Applied Linguistics, Volum1 , Issue 1, 1980

THEORETICAL BASES OF COM­ MUNICATIVE APPROACHES TO SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING AND TESTING* MICHAEL CANALE and MERRILL SWAIN The Ontano lnslltutefor Studies in Educatlo".

INTRODUCTION

•we would like to express our gratitude to the Mirustry of Education, Ontario for its financial suppon of the research (French as a Second Language: Ontario Assessment Instrument Pool Project) reponed here. We also wish to thank Rosaria Giglio and Nancy Villarroel for their tech­ nical assistance in the preparation of this paper, as well as the following friends and colleagues for their valuable comments on an earlier draft: J. Patrick Allen, Andrew Cohen, Alan Davies, Claus Faerch, Bruce Fraser, Daina Green, Peter Groot, Birgit Harley, Randall Jones, Keith Morrow, John Oller, Jr., A. S. 'Buzz' Palmer, H. H. 'David' Stem, and Joel Walters. Of course we assume full responsibility for the views expressed here and all forms of error. Applied Linguistics,

Vol. I, No I

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THE present position paper represents an initial stage in our broader research effort to determine the feasibility and practicality of measuring what we will call the 'communicative competence' of students enrolled in 'core' (similar to general) French as a second language programmes in elementary and secon­ dary schools in Ontario. Thus in this paper we have chosen to examine currently accepted principles of 'communicative approaches' to second language pedagogy by determining the extent to which they are grounded in theories of language, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and other language­ related disciplines. The examination of the theoretical bases -has led us to question some of the existing principles, and in tum to develop a somewhat modified set of principles which is consistent with a more comprehensive theoretical framework for the consideration of communicative competence. These principles serve as a set of guidelines in terms of which communicative approaches to second language teaching methodologies and assessment instru­ ments may be organized and developed. Such a theoretical analysis is crucial if we are to establish a clear statement of the content and boundaries of com­ municative competence-one that will lead to more useful and effective second language teaching, and allow more valid and reliable measurement of second language communication skills. The organization of this paper is as follows. First we will provide a general background to communicative approaches, distinguishing the notions of com­ municative competence and communicative performance. Then we will examine ·various theories of communicative competence that have been proposed, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of a communicative approach for general second language programmes. Next we will propose a theoretical framework for communicative competence and examine its

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implications for second language teaching and testing. Finally we will suggest some directions for research that bear either directly or indirectly on our own research goals.

1. B A C K G R O U N D 1.1. Grammatical and communicative approaches

For our purposes it is useful to make a general distinction between gram­ matical (or grammar-based) and communicative (or communication-based)

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approaches to second language teaching. In choosing these particular terms we hope to avoid the confusion that has resulted from use of the more inclusive terms 'formal' and 'functional' (cf. Stern 1978 for discussion). By a gram­ matical approach we mean one that is organized on the basis of linguistic, or what we will call grammatical forms (i.e. phonological forms, morphological forms, syntactic patterns, lexical items) and emphasizes the ways in which these forms may be combined to form grammatical sentences. Most teaching materials currently in use in general second language courses are organized along these lines: for example, the Lado English series and the series Le fran�ais international. A communicative (or functional/notional) approach on the other hand is organized on the basis of communicative functions (e.g. apologizing, describing, inviting, promising) that a given learner or group of learners needs to know and emphasizes the ways in which particular gram­ matical forms may be used to express these functions appropriately. Second language textbooks developed within this framework, such as the Challenges series (Abbs et al. 1978) and the series Communicate (Johnson and Morrow 1978), have begun to appear but are in general limited to English as a second language. A third approach referred to quite o.ften in recent work on second language teaching is the situational syllabus (cf. Morrow 1977, Munby 1978, Wilkins 1976). This approach is organized primarily with reference to the particular settings (or situations) in which the learner may need to perform in the second language.• Ockenden's (1972) Situational dialogues is cited frequently as an example of teaching material developed from this perspective. While it is clear that the three approaches are logically distinct, in this paper situational syllabuses will simply be subsumed under either the grammatical or com­ municative approach. There are two reasons for this decision. First, as has been pointed out by Morrow (1977), grammatical syllabuses often present the grammatical forms under study in dialogues or contexts that are labelled 'situations'. However, to the extent that the basis of syllabus organization is the grammatical forms and not the situations themselves, the approach is essentially a grammatical one. Second, to the extent that the main reasons for including a given situation in a situational syllabus are to respond to the learner's sociocultural needs and to generate appropriate language, there seems to be sufficient overlap in objectives between situational approaches and communicative approaches to justify relaxing the distinction. The work of Johnson and Morrow (1978) illustrates this point quite clearly. Other types of approaches are of course possible and have surfaced in second language research and materials (cf. Candlin 1977 and Cook 1978 for discussion). Again, although we think that these approaches are all logically distinct, we will not distinguish them here in view of the overlap of their main

M ICHAEL CANALE AND MERRILL SWAIN

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objectives and those of the grammatical or communicative approaches. The brief descriptions of grammatical and communicative approaches provided above are intended to serve as general working definitions through­ out the rest of this paper. Also, although it should be clear, it is important to note that the term 'approach' is used here to refer to principles of syllabus construction and not to actual classroom teaching materials and methods (cf. Wilkins 1978 for such a use of this term). More detailed descriptions of com­ municative approaches will be provided in Section 2.

