Applied Linguistics

Applied Linguistics, Muhammad Farkhan

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Muhammad Farkhan A lecturer at English Letters Department, Letters and Humanities Faculty UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta

([email protected])

ABSTRACT As a branch of linguistics, applied linguistics differs from other braches in its focus. Mainly, it deals with the application of linguistic theories, methods, and findings to elucidation of language problems from other areas of experience or knowledge. Therefore, it is also multidisciplinary study as it involves various knowledge and disciplines, such as neurology, psychology, language teaching, translation, and so on. Key Words: method Error Applied linguistics is a branch of linguistics whose the primary concern is the application of linguistic theories, methods, and findings to elucidation of language problems from other areas of experience or knowledge. This definition includes among other things, work with computers, the programming of texts, speech and hearing therapy, and mathematical linguistics (Elgin, 1973: 97). In this paper the discussion only covers the application of the principles and the theory of linguistics to language teaching, especially language teaching

audiolingual contrastive

communicative analysis

methodology; contrastive analysis, and errors analysis. The Grammar-Translation Method The grammar-translation approach to language teaching was congruent with the view of faculty psychologists that mental discipline was essential for strengthening the powers of the mind. Originally used to teach Latin and Greek, this method was applied to the teaching of modern languages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its primary purpose was to enable students to “explore the depths of great literature,” while helping them

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understand their native language better through text analysis of the grammar of the target language and translation. The grammar-translation method, in its purest form, had the following characteristics: 1. Students first learned the rules of grammar and bilingual lists of vocabulary pertaining to the reading or readings of the lesson. Grammar was learned deductively by means of long and elaborate explanations. All rules were learned with their exceptions and irregularities explained in grammatical terms. 2. Once rules and vocabulary were learned, prescriptions for translating the exercises that followed the grammar explanations given. 3. Comprehension of the rules and readings was tested via translation (target language to native language and vice versa). Students had learned the language if they could translate the passages well. 4. The native and target languages were constantly compared. The goal of instruction was to convert L1 into L2 and vice versa, using a dictionary if necessary. 5. There were very few opportunities for listening and speaking practice (with the exception of reading passages and sentences aloud) since the method concentrated on reading and translation exercises. Much of the class time was devoted to talking about the language virtually no time was spent talking in the language. The Audiolingual Method The theory underlying the audiolingual method was rooted in two parallel schools of thought in psychology and linguistics. In psychology, the behaviorist and neobehaviorist schools was extremely influential in the 1940s and 1950s. At the same time, the structural, or descriptive, school of linguistics dominated thinking in that field. Language teaching based on this school of thought operated on the following premises: 1. Language is primarily an oral phenomenon. Written language is a secondary representation of speech. 112

2. Linguistics involves the study of the recurring patterns of the language. 3. The major focus of study is phonology and morphology. 4. Language is acquired through the over learning of its patterns. 5. All native languages are learned orally before reading ever occurs. Therefore, second languages should be learned in the “natural order”: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 6. In learning languages, a student should begin with the patterns of the language rather than with deductive learning of grammatical rules (Chastain, 1976:110). The audiolingual method, also known as the Aural-Oral, Functional Skills, New Key, or American Method of language teaching, was considered a “scientific” approach to language teaching. Lado proposed the following “empirical laws of learning” as the basis for audiolingual methodology: 1. The fundamental law of contiguity states that when two experiences have occurred together, the return of one will recall or reinstate the other. 2. The law of exercise maintains that the more frequently a response is practiced, the better it is learned and the longer it is remembered. 3. The law of intensity states that the more intensely a response is practiced, the better it is learned and the longer it will be remembered. 4. The law of assimilation states that each new stimulating condition tends to elicit the same response that has been connected with similar stimulating conditions in the past. 5. The law of effect maintains that when a response is accompanied or followed by a satisfying state of affairs, that response is reinforced. When a response is accompanied by an annoying state of affairs, it is avoided (Lado, 1964: 37). Communicative Language Teaching Richards and Rodgers (1986) describe Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as an approach rather than a method, since it is defined in rather broad terms and represents a

Applied Linguistics, Muhammad Farkhan

philosophy of teaching that is based on communicative language use. CLT has developed from the writings of British applied linguists such as Wilkins, Widdowson, Brumfit, Candlin, and others, as well as American educators such as Savignon (1983), all of whom emphasize notional-functional concepts and communicative competence, rather than grammatical structures, as central to language teaching (Richard and Rogers, 1986: 65). Some of these principles are summarized below. 1. Meaning is of primary importance in CLT, and contextualization is a basic principle. 2. Attempts by learners to communicate with the language are encouraged from the beginning of instruction. The new language system will be learned best by struggling to communicate one’s own meaning and by negotiation of meaning through interaction with others. 3. Sequencing of materials is determined by the content, function, and/or meaning that will maintain students’ interest. 4. Judicious use of the native language is acceptable where feasible, and translation may be used when students find it beneficial or necessary. 5. Activities and strategies for learning are varied according to learner preferences and needs. 6. Communicative competence, with an emphasis on fluency and acceptable language use, is the goal of instruction. “Accuracy is judged not in the abstract, but in context” (Finnocchiaro and Brumfit, 1983: 92). Contrastive Analysis In the middle part of the twentieth century, one of the most popular pursuits for applied linguists was the study of two languages in contrast. Eventually the stockpile of comparative and contrastive data on a multitude of pairs of languages yielded what commonly came to be known as Contrastive Analysis (CA). CA claims that the principal barrier to second acquisition is the interference of the first language system with the second language system, and that a scientific,

