THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE

A. Linguistics and English Language Teaching

Teachers’ knowledge on the workings of language and language teaching

are essentially intertwined with each other. The teachers’ competence on
how a language behaves will certainly help teachers explain to the students
how the language works, as well as anticipate and respond appropriately to
possible learning difficulties.

1. Knowledge of linguistics, specifically phonology, may be useful for

explaining interference problems that may be experienced by English
language learners with the English sound system. To illustrate, in the
absence of the following sounds such as /f/ and /v/ in Philippine
languages, except in Ivatan and Ibanag, Filipino English learners are
likely to use /p/ and /v/ as substitute sounds, e.g., /pæn/ for /fæn/ ‘
fan’ and /bæn/ for /væn/ ‘van’. Language teachers are advised to
remember that each language has its own inventory of phonemes that
may differ from that of another language. Such differences may result
in using sounds that only approximate the target sounds, as shown in
the aforecited examples.

2. Language teachers need to realize that grammatical units such as

morphemes, words, phrases and clauses behave quite differently
across languages. For example, plurality, and tense in English are
expressed through inflections as is {-s/ -es} and {-ed}. However,
Tagalog plurality is expressed as separate words as in mga bata
‘children’. Linguistically speaking, Tagalog verbs have no tense, only
aspects – perfective “kumain’ and imperfective ‘kumakain’, which
may explain the Filipinos’ problems in dealing with English tenses.

3. Helping students to discover the meaning of words by parsing them

into small parts depends heavily on the teacher’s knowledge of
morphology or word formation rules. To exemplify, students may
parse or segment the following words, taking note of the morpheme {-
ment} that recurs in embarrassment, government, disillusionment,
enhancement. As students discover the meaning of {-ment} as ‘state
or condition’, they may be able to give the meaning of the cited
examples as: ‘state of being embarrassed’, ‘state of governing’, ‘state
of being disillusioned’, and ‘state of enhancing’. Hence, the process of
word formation such as derivation may help learners interpret and
remember meaning of words that follow certain patterns in forming
short words into longer words.

4. Teachers’ knowledge about larger units of language use – discourse

structure – may be relevant when teaching exchanges or
conversations. The use of language for social functions such as asking
permission involves familiarity with modals that express formality
and a higher degree of politeness when speaking with someone who is
older, who occupies a higher position, or is an authority than the
speaker. In this context appropriacy has to be observed in selecting
modals. For example, it is appropriate to use may, not can when
 asking permission from someone who is older, higher in position than
the speaker. e.g. May I use the office computer?

B. Views about Language

1. The structuralists believe that language can be described in

terms of observable and verifiable data as it is being used. They
also describe language in terms of its structure and according to
the regularities and patterns or rules in language structure. To
them, language is a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily
assigned to the objects, states, and concepts to which they refer,
used for human communication.

 Language is primarily vocal. Language is speech, primarily

made up of vocal sounds produced by the speech apparatus
in the human body. The primary medium of language is
speech; the written record is but a secondary representation
of the language. Writing is only the graphic representation of
the sounds of the language. While most languages have
writing systems, a number of languages continue to exist,
even today, in the spoken form only, without any written
form. Linguists claim that speech is primary, writing
secondary. Therefore, it is assumed that speech has a priority
in language teaching.

 Language is a system of systems. Language is not a

disorganized or a chaotic combination of sounds. Sounds are
arranged in certain fixed or established, systematic order to
form meaningful units or words. For example, no word in
English starts with bz-, lr- or zl- combination, but there are
those that begin with spr- and str- (as in spring and string).
In like manner, words are also arranged in a particular
system to generate acceptable meaningful sentences. The
sentence “Shen bought a new novel” is acceptable but the
group of words “Shen bought new novel a” is unacceptable,
since the word order of the latter violates the established
convention in English grammar, the Subject-Verb-Object or
S-V-O word order.

Language is a system of structurally related elements or

‘building blocks’ for the encoding of meaning, the elements
being phonemes (sounds), morphemes (words), tagmemes
(phrases and sentences/clauses). Language learning, it is
assumed, entails mastering the elements or building blocks
of the language and learning the rules by which these
elements are combined, from phoneme to morpheme to
word to phrase to sentence.

 Language is arbitrary. There is no inherent relation between

the words of a language and their meanings or the ideas
conveyed by them. Put another way, there is no one to one
correspondence between the structure of a word and the
 thing it stands for. There is no ‘sacred’ reason why an
animal that flies is called ibon in Filipino, pajaro in Spanish,
bird in English. Selection of these words in the languages
mentioned here is purely an accident of history that native
speakers of the languages have agreed on. Through the years
reference to such animal has become an established
convention that cannot be easily changed.

