A. European School
Saussure is considered to be the representative of the European school. His contribution mainly includes two aspects.
On the one hand, he settled down the general direction of modern linguistics, made clear the essence of language and
designed the tasks of linguistic research. Saussure’s view that the meanings of words are to be understood through their
relations to each other was quite opposed to the positivist method among dominant academicians in his day, he sought
to understand language through analysis of sounds and their impact on the nervous system. On the other hand, several
distinctions Saussure made laid down great foundation for later research. They are langue and parole, synchronically
and diachronically (i.e. historically). Without making their relationships clear, the research of modern linguistics is
likely to get back on the way of traditional grammar.
B. American School
Leonard Bloomfield is widely respected as one of the best linguists of the last century and one of the best of all time
as well. He spent most of his time dealing with comparing and contrasting Germanic languages. His best know
publication Language dealing with a standard text gave a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and followers.
Until very recently most American linguists considered themselves Bloomfield's disciples in some sense. Whether they
studied or learned from him or not, many of their linguistic works have taken the form of working out questions raised
by Bloomfield. And methods they adopted are just those suggested by him too.
Bloomfield invented immediate constitute analysis (IC analysis) to dissect a sentence into small parts. e. g. for this
sentence, handsome Jackie Chang is a famous actor.We can treat it in the following way by using IC analysis:
The first analysis: Handsome Jackie Chang∕is a famous boxer.
The second analysis: Handsome ∥Jackie Chang∕is a∥ famous boxer.
The third analysis: Handsome ∥Jackie Chang∕is∕∕∕ a∥ famous∕∕∕ boxer.
If a sentence is longer, this process can continually go on. No matter how long a sentence is, by adopting IC analysis,
it can be divided into the different smallest constitutes which make the sentence. In this way, the different constitutes of
a sentence can be examined. And it proves that a language is a system of symbolic structures.
We have to consider a little bit about the research of the psychological fields at the beginning of the 20th century too.
At that time, mentalism lead by W. Wundt was in a dilemma. Psychologists were thinking about a new theory to help
psychology get out of the mud. Then, a psychological revolution launched by J. B. Watson established behaviorism to
replace Wundt’s mentalism. They argued that the acquirement of any knowledge involves direct experience: knowledge
acquired only through objective and observable experiment can be reliable, otherwise not. Any feeling, impression is
not to be dependent upon.
Bloomfield used behaviorism to guide his structuralist approach to language study, and audio-lingual language
teaching method was brought forward.
V. AUDIO-LINGUAL LANGUAGE TEACHING METHOD
Different from grammar translation method discussed above, audio-lingual language teaching method treats language
as a kind of human habit, it is the speech that is supposed to be spoken by language speakers rather than written out by
them. So we need to teach language itself, not knowledge.
Usually, a language class conducted by way of Audio-lingual language teaching method has the following characters:
Drilling is a central technique. The study process of a foreign language is the process of habit forming. The first step
is mimicking, and this process repeats constantly until a learner feels natural to speak out the sentence he or she is
required to learn. That means the formation of a habit of saying such a sentence naturally. Teachers are required to guide
students to practice the same sentence again and again until they finally get familiar with it. As for the dialogues and
texts in the textbooks, students are required to read them again and again, until they could recite them. Communicative
activities are achieved through a long, boring and repetitive process of rigorous drills and exercises.
One main teaching responsibility of the teacher is that he or she should try his or her best to prohibit students making
mistakes. The existence of mistakes may stay in the habit, which is called mistake acquisition. So whenever a mistake is
found out, the teacher should correct it at once.
Teachers play the role of a model for the target language; students should try their best to mimic the pronunciation
and intonation of the teacher. Teachers are supposed to provide very standard, native-sound pronunciation and
intonation of the target language. The primary goal of teaching is to secure formal correctness. Their native language
habits are not supposed to be taken into the classroom, translation is forbidden at early stages.
Language materials are not shown to the students with nothing else. They are always shown in certain contexts. The
teaching of grammar is conducted within dialogues. Grammatical explanation is often avoided. Varieties of language
usage are recognized, but teachers don’t emphasize this.
This method considers that every language has a certain amount of sentence patterns that help students form the habit
of using it. The purpose of language teaching is to let students acquire these sentence patterns. They learn sentence
structures before vocabulary. The introduction of new vocabulary is conducted through dialogues.
Teachers usually ask another question just after students have answered the former question. This is to help them
form the mechanism of answering questions automatically.