euskalarien nazioarteko jardunaldiak IKER - 1 - Euskaltzaindia

KARMELE ROTAETXE
century, supplies mainly descriptions of data and rules for the interpretation of the
material. And without a consultation of the knowledge that Linguistics can provide us
about a language, there cannot be a systematic progress in teaching-learning. So the
linguistic study must determine how we have to describe what is going to be taught.
But the relation between theory and teaching cannot be but an indirect one, as the
discipline and practical activity are separated precisely by that other scientific and
intermediate activity which is constituted by Applied Linguistics. As an activity, the
latter comprises several stages: 1) Description: the applied linguist must integrate in the
grammatical description made by the theoretical linguist socio-linguistic criteria which
will allow to take into account the functioning of the language in the society (dialectal
differences and/or registers). The results of this first work about the grammatical
description answer this question: «which is the nature of the language that is going to
be taught ?» and constitute a raw inventory for the second stage; 2) Selection: in the
inventory a selection must be done in order to establish a «syllabus» or inventory. The
question is the following one: «what must be taught ?» And several parameters must
be taken into account:
a) the usefulness for the student, that is, its immediate urgency for the communication;
b) the difference: in relation to the language which the student already masters;
c) the difficulty coming from the learning of a new system, more or less distant from
the one he possesses. It results from this that, when elaborating the syllabus, the
complex phenomena must be presented after the simple ones and starting from them.
These three criteria are based on an intralingual analysis in a); on the need of recurring
to the Contrastive Linguistics in b) and to the analysis of errors in c). 3) In the third
stage, the syllabus must be presented progressively, in order to transform it into a
pedagogical grammar. The question would be: «how to use the selected material?».
The practica! leve! of teaching answers this question: «how to teach ?» and in this level
we must either change the syllabus into pedagogical material, or make use of the
material in class (contact with the students, problems related most properly to every
type of teaching and in particular to the socio-linguistic aspect). It cannot be got
without the previous activity of Applied Linguistics. And, in it, nothing has been done
in the Basque studies. The investigation about Applied Linguistics is absolutely
necessary if we want to avoid that next Bascologists' Meetings may study theoretical
points of a language marked with the feature (–vitality). I submit this reflexion to the
Authorities in our University and to our Basque Government.
RESUMEN
Dos razones han dictado mi elección: 1) nuestra lengua no se está extendiendo al
ritmo que se hubiera esperado y deseado y el fenómeno se acompaña de numerosas
frustraciones en personas motivadas cuando empiezan a aprender; 2) el número de
bilingües (7,9 en Alava; 15,1 en Vizcaya; 45% en Guipúzcoa; 11% en Navarra y 34,5
en el norte del país) no permite ilusiones. Nuestros esfuerzos deben pues dirigirse no
sólo a introducir el euskara en los ámbitos sociales de los que ha sido apartado
(problema religado a la diglosia), sino también a aumentar el número de bilingûes para
mejorar la relación monolingûes (español o francés) y bilingües (español o francésvasco).
Y este objetivo que concierne a toda nuestra comunidad está en relación con el
tipo de enseñanza que sepamos proponer. Hay que replantearse la enseñanza sobre la
base de una programación científica, lo que implica replantear la formación de los
enseñantes. Admito que, si bien la enseñanza de una lengua encierra ciertas variables
no controlables, muchas otras lo son: Y la lingûística ofrece un conjunto desarrollado
de conocimientos científicos sobre el lenguaje que puede guiar la actividad del profesor.
Mi comunicación se centra en la lingüística aplicada, limitada a la aplicación del
conocimiento lingüístico a la enseñanza. La lingûística aplicada, que utiliza los resultados
476 [12]