That language is arbitrary means that the relationship

between the words and the ‘things’ they denote is merely
conventional, i.e. native speakers of English, in some sense,
agreed to use the sounds / kæt / ‘cat’ in English because
native speakers of English ‘want’ it to be.

 Language is a means of communication. Language is an

important means of communicating between humans of their
ideas, beliefs, or feelings. Language gives shape to people’s
thoughts, as well as guides and controls their activity.

2. The transformationalists/ cognitivists believe that language is a

system of knowledge made manifest in linguistic forms but
innate and, in its most abstract form, universal.

 Language is innate. The presence of the language acquisition

device (LAD) in the human brain predisposes all normal
children to acquire their first language in an amazingly short
time, around five years since birth.

 Language is creative. It enables native speakers to produce

and understand sentences they have not heard nor used
before.

 Language is a mental phenomenon. It is not mechanical.

 Language is universal. It is universal in the sense that all

normal children the world over acquire a mother tongue but
it is also universal in the sense that, at a highly abstract level,
all languages must share key features of human languages,
such as all languages have sounds; all languages have rules
that form sounds into words, words into phrases and clauses;
and all languages have transformation rules that enable
speakers to ask questions, negate sentences, issue orders,
defocus the doer of the action, etc.

2. The functionalists believe that language is a dynamic system

through which members of speech community exchange
information. It is a vehicle for the expression of functional
meaning such as expressing one’s emotions, persuading people,
asking and giving information, making people do things for
others.
 This view of language emphasizes the meaning and functions
rather than the grammatical characteristics of language, and
leads to a language teaching content consisting of categories of
meaning/notions and functions rather than of elements of
structure and grammar.

3. The interactionists believe that language is a vehicle for

establishing interpersonal relations and for performing social
transactions between individuals. It is a tool for creating and
maintaining social relations through conversations. Language
teaching content, according to this view, may be specified and
organized by patterns of exchange and interaction.

B. Acquisition of Language

1. Behaviorist learning theory. Derived from a general theory of

learning, the behaviorist view states that the language behavior
of the individual is conditioned by sequences of differential
rewards in his/her environment.

It regards language learning as a behavior like other forms of

human behavior, not a mental phenomenon, learned by a
process of habit formation. Since language is viewed as
mechanistic and as a human activity, it is believed that learning
a language is achieved by building up habits on the basis of
stimulus-response chains. Behaviorism emphasizes the
consequences of the response and argues that it is the behavior
that follows a response which reinforces it and thus helps to
strengthen the association.

According to Littlewood (1984), the process of habit formation

includes the following:

a. The child imitates the sounds and patterns which s/he hears
around her/him.
b. People recognize the child’s attempts as being similar to the
adult models and reinforce (reward) the sounds by approval
or some other desirable reaction.
c. In order to obtain more of these rewards, the child repeats
the sounds and patterns so that these become habits.
d. In this way the child’s verbal behavior is conditioned
(‘shaped’) until the habits coincide with the adult models.

The behaviorists claim that the three crucial elements of

learning are: a stimulus, which serves to elicit behavior; a
response triggered by the stimulus, and reinforcement, which
serves to mark the response as being appropriate (or
inappropriate) and encourages the repetition (or suppression) of
the response.

2. Cognitive learning theory. Chomsky argues that language is not

acquired by children by sheer imitation and through a form of
 conditioning on reinforcement and reward. He believes that all
normal human beings have an inborn biological internal
mechanism that makes language learning possible. Cognitivists/
innatists claim that the child is born with an ‘initial’ state’ about
language which predisposes him/her to acquire a grammar of
that language. They maintain that the language acquisition
device (LAD) is what the child brings to the task of language
acquisition, giving him/her an active role in language learning.

One important feature of the mentalist account of second

language acquisition is hypothesis testing, a process of
formulating rules and testing the same with competent speakers
of the target language.

3. Krashen’s Monitor Model (1981). Probably this is the most

often cited among theories of second language acquisition;
considered the most comprehensive, if not the most ambitious,
consisting of five central hypotheses:

The five hypotheses are:

a. The acquisition/ learning hypothesis. It claims that there

are two ways of developing competence in L2:
Acquisition - the subconscious process that results from
informal, natural communication between people
where language is a means, not a focus nor an end,
in itself.

Learning - the conscious process of knowing about

language and being able to talk about it, that occurs
in a more formal situation where the properties or
rules of a language are taught. Language learning
has traditionally involved grammar and vocabulary
learning.

Acquisition parallels first language development in

children while learning approximates the formal
teaching of grammar in classrooms. Conscious thinking
about the rules is said to occur in second language
learning while unconscious feeling about what is correct
and appropriate occurs in language acquisition.

b. The natural order hypothesis. It suggests that grammatical

structures are acquired in a predictable order for both
children and adults, that is, certain grammatical structures
are acquired before others, irrespective of the language
being learned. When a learner engages in natural
communication, then the standard order below will occur.