We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker­ hearer's knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use of language in concrete situations) . . . In actual fact, it [performance) obviously could not directly reflect competence. A record of natural speech will show numerous false starts, deviations from rules, changes of plan in mid-course, and so on (Chomsky 1965:4, his emphasis). Thus competence refers to knowledge of grammar and of other aspects of language while performance refers to actual use. Campbell and Wales (1970) accept the methodological distinction between knowledge or ability and actual performance as an 'eminently honourable' one in any discipline. In fact, most linguists do seem to accept this weaker claim. A notable exception is Halliday (1970), who rejects it as either unnecessary (if the distinction refers merely to what we can describe in the grammar and what we cannot) or misleading if, for example, it restricts the data one considers. We agree with his implication (and with Chomsky's 1976 explicit statement) that theoretical assumptions as to what are and what are not relevant data in a given discipline can be dangerous and must not be accepted as dogma leading to the exclusion of other research lines. Chomsky's (1965) stronger claim is that competence refers to the linguistic system (or grammar) that an ideal native speaker of a given language has inter­ nalized whereas performance mainly concerns the psychological factors that are involved in the perception and production of speech, e.g. perceptual parsing strategies, memory limitations, and the like. Given this perspective, a theory of competence is equivalent to a theory of grammar and is concerned with the linguistic rules that can generate and describe the grammatical (as opposed to ungrammatical) sentences of a language. A theory of performance, on the other hand, focusses on the acceptability of sentences in speech per­ ception and production, and is a theory of the interaction between the theory

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1.2. Competence and performance The terms 'competence' and 'performance' are used frequently in dis­ cussions of second language approaches. Since these terms are used differently by various researchers and signal important distinctions for the purposes of second language teaching and testing, it is worthwhile to discuss them in some depth. Chomsky (1965) introduced the term 'competence' and 'performance' in modern linguistics through statements about the methodological necessity of studying language through idealized abstractions and ignoring what seem to be irrelevant details of language behaviour. As Campbell and Wales (1970) have pointed out, Chomsky (1965) uses these terms in both a weak sense and a strong sense. The weak sense of these terms is implied in the following passage:

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o f grammar and the set of nongrammatical psychological factors bearing on language use. Consider, for example, the sentences in (1). (I) a. the was cheese green (ungrammatical) b. the cheese the rat the cat the dog saw chased ate was green (grammatical but unacceptable) c. the dog saw the cat that chased the rat that ate the cheese that was green (grammatical and acceptable)

Consider now a child with just that ability. A child who might produce any sentence whatever-such a child would be likely to be institutionalized: even more so if not only sentences, but also speech or silence was random, unpre­ dictable (Hymes 1972:277). He continues: We have then to account for the fact that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to ac­ complish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others. This competence, moreover, is integral with attitudes, values, and motivations concerning language, its features and uses, and integral with competence for, and attitudes toward, the interrelation of language with the other code of communicative conduct [viz. social interactiOn] (Hymes 1 972:277-278). In view of Chomsky's (1965) strong claim that competence is to be associated exclusively with knowledge of rules of grammar, both Hymes (1972) and Campbell and Wales (1970) propose a broader notion of compe­ tence, that of communicative competence. This notion is intended by them to include not only grammatical competence (or implicit and explicit knowledge of the rules of grammar) but also contextual or sociolinguistic competence (knowledge of the rules of language use). Furthermore, Hymes (1972) ex­ plicitly and Campbell and Wales (1970) implicitly adopt the distinction be­ tween communicative competence and performance, where this latter notion refers to actual use.

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According to our own intuitions, ( l a) differs from both (1b) and ( l c) in terms of grammaticality but (1b) and (1c) differ with respect to acceptability: i.e. ( l b) is more difficult to interpret and produce than (lc). Hymes (1972) and Campbell and Wales (1970) were among the first to point out that this stronger version of the competence-performance distinction pro­ vides no place for consideration of the appropriateness of sociocultural signi­ ficance of an utterance in the situational and verbal context in which it is used. For Campbell and Wales (1970) 'by far the most important linguistic ability' is that of being able to 'produce or understand utterances which are not so much grammatical but, more important, appropriate to the context in which they are made' (p. 247, their emphasis). Hymes (1972) asserts somewhat less boldly that 'there are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless' (p. 278). His point is illustrated clearly in his discussion of a (hypothetical) child who has the ability to understand and produce any of the grammatical sentences in a language. We quote:

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A theory which characterises the regularities of language is a competence theory; a theory which characterises the interaction between that linguistic

