Continuing with our look at While We’re On The Topic by Bill VanPatten (Alexandria: ACTFL, 2017), this week we are looking at the second principle of Communicative/Contemporary Language Teaching, namely
Language Is Too Abstract And Complex To Teach And Learn Explicitly
With this principle, VanPatten addresses a key question in language instruction: “What is the nature of language?”
This has been answered in various ways throughout time, and each answer – combined with an understanding of the nature of learning and the nature of acquisition – leads to a different pedagogy.
VanPatten specifically rejects certain views of language. Specifically, he holds that …
– Language is not a collection of rules and structures
– Language is not a closed body of text
– Language is neither simple nor concrete
– Language cannot be taught and learned explicitly
A key contention of VanPatten is that language is not what we find in language textbooks, i.e. it is not the grammar and syntax presented in the typical textbook – even when these are viewed as “rules of thumb” and not absolutes.
VanPatten understands language to be a psychological construct, what he calls a “mental representation” in the mind/brain of the speaker. This construct or mental representation looks nothing like the “rules of grammar” typically presented in textbooks. As VanPatten famously puts it:
What’s on page 32 of the textbook is not what winds up in your head.
As an illustration of this disjunct between psychology and pedagogy, VanPatten considers the issue of identifying the subject of a sentence. In the discussion, the author illustrates the difficulty of articulating an explicit and concrete definition of “subject”, even though most people can identify the subject in a given sentence in their native language.
The mental representation of language that people have in their mind/brain is, according to VanPatten
– abstract
– complex
– implicit
Language is abstract. That is, it cannot be readily described in typical “lay” language. Professionals use abstract constructs to describe language, terms such as “underlying features”, “functional versus lexical categories”, “phrase structures”, and “movement and merge”.
Language is complex. That is, it has many components that can be arranged in various configurations.There are sound systems (with wide ranging variants), words (meaning and structure), syntax (relationships among words), rhythm and tone, intent, and more.
Language is implicit. That is, we do not have conscious knowledge of the contents of our mental representation of language and cannot (easily) articulate what we know even though we know when any given utterance transgresses one of the implicit strictures of our native language.
VanPatten then draws implications for Language Teaching. His first and boldest implication is
Because language is so abstract, complex, and implicit, you cannot teach (or learn) language explicitly
Drawing on his understanding of the nature of language, the nature of acquisition, and the nature of the mind/brain, VanPatten reminds the reader that
communication and language are not the same thing
Furthermore,
explicit rules and paradigms cannot become the abstract and complex system of language because the two things are completely different
The further implication is that teachers cannot teach language but can create a context and environment in which learners acquire a language. That context includes providing learners with large quantities of messages in the target language that they understand and find interesting.
There are researchers who disagree with VanPatten’s position and believe that at least some propositional knowledge (rules and paradigms) can be transmogrified into procedural knowledge (mental representation) and who hold to different versions of “comprehensible input plus”, e.g. the “noticing hypothesis”, the “output hypothesis” and “sociocultural theory”. However, the commonality in all of these is the indispensability and primacy of comprehensible input.
No matter what you may think of additions to comprehensible input, it is important to acknowledge that
Comprehensible Input is the sine qua non of language acquisition.
Followers of VanPatten (and Krashen) believe it is also the non plus ultra of language acquisition. VanPatten’s small book makes a good case for this.