Білім беру бағдарламасына арналған торм 5206 тілдерді оқытудағы психологиялық МӘселелер пәні бойынша лекция тезистерінің жинағы

In the decade of the 1960s, the generative-transformational school of linguistics emerged through the influence of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky was trying to show that human language cannot be scrutinized simply in terms of observable stimuli and responses or the volumes of raw data gath­ered by field linguists. The generative linguist was interested not only in describing language (achieving the level of descriptive adequacy) but also in arriving at an explanatory level of adequacy in the study of language, that is, a "principled basis, independent of any particular language, for the selection of the descriptively adequate grammar of each language" (Chomsky 1964).

Early seeds of the generative-transformational revolution were planted near the beginning of the twentieth century. Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) claimed that there was a difference between parole (what Skinner "observes," and what Chomsky called performance) and langue (akin to the concept of competence, or our underlying and unobservable language ability). A few decades later, however, descriptive linguists chose largely to ignore langue and to study parole, as was noted above. The revolution brought about by generative linguistics broke with the descriptivists' preoc­cupation with performance—the outward manifestation of language—and capitalized on the important distinction between the overtly observable aspects of language and the hidden levels of meaning and thought that give birth to and generate observable linguistic performance.

Similarly, cognitive psychologists asserted that meaning, under­standing, and knowing were significant data for psychological study. Instead of focusing rather mechanistically on stimulus-response connec­tions, cognitivists tried to discover psychological principles of organization and functioning. David Ausubel (1965) noted:

Cognitive psychologists, like generative linguists, sought to discover underlying motivations and deeper structures of human behavior by using a rational approach. That is, they freed themselves from the strictly empir­ical study typical of behaviorists and employed the tools of logic, reason, extrapolation, and inference in order to derive explanations for human behavior. Going beyond descriptive to explanatory power took on utmost importance.

Both the structural linguist and the behavioral psychologist were inter­ested in description, in answering what questions about human behavior: objective measurement of behavior in controlled circumstances. The gen­erative linguist and cognitive psychologist were, to be sure, interested in the what question; but they were far more interested in a more ultimate question, why: What underlying reasons, genetic and environmental fac­tors, and circumstances caused a particular event?

If you were to observe someone walk into your house, pick up a chair and fling it through your window, and then walk out, different kinds of ques­tions could be asked. One set of questions would relate to what happened:

the physical description of the person, the time of day, the size of the chair, the impact of the chair, and so forth. Another set of questions would ask why the person did what he did: What were the person's motives and psycho­logical state, what might have been the cause of the behavior, and so on. The first set of questions is very rigorous and exacting: it allows no flaw, no mis­take in measurement; but does it give you ultimate answers? The second set of questions is richer, but obviously riskier. By daring to ask some difficult questions about the unobserved, we may lose some ground but gain more profound insight about human behavior.

Constructivism

Constructivism is hardly a new school of thought. Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, names often associated with constructivism, are not by any means new to the scene of language studies. Yet constructivism emerged as a pre­vailing paradigm only in the last part of the twentieth century. What is con­structivism, and how does it differ from the other two viewpoints described above?

Constructivists, not unlike some cognitive psychologists, argue that all human beings construct their own version of reality, and therefore multiple contrasting ways of knowing and describing are equally legitimate. This perspective might be described as

an emphasis on active processes of construction [of meaning], attention to texts as a means of gaining insights into those processes, and an interest in the nature of knowledge and its vari­ations, including the nature of knowledge associated with mem­bership in a particular group. (Spivey 1997)

Constructivist scholarship can focus on "individuals engaged in social prac­tices. ... on a collaborative group, [or] on a global community" (Spivey 1997).

A constructivist perspective goes a little beyond the rationalist/innatist and the cognitive psychological perspective in its emphasis on the primacy of each individual's construction of reality. Piaget and Vygotsky, both com­monly described as constructivists (in Nyikos & Hashimoto 1997), differ in the extent to which each emphasizes social context. Piaget (1972) stressed the importance of individual cognitive development as a relatively solitary act. Biological timetables and stages of development were basic; social-interaction was claimed only to trigger development at the right moment in time. On the other hand, Vygotsky (1978), described as a "social" con­structivist by some, maintained that social interaction was foundational in cognitive development and rejected the notion of predetermined stages.

Researchers studying first and second language acquisition have demonstrated constructivist perspectives through studies of conversa­tional discourse, sociocultural factors in learning, and interactionist theo­ries. In many ways, constructivist perspectives are a natural successor to cognitivist studies of universal grammar, information processing, memory, artificial intelligence, and interlanguage systematicity.

All three positions must be seen as important in creating balanced descriptions of human linguistic behavior. Consider for a moment the analogy of a very high mountain, viewed from a distance. From one direc­tion the mountain may have a sharp peak, easily identified glaciers, and dis­tinctive rock formations. From another direction, however, the same mountain might now appear to have two peaks (the second formerly hidden from view) and different configurations of its slopes. From still another direction, yet further characteristics emerge, heretofore unob­served. The study of SLA is very much like the viewing of our mountain: we need multiple tools and vantage points in order to ascertain the whole picture.
Table 1.1 - A summarize of concepts and approaches described in the three perspectives above. The table may help to pinpoint certain broad ideas that are associated with the respective positions