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However, there is some diversity of opinion in the literature as to (i) whether or not the notion 'communicative competence' includes that of 'grammatical competence' as one of its components and (ii) whether or not communicative competence should be distinguished from (communicative) performance. As concerns (i), it is common to find the term 'communicative competence' used to refer exclusively to knowledge or capability relating to the rules of language use and the term 'grammatical (or linguistic) competence' used to refer to the rules of grammar. The terms are used in this manner by, for example, Allen (1978), Jakobovits (1970), Palmer (1978), Paulston (1974), and Widdowson (1971). It is equally common to find these terms used in the manner in which Hymes (1972) and Campbell and Wales (1970) use them; thus one finds them employed in this way by Connors et al. (1978), Cooper (1968), Morrow (1977), Munby (1978), and Savignon (1972), among others. Munby (1978) claims that the view that communicative competence includes gram­ matical competence is to be preferred to the view that it does not since the former view logically excludes two possible and misleading conclusions: first, that grammatical competence and communicative competence should be taught separately, or the former should be taught before the latter; and second, that gr ammatical competence is not an essential component of com­ municative competence. We find his first reason unconvincing since even if one adopts the position that communicative competence includes grammatical competence, it is still possible to maintain that the teaching of grammatical competence could be separate from or precede the teaching of sociolinguistic competence. Munby's second reason, however, is to us both convincing and important. Just as Hymes (1972) was able to say that there art: rules of grammar that would be useless without rules of language use, so we feel that there are rules of language use that would be useless without rules of grammar. For example, one may have an adequate level of sociolinguistic competence in Canadian French just from having developed such a competence in Canadian English; but without some minimal level of grammatical competence in French, it is unlikely that one could communicate effectively with a mono­ lingual speaker of Canadian French (ignoring, with Clark 1972, the quite limited 'communication' that nonverbal means permit). Note that in adopting the view that grammatical competence is an essential component of com­ municative competence, we nonetheless agree with Widdowson (1978) that in normal conversation native speakers will focus more on language use than on grammar. We will return to this point in Section 2.3. Let us tum now to (ii), the issue of whether or not communicative com­ petence should be distinguished from (communicative) performance. It is fair to say that almost all researchers dealing with communicative competence do (at least implicitly) maintain this distinction. One exception, mentioned above, is Halliday (1970 and elsewhere). Another is Kempson (1977), who adopts Chomsky's (1965) strong position that competence refers exclusively to rules of grammar and identifies the notion of communicative competence with a theory of performance. This seems to be a common view among linguists working within the Chomskyan paradigm (cf. Dresher and Hornstein 1977, for example). Kempson reasons as follows:

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characterisation and all the other factors which determine the full gamut o f regu­ A theory characteris­ larities of communication is a theory of performance . ing a speaker's ability to use his language appropriately in context, a theory of communicative competence, is, simply a performance theory ( 1 977:54-55). .

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She claims further that the strong version of the competence-performance dis­ tinction makes a difference of logical priority between the study of the language users' knowledge of their language, which she identifies as com­ petence, and the study of the use of that knowledge, or performance in her terms. That is, the study of competence must logically precede the study of performance (cf. also Chomsky 1965 on this point). We do not question this claim so much as its interpretation given Kempson's identification of com­ petence as grammatical competence and performance as communicative com­ petence. We disagree with her exclusion of what we have called sociolinguistic competence from the study of competence; nor are we convinced that a des­ cription of grammatical competence must be logically prior to one of socio­ linguistic competence, as her interpretation would imply. It seems entirely reasonable to assume, on the contrary, that there are rule-governed, universal, and creative aspects of sociolinguistic competence just as there are of gram­ matical competence. A position that ignores these properties of the knowledge of language use would be subject to criticism quite parallel to that levelled by Chomsky ( 1965) against traditional and structuralist linguistics. Our view, then, is that the study of sociolinguistic competence is as essential to the study of communicative competence as is the study of grammatical competence. It is reasonable to assume then that regularities in both the user's knowledge of grammar and knowledge of language use can be abstracted from their actual realization in performance and studied independently of nonessential or non­ specific (in Campbell and Wales' 1970 terminology) features of performance. To summarize, we have so far adopted the term 'communicative com­ petence' to refer to the relationship and interaction between grammatical com­ petence, or knowledge of the rules of grammar, and sociolinguistic com­ petence, or knowledge of the rules of language use. Communicative com­ petence is to be distinguished from communicative performance, which is the realization of these competencies and their interaction in the actual production and comprehension of utterances (under general psychological constraints that are unique to performance). In Section 3.2 we will propose a third system of knowledge to be included in a theory of communicative competence. We think it is important to maintain these basic definitions for second language teaching and testing purposes. For example, if a communicative approach to second language teaching is adopted, then principres of syllabus design must integrate aspects of both grammatical competence and socio­ linguistic competence. Furthermore, teaching methodology and assessment instruments must be designed so as to address not only communicative com­ petence but also communicative performance, i.e. the actual demonstration of this knowledge in real second language situations and for authentic com­ munication purposes. It is also important to keep in mind that one cannot directly measure competence: only performance is observable. We will return to these points in more detail in Sections 3 and 4. Several other points about these definitions should be kept in mind through­ out the rest of this paper. Firsf, by adopting the position that communicative

