Introduction
600 years ago, Copernicus helped change the world we live in by
proposing that astronomers change their viewpoint. 500 years ago, Columbus
also changed the world by following his "new vision" of the world. Both
of these change of viewpoints, were resisted by many people, and it took
a long time for a majority of people to accept the new viewpoints. Both
viewpoints are basically contrary to "common sense". Even today, many people
still linguistically refer to the sun revolving around the earth with expressions
such as "sunrise" and "sunset". Many people will still refer to "upstairs"
and "downstairs" as if we lived in a flat world of ups and downs, instead
of referring to the more accurate description of "outstairs" and "instairs".
It is therefore understandable that many in the language teaching profession
are still not sure about the exact role of listening and speaking in the
practice of language teaching.
When major shifts of viewpoint occur in the sciences, there is
also a period of resistance, slow acceptance, and often a verbal habit
pattern which persists for many years. Kuhn (1962) has articulated a theory
of intellectual change that has had significant impact on the history of
science. According to Kuhn, once scientific communities have reached a
certain level of maturity, they begin to operate on the basis of "some
implicit body of intertwined theoretical and methodological belief" that
he calls a paradigm. (p.5) When difficulties arise in using the paradigm,
when an extraordinary set of investigations begins which leads to a new
set of commitments, to a new world view, to a new paradigm, a 'scientific
revolution" is taking place.
Only 40 years ago, a scientific revolution began which has created
ripple effects throughout the various scientific disciplines. Because it
is relatively new, it is not well known, somewhat resisted, and generally
not applied at the professional level. Yet, it is precisely at the professional
level that this new scientific position will ultimately have its greatest
impact. Previously, science has focused upon knowledge. That is, they have
tried to abstract events until they approached a timeless state. E=MC2
is one of the highest achievements of the physical sciences. It is however
a mathematical formula. It is therefore reversible. The one way arrow of
time has been eliminated from physical sciences mathematical formulation
of events.
The new scientific approach works in the opposite direction.
It focuses upon events as they take place with the irreversible movement
of time. This approach studies structures as they are effected by events
which take place over time. They are not reversible. The "scientific revolution"
returns time back into the formula. It therefore deals more directly with
the concerns of the professional. If understood therefore, it could have
profound implications for the basic practices of foreign language teaching.
It strongly supports the listening approach and significantly changes the
way speaking is understood. It is however, somewhat contrary to "common
sense" and therefore requires a more extensive explanation. This paper
attempts to provide a introduction to this "scientific revolution" and
a few of its implications for foreign language teaching and future research.
Current Language Teaching Controversy
Twenty years ago, listening was largely ignored as a language
skill to be taught. The focus of the then current "audio lingual" methodology
was on speaking. Many believed that listening would "automatically" occur
in the process of learning to speak. Most felt that listening was somehow
the easiest of the four skills and was learned largely by exposure. Some
even believed that practice in speaking was the best way to learn to listen.
Fries (1945) for example, after recognizing the two phases of "oral production"
and "receptive understanding" states, "As a matter of fact, practice in
production is one of the best means of developing recognition." (p.8) Others
however disputed this point. Belasco (1971) writes that he was, "jolted
by the realization that it is possible to develop so called 'speaking'
ability (vocalizing) and yet be virtually incompetent in understanding
the spoken language." (p .195)
Partly as a consequence of this kind of discovery, and partly
as a consequence of research by a group somewhat outside the language establishment,
a shift of attention was signaled. Over the past ten to fifteen years,
listening comprehension has been promoted from a somewhat neglected skill
to a status of crucial importance in language learning, especially though
not exclusively in the United States. Part of the shift has been due to
researchers such as Asher (1966, 1969, 1972, 1977), Gary (1975, 1980),
Nord (1975, 1980), Postovsky (1970, 1974) and Winitz & Reed (1973,
1975). All of these researchers focused upon listening as the focal skill
and all of these researchers advocated a delay of oral response demand.
