2010 UNISA Research Proposal
MA, TESOL
(Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages)
Christine Jonker, MA Philosophy
Title:
The why of the how: Comparing Krashen with De Saussure.
Abstract:
In the proposed thesis I wish to research the relevance of Language Philosophy for teaching English as a second or foreign language. I want to explore whether Stephen Krashen's natural approach to second language acquisition can be proven effective by using methods other than the conventional empirical research that characterizes TESOL studies. I propose that philosophical analysis of the question 'What is language' can serve as proof and support of a practical methodology such as Krashen's just as well, or even better, than empirical studies can. I will use the structural model of language as proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure to show that Krashen's instincts are indeed true.
Problem statement:
Why compare Saussure and Krashen? Saussure proves that Krashen is on the right path. Language is a structure, which means it actually has no reference to reality as is globally thought outside of philosophical circles. The twentieth century brought about an important change in Philosophy known as the Linguistic Turn, but aside from academic philosophers, few understand the import of this event. The Linguistic Turn can be compared to a Copernican revolution.
Just as people in the past thought that the sun revolves around the earth, people today still assume that language 'revolves' around reality. This means that people assume that language is 'about' reality. After the Linguistic Turn, philosophers know that it is in fact the other way around. Just as it has been proved that the earth in fact, contrary to appearances, revolves around the sun, so it has been proved, on a philosophical level, that language is not about the world. Language does not refer to things in the world. The function of language is not to describe the world. Put differently, reality is not the central stationary truth that we try to describe and mirror in our language. In fact it is language that is the 'stationary' and 'central' point around which reality or the world revolves.
The relevance of this for TESOL is to explain why traditional methods of vocabulary memorization and grammar practice fail to let students actually acquire the target language. Students can study a language for many years and yet not find themselves able to speak it. They have learned the language but they haven't acquired it. If we are able to divorce the study of language from its supposed reference to the world, much faster progress will be possible. In order to acquire a language faster it must be understood by the learner that he or she is not learning a list of names of things, but is in fact picking up a complicated structure. Acquiring a language is more akin to learning to play music than it is to memorizing facts. It requires a lot of repetition, which may be perceived to be boring by learners and teachers, but it is in fact the sine qua non of acquisition.
This is the contribution that Stephen Krashen makes to the study of language teaching: according to Krashen there is a big difference between studying a language consciously by memorizing vocabulary and practising grammar rules, and actually 'having' the language as your own. Memorizing vocabulary comes from our instinct that words are names for things. That is in fact not the case. If words truly were names for things then language learning would be easy, but it isn't. In fact things are constituted by words. We choose the words first, so to speak, and ignore things that are not named by us. For example, what is the name for the top of the foot? Why isn't there such a name? There is a name for the bottom of the foot: the sole. A more useful method of learning would be first to memorize sounds without caring so much about their meaning, and then later finding what the meaning is.
The structure of each language is complex but finite and in order to acquire the structure the unconscious mind must be utilized. The structure cannot be internalized through rote grammar and vocabulary study. The structure can only be internalized through massive amounts of examples of the structure. My thesis for the proposed research is that the Structural Linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure provides support and also proof for the fact that Stephen Krashen's Natural Approach to Second Language Acquisition is in fact in essence correct.
When adults learn a new language, or when school children learn a new language in school, as in Korea, they are using the learning method, not the acquisition method. Using the conscious learning method is equivalent to the way of thinking prior to the 20th century linguistic turn. Learning consciously corresponds to thinking about the world in terms of universals. Memorizing vocabulary is the perfect example of this. If you consciously memorize vocabulary, you are memorizing, trying to get into your head, the names for Plato's forms. You have a list of things - chair, table, bed, justice, science etc. and you try to find and remember the corresponding sound for the universal thing. This has some value but it is limited because when speaking you're searching through the conscious list in your head to come up with the Korean word for chair. This takes a long time and if you are doing this you haven't yet acquired the language.
On the other hand, if you are using the natural method to acquire the language subconsciously, you are doing what language philosophers and philosophers in general actually, describe thinking as it is thought about after the linguistic turn of the 20th century, after De Saussure and Wittgenstein. Here you are no longer trying to relate what you're taking in to the world. You understand input without trying because you're not in the universals frame of mind. You're in the frame of mind where automatism and repetition is in play, like unlocking a door, brushing your teeth, things you do without thinking. The structure of a language is so complex that it cannot be acquired through the conscious mind, which is too limited. It belongs to the province of unconscious acts, moving your tongue in a certain way, uttering sounds according to certain very complex rules, which are actually totally arbitrary. That's why a native speaker is immediately disturbed for instance by the sentence 'she eat eggs'. The unconscious mind kicks in and says there has to be an s. There doesn't really. It's just the structure of the language. Actually there's no reason for it. It's what makes English 'English' and you say the s because you've heard and said it a million times. You're saying it unconsciously. Thinking in this way solves a lot of problems like for instance asking what the grammatical status and the ontological status of the s might be. It refers to nothing in the world. It's just an arbitrary bit of the unique structure of English.
There is in fact such a thing as 'philosophical proof' and that's what I'm going to utilize in this thesis. Linguists tend to want to prove their theories empirically through research but philosophical research also constitutes proof. Logical proof. One can arrive at certain conclusions about what language is through philosophical thinking. That's what philosophers do in fact. Once you know what language is you know how it can be taught, learned, acquired, whatever ... you'll know what are mistakes and what not. For example, learning only vocabulary and grammar is a mistake. Only playing games is also a mistake. Where is the golden mean? What is the most efficient model of language learning? One needn't engage only in empirical research to find this out. You can gain insight through a priori thinking, since every human being is herself a language user and so should be able to look inside them selves and reach similar conclusions about language.
Krashen's theory comes down to a number of hypotheses that can be correlated to Saussure's structuralism. I will discuss the language learning versus language acquisition hypothesis as well as the monitor theory to show how it compares to the problem of universals in Philosophy. I will show that the formal study of language through grammar, syntax and vocabulary expansion corresponds to an outdated understanding of the nature of language, namely that language is a nomenclature or set of names that refer to things in the real world. The natural order hypothesis claims that learners first gain receptive skills and then begin to produce utterances. In other words, most important for the beginner language learner is listening and extensive reading. I will show that this corresponds to Saussure's definition of language as primarily sound, or sound images. Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis insists that language learners acquire a language by receiving massive amounts of input that contains meaning in which they are interested because their affective filter has been lowered. This corresponds to Saussure's theory of signifier and signified, according to which language is a system of signs where meaning and sound are fused together.
De Saussure's work came about as a result of, and forms part of, the 'linguistic turn'. The linguistic turn is a revolution where the instinctive assumption that language is about the world gets overturned. If language teachers and learners are able to free themselves from incorrect conceptions of what language is, faster progress will be possible. A structural and post-structural understanding of language will explain why we must indeed use new techniques when teaching foreign language acquisition in the 21st century.
To summarize: teaching English to speakers of other languages has undergone many transformations in the past few decades, and is still undergoing transformation. We have changed the way in which we teach English as a foreign language many times. Have all these changes been useful, or are they confusing to language practitioners who are not trained linguists? It is the contention of this dissertation that unless teachers of English to speakers of other languages understand why these changes have occurred, they will be less efficient than they could be. The changes in teaching methodologies and the manner in which theories of language acquisition have undergone transformations, echo the deeper changes in philosophical thinking that has occurred in the 20th century. By comparing the revolution in Philosophy to the revolution in Language Acquisition Theory this researcher believes much may be gained. Language teachers can become more effective and more efficient, and language philosophers may have the opportunity to see in action that rare thing: applied philosophy.
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