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Certainly it may be the case that individuals differ with regard to ability to use knowledge . . . : to interpret, differentiate, etc. The specification of ability for use as part of competence allows for the role of noncognitive factors, such as motivation, as partly determining competence. In speaking of competence, it is especially important not to separate cognitive from affective and volitive factors, so far as the impact of theory on educational practice is concerned . . . (Hymes 1 972:283, his emphasis). It seems reasonable to characterize communicative performance as including factors such as volition, motivation, and pathology (organic or functional) that may influence the range of choices of action one has in a given domain. However, we hesitate to incorporate the notion of ability for use into our definition of communicative competence for two main reasons: (i) to our knowledge this notion has not been pursued rigorously in any research on communicative competence (or considered directly relevant in such research), and (ii) we doubt that there is any theory of human action that can adequately explicate 'ability for use' and support principles of syllabus design intended to reflect this notion (cf. Chomsky 1975 for relevant discussion). There is also the fear that by introducing the notion of ability for use as an essential component of communicative competence, one allows the logical possibility of language users having 'linguistic deficits' (or 'communicative deficits'), i.e. inadequate language competence resulting in social class and power differences (cf. the early work of Bernstein-for example, Bernstein 1965-for a discussion of this view). This latter view has been criticized on sociolinguistic grounds by Ditt­ mar (1976), and raises political and philosophical problems similar to those discussed by Bracken (1973). It is thus not clear to us that inclusion of ability for use in our definition of communicative competence would have any practical applications for communicative syllabus design or that it is worth dealing in our research with the issues regarding the notion of 'linguistic deficit' that this inclusion would provoke. A third aspect of our basic definitions of communicative competence and communicative performance concerns the place of general psycholinguistic

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competence (minimally) includes both grammatical competence and socio­ linguistic competence, we do not assume that communicative competence is the highest or broadest level of language competence that can be distinguished or that is relevant for second language teaching purposes. This point is not made clear in the majority of research studies on communicative competence, although the assumption that communication is the essential purpose of language is widespread (cf. Campbell and Wales 1970, Groot 1975, Habermas 1970, Munby 1978, Searle 1969, for example) and would seem to imply that communicative competence is the most inclusive language competence. This assumption will be discussed in Section 3; for the moment we wish only to point out that in this paper communicative competence will be viewed as a sub­ component of a more general language competence, and communicative per­ formance viewed as one form of more general language performance. Second, we have used the notion of competence-be it communicative, grammatical, or whatever-to refer to underlying knowledge in a given sphere. Hymes (1972) reasons that this notion should refer not only to tacit knowledge but also to abilityfor use. He states:

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2. SOME THEORIES OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE Our discussion up to this point has been quite general. However, in order to arrive at a theory of communicative competence that is suitable for our research purposes, it is useful to consider in some detail some of the theories of communicative competence that have been proposed. There are many dif­ ferent ways in which these theories can be classified and presented; we have chosen to begin with what we consider to be theories of basic communication skills and work up to more comprehensive and integrated theories. It should be made clear that our classification of the different theories to be considered is based solely on the emphasis which each puts on grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, other areas of competence, and their components; there are few models of communicative competence that neglect important aspects of communication completely. In this section then we will present several representative theories and examine their aims, theoretical bases, and some empirical data bearing on each, where available. We will also discuss some advantages and disadvantages of these theories with reference to second language approaches for general programmes.

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factors (e.g. memory, perceptual strategies). We have assumed that these factors are nonspecific to communicative competence and should thus be treated as aspects of communicative performance, as suggested by Campbell and Wales (1970). Other researchers have suggested that such factors should be included in the notion of communicative competence (e.g. Hymes 1972, Jakobovits 1970). Our only reason for omitting these factors from our basic notion of communicative competence is that they are normally thought of as general psychological constraints on, among other things, the actual pro­ duction and comprehension of sentences (cf. Bever 1970 for discussion of this point), and we can find no compelling reason for including them in a model of communicative competence. Of course, these factors may still be relevant to communicative syllabus design: for example, as concerns the sequencing of grammatical structures. Finally, it should be emphasized that although we consider that the study of communicative competence should focus minimally on the relationships and interaction between regularities in grammatical competence and regularities in sociolinguistic competence (as noted by Munby 1978 and discussed above), we also feel that certain aspects of each type of competence can be investigated on their own merit. Thus just as there are regularities in a user's knowledge of language use that can be studied independently from grammar itself (e.g. the appropriateness of a speaker's intended meaning in a given sociolinguistic context, regardless of how this meaning is expressed verbally), so there are regularities in a user's knowledge of grammar that can be studied in­ dependently from sociolinguistic context (e.g. formal and substantive linguistic universals as discussed by Chomsky 1965). This point tends to be ignored in most research on communicative competence. We mention it since we feel that a theory of communicative competence will only be as strong as the individual theories of competence (grammatical, sociolinguistic, or other) on which it is based.

