BRIEF HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

LMI

Open Ended

Is language acquistion an innate ability or a learned behavior?

Language acquisition

At its most extreme, the innatist position holds that language acquisition results from an essential human ability specific to language that resides in the mind. 

Plato proposed that human beings possess knowledge intrinsically. Such knowledge need simply be activated and drawn out.

Plato and Aristotle

Educere vs Instruere

Nature vs Nurture

• From the very beginning, the Western tradition has struggled with the question of nature versus nurture, the innatist versus environmentalist position, a biological as opposed to a behavioral explanation for language acquisition.

• Clearly, it would be absurd to reduce our current understanding of second language acquisition to a simple dichotomy.

Connectionism vs Universal grammar

Repetition, frequency of stimuli, and automaticity.

Which innate abilities can be reactivated and with what success.

History of language teaching

Among the external factors that contribute to underlying beliefs and consequently prescriptions for practice, it is nearly impossible to overestimate the enormous influence of organized religion on education, including the teaching of language.

History of language teaching

Until almost the twelfth century, formal education in Western Europe took place in monasteries that offered instruction in liturgy and prayer.

Martin Luther (1483– 1547) proposed in 1524 that all children acquire basic literacy in order to read the Bible.

History of language teaching

The foundation of the earliest universities in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries (Bologna in 1088, Paris in 1150, and Oxford in 1167) allowed students the opportunity to build upon that early education. In this way, a student at age 14 or so, having mastered basic literacy in Latin under a tutor’s guidance, could study the seven liberal arts.

Poll

Would you like to hear an anecdote from those times?

• Yes, sounds cool.

• Nah, keep teaching broheim.

History of language teaching

De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis [On the Conduct and Education of Young People]-1400. A new program for learning.

The humanists contended that second-language literacy skills alone were necessary but insufficient training for a citizen of the Renaissance world. Instead, the educated person would also be able to speak Latin fluently, confidently, and persuasively.

History of language teaching

The case for spoken Latin could not turn the rising tide of the vernacular languages, which constituted the common system of communication among the burgeoning and increasingly influential middle class. Even parents of university students began to complain about the waste of time and money spent on learning a language that served no practical purpose.

History of language teaching

The fading utility of Latin for anything but the most scholarly pursuits would eventually be extinguished with the availability of vernacular translations of the Bible made possible by the invention of the printing press in 1440. For the first time, literacy in one’s first language could both ensure success in the affairs of this world and guarantee one’s salvation in the next.

History of language teaching

-The influence of the Catholic Church on education reached its pinnacle with the system of education developed by the Jesuits.

-Intelligence and foreign language aptitude.

-“grammar-translation.”

History of language teaching

The general format of the language classes consisted of recitation of memorized passages (from Cicero and a grammar book), a review of the previous lesson, a lecture, and a dictation, followed by the presentation of a new grammar point.

History of language teaching-The Jesuits

The teacher was explicitly advised to provide learners with a first-language translation of the Latin words and sentences, not just once, but several times over the course of a single lecture, and not only in the first-year course, but in the second and third years as well.

History

The use of the vernacular languages for instruction of the elite students in the Jesuit schools reflected their rising cachet in society at large.

The seventeenth century witnessed a combination of social and religious forces that solidified the status and power of the vernacular languages of Europe.

Economic factors, too, favored the vernacular languages of France, Holland, and England as they displaced Catholic Spain as the dominant commercial power.

History of language teaching

Luther’s translation of the New Testament into German in 1522 and of the Old Testament in 1534; Tyndale’s translation into English in 1526, with the authorized King James version in 1611; Czech in 1568; Welsh in 1588; and the London Polyglot Bible in ten languages in 1653.

By this time, the printing press had advanced to the point that, not only did students likely have individual copies of texts, even of the same edition, but new versions of books appeared on the market that offered interlinear translations. 

 Johannes Amos Comenius

He cool!

 Johannes Amos Comenius

The Janua Linguarum Reserata [The Gate of Tongues, Unlocked] of 1631, the Vestibulum [The Vestibule] of 1633, and perhaps most famous of all, the Orbis Sensualium Pictus [The World of Things in Pictures] of 1658

 Johannes Amos Comenius

“Latin grammar was taught us with all the exceptions and irregularities; Greek grammar with all its dialects, and we, poor wretches, were so confused that we scarcely understood what it was all about” (Didactica Magna, ch. 16, p. 122).

 Johannes Amos Comenius

Instruction erroneously begins with the grammar (the form) rather than authors or examples (the matter).

 Johannes Amos Comenius

"No language be learned from a grammar, but from suitable authors,” “that the understanding be first instructed in things, and then taught to express them in language,” and finally, “that examples come before rules” 

Open Ended

What did you learn today?

Bibliography

Long, M. and Doughty, C., 2009. The handbook of language teaching. 1st ed. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. Pages 43-60