Second Language Teaching: A View from the Right Side of the Brain

182 Pages·2003·3.795 MB·

by  Marcel Danesi (auth.)

Second Language Teaching
TOPICS IN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS
Series Editors
Thomas A. Sebeok and Albert Valdman
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
VOLUME 8
CONTEXTS OF COMPETENCE
Social and Cultural Considerations in Communicative Language Teaching
Margie Berns
THE DYNAMIC INTERLANGUAGE
Empirical Studies in Second Language Variation
Edited by Miriam R. Eisenstein
FRENCH AND CREOLE DISCOURSE, Second Edition
Edited by Albert Valdman
THE GRAMMAR OF DISCOURSE, Second Edition
Robert E. Longacre
ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL BILINGUAL EDUCATION
The Role of the Vernacular
Edited by Beverly Hartford, Albert Valdman, and Charles R. Foster
LINGUISTICS AND LITERACY
Edited by William Frawley
LITERACY IN SCHOOL AND SOCIETY
Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Elisabetta Zuanelli sonino
THE RELATION OF THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUSTICS
Edited by Olga Miseska Tomic and Roger W. Shuy
Second Language
Teaching
A View from the Right Side of the Brain
by
MARCEL DANESI
University of Toronto,
Canada
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS :MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-1489-5 ISBN 978-94-010-0187-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0187-8
Printed an acid-free paper
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© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003
Softcover rl9>rint of the hardcover 1s t edition 2003
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface IX
Chapter 1 The Second Language Teaching Dilemma 1
Introduction
The SLT Dilemma 2
The "Method Response" 4
Grammar-Translation Pedagogy 4
The Direct Method 6
The Reading and Oral Methods 8
The Audiolingual Method 9
The Cognitive-Code Method 11
Post-Method Responses 12
Communicative Language Teaching 13
Humanistic and Neurolinguistic Methods 14
The Proficiency Movement 15
Some Issues 16
Acquisition vs. Learning 16
Universal Grammar Theory 17
The Critical Period Hypothesis 20
The Role of Culture 20
The Foray into the Neurosciences 22
Chapter 2 Looking to Brain Research for Insights 24
Introduction 24
The Brain 25
The Cerebrum and the Cerebellum 26
The Brain Stem 28
Neuronal Structure 29
Memory 31
Historical Background 31
Cerebral Dominance Theory 33
Complementary Hemisphericity Theory 34
Recent Trends 36
vi CONTENTS
The Neurolinguistic Methods 37
Suggestopedia 37
Total Physical Response 40
The Natural Approach 41
Neurolinguistic Questions 42
The SLA = NLA Hypothesis 43
The CPH Issue 43
The Role of the RH in SLA 44
UGTheory 45
Chapter 3 Making Second Language Teaching "Brain-Compatible" 48
Introduction 48
Two Modal Principles 50
The Modal Flow Principle 51
The Modal Focusing Principle 55
The Contextualization Principle 57
Cultural Contextualization 58
Practical Contextualization 58
The Conceptualization Principle 61
Concrete Concepts 62
Abstract Concepts 63
Implications 64
Revamping Contrastive Analysis 68
Chapter 4 Fine Tuning the Brain for Language Acquisition 72
Introduction 72
Conceptual Competence 72
Neuroscientific Research on Metaphor 77
Conceptual Metaphor Theory 78
Extending the Theory 86
Revisiting the SL T Dilemma 89
Conceptual Systems in Contact 91
A Conceptually-Based CA 92
Practi cal Imp Ii cations 97
CONTENTS vii
Chapter 5 Activating the Brain in the Classroom 102
Introduction 102
Repertoire of Techniques 104
Structural Techniques 105
Visual Techniques 110
Ludic Techniques 111
Humor Techniques 115
Role-Playing Techniques 117
Organizational Issues 118
Selecting an Appropriate Technique 118
Integrating Linguistic, Communicative, and Conceptual Systems 125
Concluding Remarks 126
Glossary and Abbreviations 127
Cited Wodes and General Bibliography 141
Index 169
PREFACE
At no other time in the history of education have teachers of languages been so
knowledgeable about what to do in the classroom, or have had so many advanced
tools at their disposal to help their students learn-from expertly-designed text
books to technologically-sophisticated devices such as CD-ROMs. Yet, despite the
many strides that teachers have made over the years, and notwithstanding the many
sophisticated tools that they have at hand today, only a small fraction of students
eventually achieve native-like proficiency at the end of a course of study. Why?
This question has bothered me throughout my professional life as a teacher of
second languages. Disenchanted with existing methodologies, in the mid-1980s I
ventured to seek insights from the domain of the neurosciences, thinking at the time
that my theoretical adventure would probably turn out to be an unproductive one.
To my surprise, it changed my view of learning drastically, allowing me to take
charge of my classroom and to turn it into a veritable "field lab." Hence, the reason
for this book. I have written it, simply, to communicate to my teacher colleagues
the important pedagogical insights that I believe can be gained from an excursion
into the neuroscientific domain.
Incidentally, my interest in the neurosciences brought me, in 1986, in contact
with neuropsychologists and special education teachers working with brain
damaged children in Italy. From ensuing collaborative research on how to design
teaching materials for such children, Bimodality Theory emerged-the view that
the two primary modes of learning, the experiential and the analytical, must be ac
tivated in specific ways for such children (e.g. Danesi 1986 and D'Alfonso, Danesi,
De Lellis, and Mastracci 1986). To my surprise, various Italian educators adopted
Bimodality Theory shortly thereafter as a general framework for developing teach
ing curricula for handicapped children in school (D'Alonzo 1993). By the late
1980s, various second language teachers in Italy and North America started assess
ing the implications of Bimodality Theory critically for second language teaching
in general (e.g. Lombardo 1988, Nuessel and Cicogna 1992, Pallotta 1993, Sche
none 1994), and a number of doctoral students began investigating its principles
empirically as potential constructs for second language acquisition (e.g. Arno 1993,
Curro 1995, Smor Forster 1995). Incidentally, when the term bimodality was pro
posed in 1986, I was not aware of the fact that it had already been in use among
neuroscientists as a synonym for Complementary Hemisphericity Theory (e.g.