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2.1. Theories of basic communication skills Theories of basic communication skills, more so than the other types of communicative theories we will examine, seem to be designed with general second language programmes in mind. A theory of basic communication skills can be characterized as one that emphasizes the minimum level of (mainly oral) communication skills needed to get along in, or cope with, the most common second language situations the learner is likely to face. Thus Savignon (1972) is concerned mainly with the skills that are needed to get one's meaning across, to do things in the second language, to say what one really wants to say. Schulz (1977) expresses a similar concern. VanEk (1976) states as the general objective for the 'threshold level' for general second language programmes that 'the learners will be able to survive (linguistically speaking) in temporary contacts with foreign language speakers in everyday situations, whether as visitors to the foreign country or with visitors to their own country, and to establish and maintain social contacts' (pp. 24-25). Much of the research on basic communication skills tends to put less emphasis on other aspects of communicative competence such as knowledge of the appropriate­ ness of utterances with respect to sociocultural context (e.g. Rivers 1973, Schulz 1977, and some of the early research discussed by Paulston 1974) or knowledge of discourse (e.g. Savignon 1972, Van Ek 1976). Furthermore, some of the communicative approaches based on this work do not emphasize grammatical accuracy (e.g. Palmer 1978, Savignon 1972). It is not always clear just what skills are included in theories of basic com­ munication skills. For example, Savignon (1972) makes explicit reference only to grammatical skills (e.g. pronunciation, vocabulary), communicative tasks with respect to particular communicative functions (e.g. greeting, leave­ taking, information-getting, information-giving), and other factors such as willingness to express oneself in the second language, resourcefulness in making use of limited grammatical skills, and knowledge of kinesic and para­ linguistic aspects of the second language (e.g. facial expressions, gestures). The criteria she adopts for evaluating the communicative performance of her students include effort to communicate, amount of communication, compre­ hensibility and suitability, naturalness and poise in keeping a verbal inter­ action in hand, and accuracy (semantic) of information. However, she pro­ vides no description or specification of the grammatical and other skills required in, say, information-getting, nor is there any empirical justification of the criteria for evaluation. Van Ek (1976) provides perhaps the clearest statement of basic com­ munication skills that we have come across. His model emphasizes 'language functions' (or communicative functions) and 'notions', and considers only in second place what language forms must be known to give expression to these functions and notions. He supplies lists of general language functions (e.g. imparting and seeking factual information, getting things done by someone, socializing), specific language functions (e.g. under the general heading 'imparting and seeking factual information' are included identifying, report­ ing, correcting, and asking), general notions (e.g. existential, spatial, tem­ poral), specific notions (e.g. names, addresses, likes and dislikes), topic areas (e.g. personal identification, house and home, travel, food and drink), settings (e.g. home, school), and roles (e.g. stranger, friend). All of these factors are

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involved in determining the particular inventories of vocabulary, structures, and grammatical categories that he proposes. But in spite of these specifications, there are serious gaps in the description of certain skills. For example, there is no description of any rules of language use bearing on ap­ propriateness of utterances, even though factors such as role, topic, setting, notion, and function are considered in the model. As concerns the theoretical bases of theories of basic communication skills, we think it is important to consider two principles: (i) that these theories can be . said to specify a minimum level of communication skills and (ii) that more effective second language learning takes place if emphasis is put from the beginning on getting one's meaning across, and not on the grammaticalness and appropriateness of one's utterances. ost by finding in Bernstein a sociolinguist who is not afraid of theory or description, who has indeed advanced strong hypotheses about the nature of social semiotics by way of his work on acculturization, socialization, and the role of language in both. This has helped Halliday work with confidence towards a general socio­ linguistic theory, to take firmer steps towards what Pike ( 1 967) attempted: an ap­ proach to language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior. We have for some decades witnessed an emphasis on the investigation of language as an individual possession. It is to be hoped that the coming decade will show a preoc­ cupation with language as a shared possession, as a social inter-activity uniquely central to men and women's existence among other men and women. ' In this regard the importance of Halliday's work can hardly be overestimated: it attempts to penetrate the mysteries of language at the same time as it is open to use for many socially im­ portant purposes: it respects the untidiness of what happens when people speak and write at the same time as it sets out to tame this wilderness in a socially meaningful way' (Gregory 1 976: 1 99).

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REVIEWS

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(Received Apri/ 1979)

Reviewed by ROBERT L. COOPER The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

RONALD MACKAY and ALAN MOUNTFORD, English for Specific Purposes. (Applied linguistics and language study.) London: Longman, 1 978. Pp. xii, 227. This is a book which, at first sight, seems likely to offer a good deal to the growing number of teachers of English as a study medium, both in Britain and overseas, who are called on to produce classroom materials to meet highly specific needs. It consists of a collection of papers which draw directly on experience of materials design, three papers (Part II) being contributed by a group of experienced textbook writers, and five (Part III) by university teachers professionally involved in providing special courses for overseas students in Britain. The whole is introduced by a theoretical essay by the editors (Part 1), the purpose of which is to set the more practical contributions within the framework of recent developments in communicative language teaching. Unfortunately, the book is seriously flawed, both in conception and execution, and it suffers from the additional handicap that several other books are now available

