Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T05:23:00.864Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Cloud-Cuckoo-Land” or: Feedback as the Central Component in Foreign-Language Teaching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

J. B. Walmsley
J. B. Walmsley
Affiliation:
Pädagogische Hochschule Westfalen-Lippe
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In this paper I shall argue that FEEDBACK constitutes a central but unjustly neglected concept in the study of institutionalized foreign language learning. Since feedback is the crucial element in distinguishing cybernetic from linear models in general, I shall also be adopting the position that language learning, and foreign-language learning in particular, is best represented in cybernetic terms. To date, however, as Crothers and Suppes (1967:19) point out, feedback in psychological literature (and the same is true, I think, for the literature on foreign-language teaching) has usually been characterized simply as a 0, 1 event-that is, as a binary opposition which could be represented as “yes/no.” Our discussion will show, however, that even in the limited communication situation of the foreign-language classroom the students can and do extract much more from the behavior of the teacher than we might suppose – even if what they learn is somewhat different in nature from what the teacher intends. In proposing an explicitly cybernetic approach as a basis for modeling foreign-language learning, we must be careful to point out that this approach has most in common with many models put forward to explain particular processes within biology and, in the study of speech, with those postulated to explain speech degeneration (Arnold 1960, 1961; Gerard 1959; Milisen 1966; West 1957; Wolf and Wolf 1959; Wood 1945) and also some aspects of speech production and perception (Laver's 1970 model is implicitly cybernetic, as are Corder's speculations on the role of error in foreign-language learning. The analysis-by-synthesis model of speech perception, in that it can be reduced to the form HYPOTHESIS + FEEDBACK, is also essentially cybernetic in nature.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Spring 1980 , pp. 29 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Annett, J. 1969. Feedback and human behavior. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Arnold, G. E. 1960. Studies in tachyphemia: l. Present concepts of etilogical factors. Logos 3. 25–45.Google Scholar
Arnold, G. E. 1961. Congenital language disability as a study model of evolution in communication. Language and Speech 4. 113–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ashby, W. R. 1952. Design for a brain. London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Borger, R., and Seaborne, A. E. M.. 1966. The psychology of learning. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Brown, R. 1973. A first language. London: Allen & Unwin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R.; Cazden, C.; and Bellugi-Klima, U.. 1969. The child's grammar from 1 to 111. In Hill, 2. 28–73.Google Scholar
Brown, R.; Cazden, C., and Wales, R.. 1970. The study of language acquisition. In Lyons, 242–60.Google Scholar
Cazden, C. B. 1965. Environmental assistance to the child's acquisition of grammar. Harvard University dissertation.Google Scholar
Cohen, A. 1968. Errors of speech and their implications for understanding the strategy of language users. Zeitschrift fur Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung, 177–81.Google Scholar
Couffignal, L. 1966. La cybernetique et l'enseignement des langues vivantes. Etudes de linguistique appliquee 4. 116–33.Google Scholar
Corder, S. P. 1967. The significance of learners' errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 5. 161–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Cube, F. 1965. Kybernetische Grundlagen des Lehrens und Lernens. Stuttgart: Klett.Google Scholar
Filipovic, R. (ed.). 1972. Active methods and modern aids in the foreign languages. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, H. 1971. Kybernetische Grundlagen der Pädagogik. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.Google Scholar
Franke, H. W. 1970. Informationspsychologische Aspekte der Sprache. Linguistische Berichte 8. 30–37.Google Scholar
Gerard, R. W. 1959. Brains and behavior. Human Biology 31. 14–20.Google ScholarPubMed
Gordon, B., and Jakobovits, L. A.. 1974. The context of foreign-language teaching. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Gregory, R. L. 1966. Eye and brain. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.Google Scholar
Haugen, E. 1972. Bilingualism as a social and personal problem. In Filipovic, 1–14.Google Scholar
Hayes, J. R. (ed.). 1970. Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Hill, J. P. (ed). 1969. Minnesota symposia on child development, Vol. 2. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Jeffress, L. A. (ed.). 1951. Cerebral mechanisms in behavior: the Hixon symposium. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Lashley, K. 1951. The problem of serial order in behavior. In Jeffress, 112–36.Google Scholar
Laver, J. D. M. 1970. The production of speech. In Lyons, 53–75.Google Scholar
Lyons, J. (ed.). 1970. New horizons in linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
MacFarland, D. J. 1971. Feedback mechanisms in animal behavior. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
McNeil, D. 1970. The acquisition of language. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Milisen, R. 1966. Articulatory problems. Speech pathology, ed. by Rieber, R. W. and Brubaker, R. S., 301–20. Amsterdam: North HollandGoogle Scholar
Miller, G. E.; Galanter, E.; and Pribam, K. H.. 1960. Plans and the structure of behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nathan, P. 1969. The nervous system. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Oiler, J. W., and Richards, J. C. (eds.). 1973. Focus on the learner: pragmatic perspectives for the language teacher. Rowley: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Olsson, M. 1972. Intelligibility. Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg Department of English.Google Scholar
Pribram, K. H. 1971. Languages of the brain. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Sinclair, H. 1971. Sensorimotor action patterns as a condition for the acquisition of syntax. In Huxley and Ingram, 121–30.Google Scholar
Upshur, J. A. 1973. Context for language testing. In Oiler and Richards, 200–13.Google Scholar
Vigil, N. A., and Oiler, J. W.. 1976. Rule fossi1 ization: a tentative model. Language Learning 26. 281–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walmsley, J. B. 1976. Feedback and simulation. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 14. 323–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, R. 1957. The neurophysiology of speech. Handbook of speech pathology and audiology, ed. by Travis, L. E., 51–59. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Weiner, N. 1948. Cybernetics. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wilkins, D. 1972. Linguistics In language teaching. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Wolf, A. A., and Wolf, E. G.. 1959. Feedback processes in the theory of certain speech disorders. Journal of Speech Pathology and Therapy 2. 48.Google Scholar
Wood, K. S. 1945. Parental maladjustment and functional articulatory defects in children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 11. 225–75.Google Scholar
Young, J. Z. 1971. Introduction to the study of man. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zabrocki, L. 1972. Kybernetische Lernmodelle und programmierter Fren-sprachenunterricht. In Filipovic, 15–35.Google Scholar
Zabrocki, L. 1975. Kybernetische Modelle der sprachlichen Kommunikation. Wroclaw: Polskiej Akademii Nauk.Google Scholar