English Language Teaching in its Social Context

~ errorswereChapter 3Rod EllisSECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION:RESEARCH AND LANGUAGE PEDAGOGYIntroductionHE DOMINANT METHODS FOR TEACHING secondlanguagesinthe 1960sT were the grammar-translation method and thc audiolingual method. These methodsrested on very differcnt theories of language learning. The grammar-translation methodrested on the belief that language learning was largely an intellectual process of studying andmemorizing bilingual vocabulary lists and explicit grammar rules. The audiolinguist onedrew on bchaviourist theories of learning which emphasized habit formation throughrepeated practice and reinforcement. However, although there had been a number of studiesinvestigating the effects of teaching on learning (Agard and Dunkcl 1948) very little wasknown about how learners actually lcarnt a second language. L2 learning, at that time, hadsimply not been rigorously studied.Starting from the 196Os, two approaches to addressing this lacuna have been evident.The first, a continuation ofthe approach adopted in earlier research, consists of attempts toinvestigate the relative effectiveness of differcnt ways of teaching language in terms of thcproducts of learning. Experimental studies by Schcrer and Wertheimer (1 964) and Smith(1970), for example, compared the learning outcomes of the grammar-translation andaudiolingual methods. The results, however, were inconclusive. The studies failed todemonstrate the superiority of one method over the other.The second approach involved the empirical study of how learners acquired an L2. Inthe first place, this took the form of studies oflearners' errors (e.g. Duskova 1969) and casestudies of individual learners learning a second language not in the classroom but throughexposure to it in natural settings (c.g. Ravcm 1968).Thesc studics involved forms ofrcsearchto which tcachers could easily relate if only because the constructs on which they were basedand individual learners ~ ones with which they were familiar. Also, thesestudies proved more rcwarding than the global method comparisons, providing clearevidence that L2 learners, like children acquiring their first language (Ll), accumulatedknowledge of the language they wcrc learning in a gradual and highly systematic fashion.Thus, whereas global method studics soon fell out of fashion,' studies of L2 learning tookoff; SLA was born.Much of this early work in SLA was pedagogically motivatctl. That is, researchersconducted studies of L2 learning with the cxpress intention of addressing pcdagogic issues.