All pointed out that listening was both the necessary and sufficient causal
factor in language learning and that speaking should not be forced. Krashen
(1982) has made the point most clearly when he stated, "if you want to
teach someone to talk, do not teach them to talk, give them comprehensible
input ! " (p.21)
This position seemed so extreme that even those who felt that
listening deserved more attention were horrified. Wilga Rivers for example,
was one of those who had advocated more emphasis on listening quite early
on (Rivers, 1966), but who has since turned to attack the position quite
vehemently (Rivers, 1984). While some criticism of some specific attempts
to apply the new paradigm to language teaching may be justified, it seems
premature to judge so harshly on only a few examples, and to throw the
baby out with the bathwater. The new viewpoint is only 40 years old. It
needs refining yes. It needs to be understood better even by its advocates
yes. But it also needs to be better understood by its critiques before
their criticism can be considered valid. Otherwise it begins to sound like
many of the critiques of Copernicus and Columbus who merely held back progress
for many years.
The new approach certainly does seems contrary to "common sense".
Most of the opponents to the comprehension approach have argued that "we
learn by doing". We learn to swim by swimming and we learn to play the
piano by playing not by listening to someone else play. Their argument
therefore is that speaking is a skill which must be taught if it is to
be learned. The argument has a ring of authenticity to the ears of the
ordinary language teacher. Many of the opponents to the extreme comprehension
position do advocate communicative competence as a focus of attention today.
Their theme song is "interaction" in which both listening and speaking
are practiced from the first day. Their position on listening is that listening
is important, but students should be listening to "authentic" materials
and then responding orally to it. Scientifically, these people seem either
unaware of, or indifferent to the "scientific revolution" which has taken
place in the philosophy of science itself.
The Scientific Controversy over Causality
In the philosophy of science, a keystone of scientific explanation
has been causality. Von Foerster (1972) has pointed out that one of the
basic pillars of the scientific method is the "principle of the necessary
and sufficient cause." He points out that this basic principle also implies
that almost everything else in the universe shall be considered irrelevant.
"If P are the causes that are to explain the perceived effect Q, then the
principle of necessary and sufficient cause forces us to reduce our perception
of effects further and further until we hit upon the necessary and sufficient
cause that produces the desired effect: everything else in the universe
shall be irrelevant." (p.37) He goes on to point out that such a position
is counterproductive in attempting to understand any evolutionary process
such as the growth of an individual, the development of a society, or .
. . the learning process. He then points out that Aristotle many years
earlier had referred to two major types of causes which were the center
of controversy within the philosophy of science for many years. Aristotle
distinguished between two kinds of causes, one, the "efficient cause" which
pushes from behind, the other the "final cause" which beckons from ahead.
These two causal explanations were part of the early days of science and
they provided distinctly different explanatory frameworks for either innate
matter or living organisms. The distinction was primarily that "efficient
causes" temporally precedes the effect, while the "final cause" succeeds
its effect in time. For example, when striking a match on the treated surface
of a match box, the striking is the (efficient) cause for the match to
ignite. However, the (final) cause is my wish to see it ignited.
The scientific community of the 17th and 18th centuries argued
about these two causal factors. The physical sciences were the leading
proponents of the analytic method. The analytic method is basically the
examination of the relationship between pairs of variables at a time and
the construction of a mathematical theory in which (efficient) causally
interrelated factors were combined into a single equation. Attempts to
extend the analytic method to the study of living processes were only partially
successful. According to one view, called vitalism, the extension of the
analytic method to living processes was in principle impossible, because
the living processes were not governed by the same laws as non living processes.
One position firmly defended by the vitalists was that living beings were
governed by goals and purposes, while inanimate objects which obeyed the
laws of physics were not goal oriented. Vitalists, using the concept of
final causes which pull from ahead, or teleological explanations, were
closely associated with a belief in God.
Using the "If such and so (condition) . . . then this result"
paradigm, the science of physics developed more and more mechanical explanations
of motion without reference to its possible future states. The success
of the mechanical view of subsuming a vast variety of motions under a single
theory plus the tainted association of the vitalists with religion, contributed
to the demise of teleological explanations in physics. By the beginning
of the twentieth century, the scientific community as a whole, regardless
of specific discipline, rejected teleological explanations as "unscientific".
The universe was seen as a giant mechanical clockwork in which science
had simply to continue the analysis to "understand" the entire universe.
It was in this atmosphere that modern "scientific" psychology and linguistics
grew up. As Rapoport (1968) expressed it,
In linguistics, the subject matter became the publicly observable
data, often "sterilized" from its meaning, and completely divorced from
the temporal variable. In psychology, the behavioral movement vigorously
opposed all teleological explanations of behavior and insisted that only
observable stimuli (efficient causes) and observable responses (effects)
were legitimate explanatory factors for a "scientific psychology". As Bandura
( I 977) put it.
