The work of the Council of Europe is another example of the change in
approach in the 1970s. It was based on current semantic and sociolinguistic
concepts, including Wilkins' notions and functions. The council developed their
own syllabuses and produced inventories which specified situations in terms of
learners' roles, settings and topics, and listed language activities, functions and
notions (Van Ek, 1975).
Krashen's (e.g. 1982) influential theory of second language acquisition illustrates
the increasing influence of psycholinguistics. It was only weakly based on
Chomsky's theory, but it drew on second language acquisition research and
Krashen confidently advocated the fundamental pedagogical principle of second
language acquisition, namely the provision of comprehensible input, as the
solution to second language teaching problems.
Linguistics and second language teaching: an evaluation
These examples illustrate a number of aspects related to the influence linguistics
has had on second language teaching:
A 'banners and bandwagon' effect
There is clear evidence that linguistics has had a 'banners and bandwagon' effect
on language teaching. We see some hasty applications, and equally hasty
rejections of linguistic theory.
An inappropriate psychological theory in the form of Skinner's operant
conditioning was taken over into linguistics and then applied to language
teaching. There is little doubt that this application led to disappointing results in
language teaching. The rejection of audiolingualism was therefore hasty and
fierce.
Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 25, 1992, 169-182 doi: 10.5774/25-0-80