Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Foreign Language Instruction

1964; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1169757

1935-1046

Jesse O. Sawyer,

Second Language Learning and Teaching

IN THE past three years, language teachers have interested themselves in an extremely varied number of the aspects of foreign language instruction. Contrastive studies; programed learning; uses of television, language laboratories, and other devices; development of new texts and tests; and continued appraisal of a variety of classroom techniques have all contributed to producing rather extensive changes in the teaching of foreign languages. The most important changes are probably the rather wide acceptance given to the use of recorded materials; developing acceptance of an audiolingual approach, with its emphasis on learning to speak the language taught; and wider extension of foreign language instruction into primary and secondary education. However, recent research has not addressed itself so intensively as one might think either to the interests of language teachers or to the actual changes that have taken place. This emphasis in itself cannot be viewed negatively, since research is motivated and controlled by factors other than the simple questions of what one needs to know. Since research is now much more objectively oriented than at any time in the past, one can look forward to a day when more questions will receive more satisfactory answers. At the same time, the teacher has become increasingly aware that research studies often do not provide clear-cut yes or no directions. He has been led to conclude (a) that many basic problems can only be answered by psycholinguistic research or by pure psychological research and (b) that the extremely complex language teaching-learning situation is such that the effect of some experimental variables is likely to be marginal and the results are necessarily so qualified with conditions that interpretation is extremely difficult. Study that summarizes, compares, and interprets related research has become essential, since the individual teacher can no longer single-handedly collect and interpret the studies applicable to any single problem. An example of this kind of study is Pimsleur, Mosberg, and Morrison's (1962) examination of Student Factors in Foreign Language Learning. Having reviewed all the available recent research, they estimated that verbal intelligence accounted for some 20 percent of the variance in foreign language achievement and that motivation might account for an additional 15 percent. Approximately 65 percent of the variance in foreign language achievement remained largely unexplained. In spite of these findings, much research in foreign language instruction has been and still is centered in various aspects of verbal intelligence. Additional Reference: Brooks, Hockett, and O'Rourke (1963).