Shifting the Paradigm
The publication of Wiener's book Cybernetics in 1948 signalled a return to the systems approach and teleological causality as a legitimate explanatory framework within the sciences. Wiener (1948) proposed that systems can self regulate themselves on the basis of their outputs, rather than their inputs. To put it another way, they can be controlled on the basis of final cause as well as efficient cause. The pull of goal seeking became as legitimate a scientific explanation as the push of the efficient causal connection. Central to this new explanatory legitimacy is a concept known as feedback. Wiener (1954) pointed out that feedback operates in both animal and machine systems.
Cybernetic feedback theory is relatively new and hence not thoroughly
known even by many in the scientific disciplines. It is barely forty years
old. Nevertheless, it has been having profound effects upon much of the
scientific community where it has been understood, and once understood
should also have a profound effect upon the foreign language teaching community.
Two early papers, the first by Ashby (1940) coming from England and the
second by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow (1943) coming from America, first
stated the fundamental ideas of cybernetics in a general enough manner
that they could be applied to a wide range of scientific problems. Prior
to that time, since Maxwell in 1868, the concept was known but restricted
to engineering.
In the first paper, Ashby did not use the term "feedback" but
he basically described the concept. He illustrated it with a typical negative
feedback instrument, a thermostat, that is, a temperature control for an
incubator. In the paper by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow, the concept
of negative feedback was explicitly introduced and its importance to purposeful
behavior in organisms was stated. They developed a new taxonomy of behavior
which has more and more become the foundation for modern behavioral understanding,
and which is the basis for the newer understanding of speaking by advocates
of the comprehension approach to foreign language teaching .
These cybernetic scientists began by first distinguishing between
active and passive behaviors. They defined passive behavior as that behavior
which is caused by energy from outside the system. For example, a billiard
ball will remain at rest until an outside force "causes" it to move, and
thenit will follow a certain trajectory. The energy came from outside the
ball, and it follows the laws of motion as set out by Newton. Active behaviors.
on the other hand, are defined by these scientists as those in which the
system in motion is the source of the energy. For example, they would include
the actions of a homing torpedo which has its own energy supply as active
behavior. According to this definition, almost all animal behavior including
human behavior is active behavior. An exception might be the movement of
a cat if it is thrown, or the falling of a boxer after he has been hit.
In these cases, the behavior would be considered passive and follow the
laws of physics. Physics, in fact, can be considered the study of passive
behavior. Efficient causal factors operate in passive behavior. Their role
in active behavior is more complex.
Active behavior, which all humans exhibit was then divided into
two sub categories: random and purposeful. A drunk walking around and bumping
into a lamp post is often described as exhibiting random behavior. This
is because there is no way to predict its sequence. Purposeful behavior
is predictable behavior. It generally is considered to either involve a
goal and the movement to that goal, or it involves a series of motions
based upon a set of rules which will allow one to predict the next movement.
The distinction is not quite however as straightforward as it may seem.
What appears to be random behavior and unpredictable to someone who does
not know the goal being pursued, or the rules being followed, may turn
out to be highly predictable and hence purposeful, once this is known to
the observer. To be able to make the shift from random to purposeful, often
simply requires the ability to shift one's point of view, to observe the
complementary side of the behavior. For example, observing someone driving
up a mountain road and looking only at the motion of the steering wheel,
might lead one to conclude that this is random behavior. But if one observed
the distance between the edge of the tire and the edge of the road, one
would be able to notice a great consistency and hence imply purpose and
predictability to this behavior. The ability to shift points of view is
important in understanding how speaking is active purposeful behavior .
. . based on listening.
The cybernetic scientists go on to further subdivide active purposeful
behavior into two more categories: (1) open-looped or programmed behavior
and (2) closed loop, or feedback behavior. Active purposeful programmed
behavior is that behavior in which both all of the energy and all of the
information controlling the system are internal to the system. Clockworks
were the first major mechanical device to exhibit this type of behavior.
Mechanical toys which are designed to exhibit a certain set of behaviors
such as toy dogs which walk and bark are in this category. They are run
by electric batteries and are controlled by internal mechanical devices.
Some of the early electronic robots also exhibited this type of behavior
although most of the modern ones contain feedback control systems as well.
