Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)

Budai, László: Some Basic Assumptions Underlying Foreign Language Teaching Strategies

- 90 disciplines, especially linguistics and psychology. Such influence is inevitable, since language instructioin must tie based oh a certain view of language and of language acguisition. In recent years, the trend towards an interdisciplinary approach — and away from theoretical fragmentation — has become evident in many spheres. Foreign language teaching methodology should encompass not only a study of the language and its acquisition, but also insights gleaned from various sources (Raz 1902). Differences in strategies may be the result of (1) different theories of the nature of language, (2) different types of language descriptions, and (3) different ideas on language learning and language acquisition (cf. Mackey 1965). During the Middle Ages grammar was associated with logic, assuming that grammar was dependent on logical analysis. Language was divided into writing, speaking and thinking, which resulted in a close association of the processes of thought and grammar. And as logic, i. e. the laws of thought appeared to be universal, it followed that grammar was universal, too; one grammar would do for all languages despite individual word variations. Ignoring the characteristic differences between languages, grammarians modelled their description of a language on that of Latin. The mediaeval concept of language had and has not even now ceased to have far-reaching consequences for foreign language teaching and learning. The Grammar1ranslation Metho

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, the outcome of the concept, can be typified by the following: — collections of semantically unrelated sentences dominated by formal grammar, whose main concern is the word and the sentence; — teh learning of grammar for grammar's sake (the knowledge of the rules being more important than their applications): the nemorizing of labels, definitions, rules, and paradigms; the use of jingles for memorizing rare exceptions to paradigms, prepositions, governments, etc.; -- learning unstructured bilingual lists of words, which results in poor retention, confusion of words and ideas; — practising rules, paradigms and isolated vocabulary items through exercises in two-way translation;