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tribution . But it is not at all clear that most of the phenomena of interest to linguists, particularly sociolinguistic variation, display normal distributions. There are numerous other examples of how the text's failure to give enough in­ formation is likely to mislead the student. In the discussion of a test of the statistical significance of a difference between the means of two groups, the reader is not told that the test assumes random samples and that the samples must be large (at least 30). Nor is the reader cautioned not to use the test for differences between means when obtained from the same sample. Another example of an omission likely to mislead the student is found with respect to the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. The common computational formula is not provided, so that the naive reader is probably left with the impression that the extremely tedious computational routine which is displayed as a means of explaining the statistic is the usual means of com­ putation. As if all this were not bad enough, conscientious students who try to follow the author's examples are likely to be confused by computational and proofreading errors. For example, the data in Table 3 are inconsistent with the original data on which they are based (Table I) because the responses of one subgroup (black women) on item 9 were shown both for item 9 and for item 1 0. What probably began as a recording error was compounded when subsequent computations were based on the incorrect figures. Thus the statistics reported for two groups (blacks and women) and for one item are wrong and the inferences based on these statistics are faulty. Further, when the figures were then converted to scaled scores (Table 8), at least one of the conversions (black women's total score) was incorrectly computed (or misprinted) even if the figures on which they were based is assumed to be correct. Students who feel insecure about their own computational ability (possibly a sub­ stantial proportion of those attracted to this book) are likely to believe that they themselves are at fault rather than the author when they are unable to understand how he arrived at some of his statistics . How will such students react when they encounter, for example, the presentation of the rank-order correlation coefficient? Substituting N = 20 into the formula's denominator, N{N2- l ) , the author gives us 20{192-1). Such students may well despair. In sum, the inadequacies of this book are so serious that students should be advised to avoid it and to consult instead one of the standard introductory texts on statistics.

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which fulfil its purposes more satisfactorily. The chief weaknesses are i n the theoretical portions, especially the editors' preamble. This is much too long, frequently in­ coherent, and-oddly in a book of this kind-marred by grammatical inaccuracy and lax proofreading. The principal strength of the book lies in the case studies, but despite the individual excellence of several of these, the collection lacks a representative character, being concerned only with the needs of students in higher education, and chiefly in Great Britain. The book takes no account of the teaching of English for occupational purposes (whether in Britain or overseas) or the extent to which aims and methods at the secondary level are coming under increasing scrutiny and review. Mackay and Mountford are no newcomers to ESP, and whatever its other limitations, their opening survey is not lacking in substance. They understand the importance of bringing course objectives into line with carefully ascertained needs, the desirability of settmg exercises which engage the cognitive ab1lities of adult students, and above all the need to be aware of the character of scientific language as the instru­ ment of scientific exposition. Such understanding, however, is already part of the equipment of anyone likely to be drawn into teaching ESP in British universities, while teacher-trainees looking for a general introduction to the field will certainly be put off by the style of presentation, the authors' rather loose handling of key terms (see 'use', p. 8, and 'notion' , p. 1 7), and, especially, the lack of detailed exemplification. Students will not be helped, either, to find later on that the editors' article on study skills is theoretically at odds with their introduction. The main themes of the introduction, like much of the methodological thrust of the book, derive from the work of Allen and Widdowson, and it is not altogether sur­ prising to find that the chapter by which they are represented duplicates (though with exemplary clarity) much of what precedes it. The paper was not written especially for the collection, and it has been superseded by other published work, making comment almost superfluous. One continuing strand can, however, be picked up briefly. This is the relative neglect within the Allen and Widdowson scheme of the conceptual as distinct from the functional (of cognitive content as opposed to illocutionary force). In this respect, their work contrasts with that of Bates and Candlin. The chapters by Swales and Bates can be considered together, since the textbooks with which they are associated originated within a few years of each other, and against similar backgrounds. They are alike, too, in their concern with the practical constraints of place and circumstance. Both papers are highly readable and refreshingly free of jargon. The two writers take proper account of their students' bookish (rather than activity­ based) approach to science, and are realistic about the overall pattern of academic study within which their teaching has to function. Both make due concessions to the bookishness, Bates by balancing mechanical against problem-solving exercises, Swales by trading on the appeal of linguistic formulae and explanations. They both make interesting adjustments to the institutional role of English as a language that is chiefly read and listened to. Swales opts for productive skills partly because his colleagues are least uncomfortable in handling them; Bates does the same because an active, pro­ ductive use of language is seen as the best introduction to a reading programme. In the first paper devoted to course materials, Straker-Cook tackles the problems of designing a syllabus in which the communicative demands of 'social survival' and academic study can both be met. His syllabus is neat and intellectually appealing in the way it integrates functions, roles and topics in a branching structure with a common spine. But the associated methodology is unimaginative (mimicry and memorization), and offers no transition to genuine interaction. Mackay and Mountford contribute a rather confused and theoretically top-heavy chapter which none the less introduces some interesting 'Focus'-style exercises, especially those which aim to develop compre­ hension by giving practice in discourse reconstruction (thus linking reading and writing). But generally this reads like an uneasy transitional paper, in which, for