Group 1: present progressive -ing (She is reading)

plural -s (bags)
copula ‘to be’ (The girl is at the library.)
 Group 2: auxiliary ‘to be’ (She is reading.)
articles the and an (That’s a book.)

Group 3: irregular past forms (She drank milk.)

Group 4: regular past -ed (She prayed last night.)

third-person-singular -s (She prays every day.)
possessive -s (The girl’s bag is new.)

b. The monitor hypothesis. It claims that conscious learning

of grammatical rules has an extremely limited function in
language performance: as a monitor or editor that checks
output. The monitor is an editing device that may normally
operate before language performance. Such editing may
occur before the natural output or after the ouput.

Krashen suggests that monitoring occurs when there is

sufficient time, where there is pressure to communicate
correctly and not just convey meaning, and when the
appropriate rules are known.

d. The input hypothesis. Krashen proposes that when learners

are exposed to grammatical features a little beyond their
current level (i.e., i + 1), those features are ‘acquired’.
Acquisition results from comprehensible input, which is
made understandable with the help provided by the context.
If learners receive understandable input, language structures
will be naturally acquired. Ability to communicate in a
second language ‘emerges’ rather than indirectly put in place
by teaching.

c. The affective filter hypothesis. Filter consists of attitude to

language, motivation, self-confidence and anxiety. Thus
learners with favorable attitude and self-confidence may
have a ‘low filter’ which promotes language learning.
Learners with a low affective filter seek and receive more
input, interact with confidence, and are more receptive to the
input they are exposed to. On the other hand, anxious
learners have a high affective filter which prevents
acquisition from taking place.

d. Implications for teaching:

1. Teachers must continuously deliver at a level

understandable by learners.
 2. Teachers must prepare the learners for real life
communication situations. Classrooms must provide
conversational confidence so that when in the outside
world, the student can cope with and continue
learning.

3. Teachers must ensure that learners do not become

anxious or defensive in language learning. The
confidence of a language learner must be encouraged
in a language acquisition process. Teachers should not
insist on learners conversing before they feel
comfortable in doing so; neither should they correct
errors nor make negative remarks that inhibit learners
from learning. They should devise specific techniques
to relax learners and protect their egos.

4. Teachers must create an atmosphere where learners

are not embarrassed by their errors. Errors should not
be corrected when acquisition is occurring. Error
correction is valuable when learning simple rules but
may have negative effects in terms of anxiety and
inhibitions.

5. Formal grammar teaching is of limited value because

it contributes to learning rather than acquisition. Only
simple rules should be learned.

6. Teachers should not expect learners to learn ‘late

structures’ such as third person singular early.

C. Influences of Theories on Language Teaching

1. Applied linguists claim that theories of language learning as well

as theories of language may provide the basis for a particular
teaching approach/method. To illustrate, the linking of
structuralism and behaviorism has produced the audiolingual
method (ALM), oral approach/situational language teaching,
operant conditioning approach, bottom-up text processing,
controlled-to-free writing, to cite a few. These methods
underscore the necessity of overlearning, a principle that leads to
endless and mindless mimicry and memorization (‘mim-mem’).
They are also characterized by mechanical habit-formation
teaching, done through unremitting practice: sentence patterns are
repeated and drilled until they become habitual and automatic to
minimize occurrences of mistakes. Grammar is taught through
analogy, hence, explanations of rules are not given until the
students have practiced a pattern in a variety of contexts.

2. The cognitive learning theory has given birth to the cognitive

approach to learning that puts language analysis before language
use and instruction by the teacher, before the students practice
forms. It is compatible with the view that learning is a thinking
process, a belief that underpins cognitive-based and schema-
 enhancing strategies such as Directed Reading Thinking Activity,
Story Grammar, Think-Aloud, to name a few.

3. The functional view of language has resulted in communication-

based methods such as Communicative Language
Teaching/Communicative Approach, Notional-Functional
Approach, Natural Approach, Task-Based Language Teaching.
These methods are learner-centered, allowing learners to work in
pairs or groups in information gap tasks and problem-solving
activities where such communication strategies as information
sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction are used.

4. The view that is both cognitive and affective has given rise to a
holistic approach to language learning or whole-person learning
which has spawned humanistic techniques in language learning
and Community Language Learning. In these methods, the whole
person including emotions and feelings as well as language
knowledge and behavior skills become central to teaching. The
humanistic approach equips learners “vocabulary for expressing
one’s feelings, for sharing one’s values and viewpoints with others,
and for developing a better understanding of their feelings and
needs.”