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JAMES R. NORD

of creating, comprehending and remembering linguistic utterances may thus involve
principles beyond those necessary for characterizing the linguistic system per se. '⁴⁷ Bransford and Johnson go on to do an excellent job of cionvincing one that the interpretation of an utterance is possible only when we can find a relevant context in our conceptual knowledge of the world. Their dominant theme is the reminder that a language is a symbol system that is generally used by individuals for the purpose of communication, and that the effective use of this symbol system depends on other knowledge available to its users. This viewpoint sees perceptual events as basically semantic units and both independent and prior to language itself. It also sees perception as primary and language as a device to refine as well as to communicate suchperceptions

In the new foreign language teaching paradigm, in the comprehension approach, the basic paradigm shifts in linguistics and psychology are incorporated almost completely. The nature of language is not "talk". Rather, language is viewed as an internal cognitive structure, a symbolic system, which both aids thinking within the individual and which acts as the guidance system in interpersonal communications.
The nature of learningis not a "change in behavior", but rather a change in the internal cognitive structure. Or as Chomsky has put it:
A child who has learned a language has developed an internal representation of a
system of rules that determine how the sentences are formed, used and understood...
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Chomsky also points out that a child who has learned the language "...has done this on the basis of what we call primary linguistic data. "'⁴⁹

The initial focus on listening comprehension as a target skill is less as a performance skill than as a basic source of "primary lingustic data" by which an intellectually growing organism can feed itself food for thought. Aural linguistic data are considered as primary, while graphic linguistic data are considered secondary; and, while a comprehension approach will involve both, it begins with the aural linguistic data, hence the focus on listening, on the linguistic symbol system side. It should not be forgotten, however, that the comprehension approach places an equal emphasis on the semantic side of the system.

The term learning, if it is used in respect to language acquisition, must be interpreted as a growth phenomenon.⁵⁰The distinction between internal brain growth and externally observed performance as a manifestation or indicator of that growth must be kept clearly separate. As Bandura puts it, "social learning theory distinguishes between acquisition and performance because people do not enact everything they learn."⁵¹It is this distinction which seems to be implied by the linguists when they use terms such as communicative competence and performance. Bandura makes the parallel explicit and adds a reason for focusing on acquisition rather than performance.
The differentiation made by psycholinguists between language competence and
performance corresponds to the distinction made between learning and performance
in social learning theory. Since observational learning does not require performance,
it provides a medium for rapid acquisition of new competencies. ⁵² We thus come back to the point that the new paradigm sees listening comprehension as the "means" (primary linguistic data) to achieve language acquisition. In this new paradigm, listening cannor be considered a passive skill. It can be considered as a receptive skill, but not a passive skill.
To understand the "learning" process involved in language acquisition, we must look more to neurology and neuropsychology. Speech is controlled in the left brain by the part of the