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example, the distinction between the acts of definition and naming is blurred and dif­ ferences of information structure are passed off as stylistic variants. Morrison writes a short but admirable chapter on listening comprehension, identifying the kind of in­ formal lecture material which constitutes a recurrent problem and, by the same methodical research, those linguistic features which represent the particular dif­ ficulties. Exercises are then focused on those points, which include connectives and anaphora, as well as stress features. The substantial final chapter by Candlin, Kirk­ wood and Moore is impressive for the thorough airing given to problems of course design, and for the honesty with which it faces practical questions of student ability and teaching resources. The programme described here is also to be admired for the finely differentiated 'micro-skills' which are at its centre. Linguistic matters are handled less impressively, the 'notional meaning' of a sample text being identified with its key concepts and their various lexical realizations. The texts chosen to illustrate this chapter, incidentally, could not be used persuasively in any defence of 'authentic' materials. Reviewed by A. P. COWIE University of Leeds

BERNARD SPOLSKY, Educational Linguistics: An

Rowley, Mass. : Newbury House Publishers

Introduction

The use of the term that gives the present journal, Applied Linguistics its name has often been criticized. Yet, this term has established itself as a focus for practitioners who are engaged in a variety of language-related tasks and who want to base their professional activities on the language sciences, as well as for linguists who want to relate their scholarship to practical problems. Foremost among the problems to which the developing discipline of applied linguistics has addressed itself are those of language teaching, particularly foreign language teaching, and most commonly the teaching of English as a foreign or second language. Bernard Spolsky, the author of the book under review, and one of the co-editors of this new journal, suggested several years ago that it is misleading to restrict applied linguistics in this way. Instead, he argued that there are areas of language education including foreign language teaching but not confined to it, such as questions of literacy, and the whole field of mother-tongue and bilingual education, which could be looked at in a coherent way without monopolizing the entire field of applied linguistics. He therefore proposed the use of the term educational linguistics to describe those scholarly activities that relate the language sciences to questions of language education. Educational linguistics would thus appear as a subdiscipline of applied linguistics, freeing applied linguistics from the 'stigma' of being exclusively concerned with language teaching. The concept of educational linguistics has always appealed to some of us a great deal and at the Modern Language Centre in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education we have adopted this designation in the naming of our specialization and some of its courses. However, it was obvious that the idea of educational linguistics, which Spolsky had so far only developed in one or two programmatic statements, had to be spelt out. It was therefore with a great deal of eagerness that I looked forward to his elaboration of this idea in a full-size book. But even before I had time to read this work, I came across a review in the TESOL Quarterly • which not only ridiculed this book but also, to my surprise and dismay, out of hand rejected the concept of educational linguistics. The reviewer, Di Pietro, himself an applied linguist of stature for whose work I have the greatest respect, suggested that the author of Educational Linguistics was presenting himself as a kind of miracle doctor who, under a new label, was offering to an

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(Received June /979)

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example, the distinction between the acts of definition and naming is blurred and dif­ ferences of information structure are passed off as stylistic variants. Morrison writes a short but admirable chapter on listening comprehension, identi fying the kind of in­ formal lecture material which constitutes a recurrent problem and, by the same methodical research, those linguistic features which represent the particular dif­ ficulties. Exercises are then focused on those points, which include connectives and anaphora, as well as stress features. The substantial final chapter by Candlin, Kirk­ wood and Moore is impressive for the thorough airing given to problems of course design , and for the honesty with which it faces practical questions of student ability and teaching resources. The programme described here is also to be admired for the finely differentiated ' micro-skills' which are at its centre. Linguistic matters are handled less impressively, the 'notional meaning' of a sample text being identified with its key concepts and their various lexical realizations . The texts chosen to illustrate this chapter, incidentally, could not be used persuasively in any defence of 'authentic' materials. Reviewed by A. P. COWIE

