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JAMES R . NOR D

alternatives; but little fundamental change came forth. John Carroll cited the "cognitive code learning approach" as an alternative in 1965. Unfortunately, as pointed out by Postovsky,
... some proponents of the cognitive theory of language acquisition, while rejecting the
mechanistic approach to language teaching still adhere to the behavioristic view of
language as a phenomenon. To them, language is still "talk". It may be defined as
"communicative competence and performance", but conceptually it is exactly the same
as "verbal behavior". It logically follows this essential behavioristic premise that
language learning isequivalent to learning to talk. ⁸
This is not really surprising. Old paradigms die hard.
Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend most of their
time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the
world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community's
willingness to defend this assumption, if necessary at considerable cost.⁹ It is especially difficult for those who have gained a reputation by adhering to a paradigm to later repudiate it and follow another.
For these men the new theory implies a change in the rules governing their prior
practice of normal science. Inevitably, therefore, it reflects upon much scientific work
they have already successfully completed.¹⁰
Part of being ordinary as a scientist is to resist changes of a certain sort, the sort that question fundamental assumptions, this resistance going under the vigilante activity of "maintaining high scientific standards".

As a consequence, most theoretical texts, most methodological courses, and almost all of the instructional materials on the market today, continue to assume language is "talk" and stress speaking as the primary goal of language teaching. Few seem to argue with Muskat- Tabakowska's assessment: "In a very general and lay sense, language teaching is a process aimed at making pupils speak a foreign language like native speakers". ¹¹

It is with some reluctance that I suggest that now may be the time to change the basic paradigm of language teaching. Now may be the time to shift from speaking to listening as the focal skill; to change from a response-oriented, production-focused methodology to a stimulus-oriented, problem-solving methodology; to move toward a paradigm concerned with competence and away from a paradigm concerned with performance.

"The success of the paradigm", writes Kuhn, "is at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples. Normal science consists in the actualization of that promise, an actualization achieved by extending the knowledge of those facts that the paradigm displays as particularly revealing, by increasing the extent of the match between those facts and the paradigm's predictions, and by further articulation of the paradigm itself".^{1 2}

This paper will try to provide some selected and still incomplete examples of the potential value I believe can be found in concentrating our research efforts and our teaching practices on the phenomenon of listening tiuency in foreign language learning. As my opinion may appear new and at odds with the vast majority of researchers and practitioners in the field, it is only from a persuasion that it is right and holds considerable promise that I bring it before you. Since my opinion may be different from many professionals of greater fame and repute, I hesitate to counter them, yet my sense of duty as a scholar makes me obliged to present to you at least some of the facts, research and logical argumentation which have

DEVELOPING LISTENING FLUENCY

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convinced me of its correctness. After you have heard my reasoning and weighed my evidence, you may judge my conclusions; and your judgment may possibly change mine. Until then, I ask you to "listen" with patience and without prejudice.

What is the new paradigm? Simplistically, it asserts that listening should be taught first and foremost and that oral response should be delayed until listening fluency is well started. At another level of explanation, it asserts that language acquisition can and does take place without any overt performance and, therefore, the primary methodology of language teaching is to create the stimulus conditions which facilitate the attentive and retentive transformation of sound information into an internal cognitive structure or language competence. Finally, the paradigm asserts that language performances, such as speaking, occur after language competence has been acquired, and are guided by that acquired competence. In other words, the new paradigm is focused on language acquisition as distinguished from language performance learning.

Asher has recommended that "for at least one semester in college or six months to a year in high school, the goal of foreign language learning should be listening fluency only".¹³The listening fluency should be so keen that when the student visits Mexico, he can understand almost anything he hears on the street, on television, or on the radio. When this level of comprehension is achieved, the student may be ready for a graceful transition to speaking Spanish. Winitz and Reeds completely agree with this position.
lt is a well documented fact that comprehension precedes speaking in the young child.
.. We regard this sequence of development--comprehension first, production
second-- a functional property of the human brain, which should not be violated in
language instruction. Therefore, we take the point of view that foreign language
instruction should discourage speaking until a high degree of comprehension is
achieved, that is until the student can understand a non-technical conversation and
decode it with ease.^{1 4}
For those who are strongly response oriented, who believe that some sort of speech training is required to learn correct speech, Winitz is clear and uncompromising. "One may ask, is speech production not taught at all? Our answer is an emphatic yes".¹⁵ Winitz makes a clear distinction between allowing students to speak andforcing students to speak.
Speech should be responded to appropriately by clinicians since language will often be
used by children to indicate understanding... however, we do not recommend
mimicry, pattern drills or chaining of words as clinical techniques.¹⁶ Postovsky recognized that speaking was not necessary for the learning of other language skills when he was first involved with a Russian course for stenographers. The course was primarily one of listening to Russian and writing down what was said. While the teaching itself required no speaking, Postovsky was surprised near the conclusion of the course when he found that the "stenographers" could not only listen to and write Russian, they could also speak it. What startled Postovsky the most was that in conversations between the "stenographers" and students from his own "A-L" class, the "stenographers" often spoke Russian with better pronunciation and with fewer grammatical mistakes than the members of his regular "A-L" course.¹⁷His findings led him to prepare a course in which oral response (speaking) was delayed for 180 hours, and then introduced only gradually-- no more than 25 minutes out of a six-hour day at first, and finally up to 90 minutes out of a sixhour day at the end of the course.¹⁸

The "A-L" paradigm, including modern modifications of it, involves listening. But in the classroom focused on speaking, a student "listens" not so much to comprehend as to mimic (in repetition drill) or to respond in correct form (in pattern response drill). Active oral