant des langues etrangeres. D'autres collegues defendent par contre une opinion contraire. Ces differences de jugement dependent en partie du manque de precision des definitions donnees de cette interference de la langue maternelle. On constate dans cet article, a Faide d'analyses des fautes commises par des quasi-bilingues (near-bilinguals), que Finterference avec la langue maternelle represente le facteur responsable, sans comparaison, du plus grand nombre de fautes de grammaire et de lexique. On pretend aussi que ce genre de fautes sont le plus rapidement soumises au processus de la fossilisation.Einige Forscher auf dem Gebiet der Fehleranalyse, insbesondere solche, die eine entwicklungspsychologische Methode verfolgen, neigen dazu, die Interferenz der Muttersprache (= negative transfer) als Hauptfehlerquelle beim Erlernen von Fremdsprachen abzulehnen. Andere Fachkollegen wiederum beharren auf der gegenteiligen Ansicht. Diese unterschiedliche Beurteilung beruht zum Teil auf dem Mangel an Genauigkeit bei der Definition von muttersprachlicher Interferenz. In diesem Artikel wird bei der Analyse von Fehlern bei nahezu zweisprachigen Personen (near-bilinguals) festgestellt, daß die Interferenz der Muttersprache bei weitem den bedeutendsten Faktor in der Fehlerproduktion darstellt. Weiterhin wird behauptet, daß diese Art der Fehler am ehesten dem Prozeß der Erstarrung (fossilization) unterliegt. During the last decade or so increasing interest has been shown in the field of error analysis (henceforth EA). This interest has been manifested in various types of research into foreigri language learning (henceforth FLL). The main thrust of this research has had two effects: one, negative, the other, positive. The latter has resulted in a developmental psycholinguistic approach to FLL which has proved far more fruitful and enlightening than the patentiy inadequate behaviouristic approach. The negative effect has been a marked tendency to minimize the importance of negatjve transfer (henceforth NT) in FLL. This development has had two major causes. On the one hand, EA being partly a reaction to contrastive analysis (henceforth CA), its protagonists have had a tendency to reject much that was associated with CA, particularly the overriding importance of NT; and on the other, a developmental approach to FLL has tended to maximize the importance of universal strategies in FLL which consequently leads to a rejection of language-specific factors such äs NT. Burt (1974 and1975) have perhaps been the most extreme in the rejection of the importance of NT. The following three quotations are typical of their position:"Children below the age of puberty will not make goofs that reflect transfer of the structure of their LI onto the L 2 they are learning/' (1...
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