Dunn 1985). I was also not cognizant of the fact that the term was employed by
Laurence Ridge, a professor of mathematical education at the University of To
ronto, five years earlier in 1981. Ridge's use of the term in that year was, to the
best of my knowledge, the first time it was so utilized in the educational literature.
x PREFACE
Bimodality Theory hardly stands alone as a "neuroscientifically-based pro
posal" for second language teaching. Interest among practitioners in brain research
started, actually, in the late 1960s, right after linguist Eric Lenneberg published his
widely-influential 1967 study, The Biological Foundations of Language, in which
he put forward the hypothesis that there is a biologically-limited period for acquir
ing language that starts at birth and ends at adolescence. Neuroscientific research
on the implications that Lenneberg's hypothesis had for the second language teach
ing profession at large was started almost immediately. Decades later, the time has
come to ask ourselves if the fuss over the neurosciences has been worthwhile. Can
knowledge about the brain truly inform not only the way we teach children with
learning problems, but also the way we teach normal students in typical classroom
situations? And what does it mean to say that a teaching approach is "brain
compatible?" These are the kinds of questions I will address in this book. However,
from the outset I must make it clear that I will only address them, not attempt to
answer them, simply because there is no empirical way to demonstrate that a spe
cific teaching procedure is capable of activating a certain part of the brain-unless
we put our students through a PET scan as we teach them something! And even if it
could be shown that a certain part is activated, in response to a specific instruc
tional stimulus, what would that truly mean, given that surprisingly little is known
about the nature of the link between brain physiology and mental functions? Never
theless, it is my cautious opinion that the foray into the neuroscientific domain on
the part of practitioners in the last three decades or so has been a fruitful one. If
nothing else, it has forced us to look more attentively and critically at the condi
tions we create in our classrooms and at the theoretical suppositions underlying
new instructional practices or teaching syllabi proposed by educators. Good teach
ing is largely an art, and thus shaped mainly by hunches about what to do that come
essentially from experience. But these hunches can certainly be confirmed or re
fined greatly by knowledge about how the brain acquires language.
I have used the manuscript of this book with prospective high school teachers
of second languages over the last few years. Several of its parts are reworkings of
previously-published research, supported by various grants from the Social Sci
ences and Humanities research Council of Canada, to whom I am very grateful.
These have been integrated into the present book without hopefully compromising
its coherence. Lacking from the present treatment are the actual data and the analy
ses of the studies that support Bimodality Theory. Readers can examine these first
hand themselves by consulting the relevant references in the bibliography provided
at the back.
This volume has not been designed as a "research monograph," but rather as a
"neuroscientific essay" on the principles that in my opinion should form the basis
of "informed" second language teaching. I have written it with a particular view in
mind-a view "from the right side of the brain," so to speak. Therefore, although it
has all the typical features of other methodology books, such as historical accounts
of language teaching trends, synopses of the main learning theories, overviews of
suitable techniques, etc., it provides a different framework for viewing them.
I must warn readers from the outset about what not to expect from this book.
First, they will not frod in it an in-depth treatment of neuroscience or neurolinguis-
PREFACE xi
tics proper. Relevant introductory manuals in these fields are listed in the bibliog
raphy at the back, which contains not only cited works, but also those dealing gen
erally with neuroscience and second language learning and teaching. Second, read
ers should not expect to [rod a prescription in it of how to teach a language me
thodically. Brain research is useful only in providing insights, not overarching solu
tions. I will, however, discuss in some detail the implications that Bimodality The
ory would seem to hold in store for language teaching practices. Whether readers
agree or disagree with any or all of my comments, is beside the point of this book.
My only hope is that they will be stimulated by it to know more about brain
compatible second language teaching. That and that alone will have made its writ
ing worthwhile, for I believe that such knowledge can form the basis for developing
pedagogy that will lead to enhanced learning outcomes for students today.
I would like to thank my students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Educa
tion, the University of Toronto, the University of Perugia, and the University of
Lugano. Their critical responses to Bimodality Theory, along with the many enthu
siastic classroom discussions that I have had with them over the years, have en
couraged me to write this manual for a broader audience. A special thanks goes out
to those teachers and researchers who have become interested in Bimodality The
ory, and who have become both its most enthusiastic supporters and its most effec
tive critics. The many suggestions they have made to me over the years have been
incorporated into this book. lowe a special debt of gratitude to the late Thomas A.
Sebeok and to Professor Albert Valdman of Indiana University for the unwavering
support they have always given to my ideas, and for inviting me to synthesize them
in book form. Most of the content of this book has, in any case, been inspired by
their truly pivotal work in linguistics, education, and semiotics. As a graduate stu
dent at the University of Toronto in the late 1960s I came under the spell of their
writings. These have left an indelible mark on my own research and writing.
Last but not least, I must thank my family, Alexander, Sarah, Lucia, Danila,
Christopher, and Danilo for having been tolerant and patient with me as I worked
on this book. I know I have been grumpy and absent-minded in the process. I dedi
cate this book to them.
Marcel Danesi
University of Toronto, 2003