structural analysis of the two languages in question would yield taxonomy of linguistic contrasts between them which in turn would enable the linguist to predict the difficulties a learner would encounter. It was at that time considered feasible that the tools of structural linguistics, such as Fries’s (1952) slotfiller grammar, would enable a linguist to describe accurately the two languages in question, and to match those two descriptions against each other to determine valid contrasts, or differences, between them. Behaviorism contributed to the notion that human behavior is the sum of its smallest parts and components, and therefore that language learning could be described as the acquisition of all of these discrete units. Moreover, human learning theories highlighted interfering elements of learning, concluding that where no interference could be predicted, no difficulty would be experienced since one could transfer positively all other items in a language. Some rather strong claims were made of CA among language teaching experts and linguists. One of the strongest was made by Robert Lado in the preface to Linguistics Across Cultures: “The plan of the book rests on the assumption that we can predict and describe the patterns that will cause difficulty in learning, and those that will not cause difficulty, by comparing systematically the language and the culture to be learned with the native language and culture of the student.” Then, in the first chapter of the book, Lado continues: “. . . in the comparison between native and foreign language lies the key to ease or difficulty in foreign language learning. Those elements that are similar to [the learner’s] native language will be simple for him and those elements that are different will be difficult” (Brown, 1994: 194). Error Analysis Human learning is fundamentally a process that involves the making of mistakes. Mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculations, and erroneous assumptions form an important aspect of learning virtually any skill or acquiring 113

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information. Learning to swim, to play tennis, to type, or to read all involve a process in which success comes by profiting from mistakes, by using mistakes to obtain feedback from the environment and with that feedback to make new attempts which successively more closely approximate desired goals. Language learning, in this sense, is like any other human learning. Children learning their first language make countless “mistakes” from the point of view of adult grammatical language. Many of these mistakes are logical in the limited linguistic system within which children operate, but by carefully processing feedback from others such children slowly but surely learn to produce what is acceptable speech in their native language. Second language learning is a process that is clearly not unlike first language learning in its trialand-error nature. Inevitably learners will make mistakes in the process of acquisition, and indeed will even impede that process if they do not commit errors and then benefit in turn from various forms of feedback on those errors. Researchers and teachers of second languages soon came to realize that the mistakes a person made in this process of constructing a new system of language needed to be analyzed carefully, for they possibly held in them some of the keys to the understanding of the process of second language acquisition. Corder says that a learner’s errors are significant in [that] they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language (Corder, 19…). In order to analyze learner language in a proper perspective, it is crucial to make a distinction between mistakes and errors, technically two very different phenomena. A mistake refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a “slip,” in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly. All people make mistakes, in both native and second language situations. Native speakers are normally capable of recognizing and correcting such “lapses” or mistakes, which are not 114

the result of a deficiency in competence but the result of some sort of breakdown or imperfection in the process of producing speech. These hesitations, slips of the tongue, random ungrammaticalities, and other performance lapses in native-speaker production also occur in second language speech. Such mistakes must be carefully distinguished from errors of a second language learner, idiosyncrasies in the interlanguage of the learner that are direct manifestations of a system within which a learner is operating at the time. an error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner. If a learner of English asks, “Does John can sing?” he is probably reflecting a competence level in which all verbs require a pre-posed do auxiliary for question formation. He has committed an error, most likely not a mistake, and an error which reveals a portion of his competence in the target language. The fact that learners do make errors and that these errors can be observed, analyzed, and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner, led to a surge of study of learners’ errors, called error analysis. Error analysis became distinguished from contrastive analysis by its examination of errors attributable to all possible sources, not just those which result from negative transfer of the native language. Error analysis easily superseded contrastive analysis, as we discovered that only some of the errors a learner makes are attributable to the mother tongue, that learners do not actually make all the errors that contrastive analysis predicted they should, and that learners from disparate language backgrounds tend to make similar errors in learning one target language. Errors—overt manifestations of learners’ system—arise from several possible general sources: interlingual errors of interference from the native language, intralingual errors within the target language, the sociolinguistic context of communication, psycholinguistic or cognitive strategies,

Applied Linguistics, Muhammad Farkhan

and no doubt countless affective variables. Conclusion As a branch of linguistics, applied linguistics differs from other braches in its focus. Mainly, it deals with the application of linguistic theories, methods, and findings to elucidation of language problems from other areas of experience or knowledge. Therefore, it is also multidisciplinary study as it involves various knowledge and disciplines, such as neurology, psychology, language teaching, translation, and so on. In language teaching, for examples, theories of language inspire the establishment of teaching methods and curriculum development. Language as a habit has already been used as a basis of audio-lingual method that emphasizes on accustoming the learners with the target language through drills. While, language as a means of communication is used as a basis of communicative language teaching which stresses on meaning rather than forms. In translation field, translation machine has made use of grammar and word order of the source language to reach the equivalences in the target language. In addition, in the filed of computer technology, how language works has also played significant role in developing application programming. Bibliography Almann, Elizabeth Thompson, 2008. Toward a Meaningful Second Language Curriculum: A Framework for Study (http://www.thelearninglight. com/Concepts.htm). Alwasilah, A. Chaedar, 1993. Linguistik Suatu Pengantar. Bandung: Angkasa. Bell, R.T. 1976. Sociolinguistics, Goals, Approaches, and Problems. London: Batsford. Brown, H. Douglas, 1994. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Regent, Chastain Kenneth, 1976. Developing Second Language Skills: Theory to Practice. Chicago: Rand McNally,

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