Humans also seem to exhibit some programmed behavior. Sometimes
our basic habits seem to be of this nature, when we simply repeat an action
without thinking about it and without regard for the effect on the outside
world. We often memorize poems in this way, each word seemingly triggering
the next word in a chain-like reaction. Rote memory seems to be a kind
of programmed behavioral set. Much of the early "Audio-lingual" methodology
seemed to involve this type of behavior training. Students could repeat
sentence patterns, often not knowing what they meant, or why they were
being said, but just producing the sounds one after the other in an active
predictable programmed manner. Humans seem to exhibit programmed behavior
. . . and they do, sometimes, in certain ways, but a more detailed understanding
of that process will come later.
Closed-loop feedback controlled behavior seems to be by far the
most common form of human behavior control. This applies to language behavior
including both listening and speaking. but the details of that must await
a clearer understanding of the general concept. When a cat chases a mouse,
he does not set a program into motion, because the mouse will try to get
away, that is, the mouse will try evasive tactics. In other words, as soon
as a cat begins to chase a mouse, the cat's environment changes, and he
must change his behavior in response to that change. Closed-loop feedback
control takes in information from its environment and uses that information
to help control its next action. With the cat and the mouse, the action
and the feedback are so quick we often don't recognize its presence. The
process also requires predictions about the future movements of the mouse
as well as feedback on whether that which was predicted (guessed) actually
happened.
In criticizing the former behavioral position, Powers (1973b)
points out that "Behaviorists have not distinguished between means and
ends between acts and results because they have not used the model that
is appropriate to behavior." (p. 351) Traditional psychology employs the
open-loop concept of cause and effect in behavior; the effect (behavior)
depends on the cause (stimulus) but not vice versa. The closed loop concept
treats behavior as one of the causes of that same behavior. That is, we
often behave in order to receive the stimuli we want. Or as Powers (1973a)
put it, "What an organism senses affects what it does, and what it does
affects what it senses. " (p. 41) To behave is to control one's own perceptions.
Traditional psychology saw the "results" of the behavior of a
subject from their point of view, but ignored both the motor acts, and
the perceptions of the subject. When a pigeon is trained to walk in a figure
eight pattern, there are at least two levels at which it must be viewed.
The first is what the behaviorists . . . and teachers tend to observe -
the results, the pattern as observed in the perceptual organs of the experimenter
. . . or teacher. But the behavior itself consists of muscular movements
themselves. The figure eight is created by walking movements. The act of
walking produces the result of a figure eight pattern in the observers
perception. The observer sees consistent behavior that remains the same.
But the observer fails to notice that the movements are always different.
As the pigeon traces out the figure eight over and over, its feet are placed
differently oneach repeat of the same point in the pattern. Variable acts
produce a constant result.
The result is what the experimental observer sees - and the result
in the mind of the performer is in cybernetic terms, the cause of the movements
which create it. The acts of the performer vary in order to create not
a consistent behavioral act, but a constant perceptual result. This implies
purpose, even on the part of the pigeon. The purpose of behavioral acts
are, in cybernetic terms, to produce the perceptual results that are in
fact observed. The behavioral experimenter . . . or teacher does not teach
behavior. What is learned is a perceptual result which then controls the
behavior which produces it. The successful behavioral act is merely an
indicator that the perceptual results desired, have been successfully learned.
From the cybernetic feedback point of view, the teacher or experimenter
can never control the behavior of another. Each individual always controls
his own behavioral acts. As Smith and Smith, (1965) put it, "Cybernetic
theory views the individual as a feedback system which generates its own
activity in order to detect and control specific stimulus characteristics
of the environment.": (p. vii)
Cybernetic Feedback Theory with its new taxonomy of behavior
began to make ripples in a number of scientific disciplines. It is creating
in Kuhn (1962) terms, a "scientific revolution." It has upset the focus
on the "analytic" method, and introduced the "synthetic approach" (Ackoff,
1980). The unnecessary narrowing of the scientific approach to the "analytic
method" had its advantages, particularly for understanding "passive behavior",
but it also had its costs. The advantage was its efficiency. An experimenter
may not be right, but he knew what he was looking for. If he didn't find
it on the first try, he could modify the hypothesis and try again. This
was certainly preferable to attempting to simply catalog anything that
one came across, especially since one is likely to come across a great
deal. The cost of using a narrow paradigm in science is the cost of using
any model. They can serve as blinders instead of as an aid to vision. As
Miller and Starr (1967) expressed it,