TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS AND THEIR IMPLICATION IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Dear students,

We come to the Online Tutorial of Introduction to Linguistics/PBIS4202

for the second session. As we have discussed on the second session that it is
important to know the characteristics of human language, it is also important for
us to know how linguistics can be applied in language teaching. In this session
we will discuss the material from module 2: Trends in Linguistics and Their
Implication in Language Teaching, focused on Approaches used in Language
Teaching and the implications. There are three prominent approaches, namely
structural approach, transformational approach, and functional approach,
which we are going to discuss in details. Besides, we also need to understand
teaching materials which are developed from structural approach,
transformational approach, and functional approach.

1. Structural Approach
This approach is closely related to the grammar-focused teaching. The
structuralists believed that language is formed from the smallest units of its sound
system. Leonard Bloomfield in his book ‘Language’, published in 1933, he
stated about structuralism. This model of grammar is still influential and worthy
of detailed comment. Structuralists began with the premise that each language
was unique and must be described in terms of its own individual patterning.
Structuralism was text-based and only interested in language that had
actually occurred.

Structuralism focuses on the level of language that examines how words combine
into larger units. We shall study only three of these units - the phrase, the clause
and the sentence.
There are five commonly occurring types of phrase in English:
noun phrases: e.g. the little dog, a young woman, etc.; adjective phrases: e.g.
extremely
old, etc.; verb phrases: e.g. might be closed, etc.; adverb phrases: e.g. very hard, every
morning, etc.; preposition phrases: e.g. on foot, by plane, etc.
They also study bigger units of words, clauses and sentences.

In the implications, teachers attempt to ask students analyze the combining words. For
example: The crying baby is walking to his mother.
NP VP NP

2. Transformational Generative Grammar Approach

Transformational Generative Grammar (TG) was introduced by Noam Chomsky
in his book Syntactic Structures published in 1957. TG distinguished between
'competence', and 'performance', Competence is the perfect storehouse of
linguistic knowledge and performance draws on this knowledge but it can be
faulty. TG does not use text since it is more interested in what produced
the text than in the text itself.
A TG model has four main characteristics:
It must attempt to make explicit and generate an
infinite set of sentences. For example, that we have
the rules:
S — NP + VP (sentence can be rewritten as noun phrase + verb phrase).
 Since the model attempts to describe the ideal speaker-hearer's linguistic knowledge
and intuitions, it must be explicit.
The model must have three components: a phonological component, a
syntactic component and a semantic component so that it parallels the
speaker's ability to
associate noise and meaning.
It must be able to assign a structure to all sentences which would be
accepted by a native speaker and 'reject all sentences which would be
rejected by a native speaker. The example of transformation is as follow.
S

NP VP

Art Adj N V NP

Art Adj N

The tall boy kicked the red ball

3. Functional Approach
A functional-notional approach concentrates on the purposes for which language
is used. A functional-notional approach to language learning places major
emphasis on the communicative purpose(s) of a speech act. It focuses on what
people want to do or what they want to accomplish through speech. It is
functioned to let others know their purpose or aim in speaking in the first place.

The basic communicative purposes of the speaker may be expressed in two

principal ways, depending on the function: We would use either A. formulas, that is,
fixed expressions; or,
B. communicative or functional expressions.
Examples of formulas
FUNCTION: greeting
(informal, usable at any time): "Hello"
(time-bound, formal): "Good
evening" FUNCTION: leave-
taking
(informal): "So long" or "Bye"
(formal): "Good-bye"
In all languages generally communicative (functional) expressions can be
changed for gender, number, tense, aspect, emphasis, or other communicative
purposes. Example:

FUNCTION: making a suggestion: "How do you feel about going to the beach?"
Here the do may become does or remain do with plural nouns or pronouns and
you may be substituted by he, she, they, the boys, etc.
Naturally a communicative function can include both a formula and a
communicative expression, for example, greeting/expression of concern: "Good
morning. How does your mother feel today?
Dear students, good luck.