University of Leeds

BERNARD SPOLSKY, Educational Linguistics: An

Rowley, Mass. : Newbury House Publishers

Introduction

The use of the term that gives the present journal , Applied Linguistics its name has often been criticized. Yet, this term has established itself as a focus for practitioners who are engaged in a variety of language-related tasks and who want to base their professional activities on the language sciences, as well as for linguists who want to relate their scholarship to practical problems . Foremost among the problems to which the developing discipline of applied linguistics has addressed itself are those of language teaching, particularly foreign language teaching, and most commonly the teaching of English as a foreign or second language. Bernard Spolsky, the author of the book under review, and one of the co-editors of this new journal, suggested several years ago that it is misleading to restrict applied linguistics in this way. Instead, he argued that there are areas of language education including foreign language teaching but not confined to it, such as questions of literacy, and the whole field of mother-tongue and bilingual education, which could be looked at in a coherent way without monopolizing the entire field of applied linguistics. He therefore proposed the use of the term educational linguistics to describe those scholarly activities that relate the language sciences to questions of language education. Educational linguistics would thus appear as a subdiscipline of applied linguistics, freeing applied linguistics from the 'stigma' of being exclusively concerned with language teaching . The concept of educational linguistics has always appealed to some of us a great deal and at the Modern Language Centre in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education we have adopted this designation in the naming of our specialization and some of its courses. However, it was obvious that the idea of educational linguistics, which Spolsky had so far only developed in one or two programmatic statements, had to be spelt out. It was therefore with a great deal of eagerness that I looked forward to his elaboration of this idea in a full-size book. But even before I had time to read this work, I came across a review in the TESOL Quarterly • which not only ridiculed this book but also, to my surprise and dismay, out of hand rejected the concept of educational linguistics. The reviewer, Di Pietro, himself an applied linguist of stature for whose work I have the greatest respect, suggested that the author of Educational Linguistics was presenting himself as a kind of miracle doctor who, under a new label, was offering to an

Downloaded from applij.oxfordjournals.org by guest on January 1, 2011

(Received June /979)

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unsuspecting world o f language teachers and applied linguistics a cheap concoction as a cure-all for all the ills of language education. Educational Linguistics: A n Introduction can be criticized on a number of grounds, but I find Di Pietro's interpretation of this work misleading and even flippant in its condemnation. There is nothing of a panacea in this book. On the contrary, the com­ plexity of language issues is stressed and the work is an attempt to disentangle those factors in language education that the language educator can influence and shape from those which are beyond his control. Areas of ignorance or uncertainty in our knowledge are pointed out repeatedly. The work does not, nor does it claim to, offer a wonder cure. What comes across to me in reading this book is the author's intention to bring together, if only in a preliminary way, some of his thoughts on educational linguistics which have become crystallized over the last few years in a number of papers and in his own research and scholarly activities. He draws freely on his personal and wide­ ranging background and wealth of experience in New Zealand, the Pacific area, the United States, Canada, and Israel. His perspective is indeed world-wide and par­ ticularly in the first few chapters, the language issues of Asia and Africa are given as much consideration as those of North America. Spolsky sees all language education as an attempt on the part of society to intervene in one way or another in natural language learning processes . In one case, such inter­ vention may mean no more than adding a new channel of communication, e.g., learning to read; in another case it may be a question of modi fying or adding a variety of the same language; in another case again it involves the addition of an entirely new language, as in bilingual education or foreign language teaching. What objectives are pursued in language education are ultimately political or philosophical decisions made by the community and not by the educational linguist. What the educational linguist can do is to point out the difficulties and complexities of all such interventions and to provide the necessary background of theory and information derived from the language sciences. The book lays in fact more emphasis on natural growth processes and the impediments and barriers to intervention than on the changes that can be guided by educational measures. As an attempt to provide a rough sketch of the area of educational linguistics-'a preface' as Spolsky calls it (page vii)-or as studies in this field bringing together something of Spolsky's own thought, this book should be welcomed and will be looked at with interest by applied linguists and students of language policy and planning. Judged, however, as its title demands, as an introduction to educational linguistics, this book is far less satisfactory, whether we interpret the term 'introduction' as the systematic presentation of a field new to the reader, or as an attempt to map out a new field which has not previously been described. Above all, the work lacks proper balance in the treatment of topics that one can expect in an introductory text. In Chapter 1 the concept of educational linguistics is introduced and an important theoretical model is developed. This model very ingeniously identifies disciplines, theories, and themes which contribute the scholarly basis for activities in language education. But it is not at all clear to what extent the book itself is meant to elaborate this model in the treatment of educational linguistics and if not, why not. Chapters 2 to 6, for example, deal at great length with an aspect that has no place in the model, viz. , the language situations within which language education must operate. Moreover, while the model gives general linguistics an im­ portant role as the source of theory of language and language description, only one short chapter (7) discusses the nature of language. The illustrative and interpretive case study detail that one has been led to expect from the four chapters on the language situation is lacking in this too condensed and axiomatic treatment of linguistic theory. It is equally difficult to identify in the two psycholinguistic chapters (8, 9) the theory of learning suggested by the model in Chapter 1 .

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(Received July 1979)

Reviewed by H . H. STERN Modern Language Centre The Ontario Institute/or Studies in Education

R E F E RE N C E S ' Review of Educational Linguistics by Robert Di Pietro. TESOL Quarterly, Dec. 1 978, pp. 464-469.

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Furthermore, the author does not really make an attempt-except in the first and last chapter-to demonstrate the relevance of the various disciplines to the different facets of language education. Another weakness is that the work is not clearly addressed either to the uninitiated as one could expect from an introductory text, nor is it clearly assumed that it is meant for applied linguists with a considerable background knowledge of names and concepts. One suspects that this work began (quite justifiably) as a collection of Spolsky's papers, and was then reinforced to be a more systematic text. Many applied linguists would no doubt like to see a collection of papers by someone like Spolsky who has made such a significant contribution to applied linguistics. One would also like to see a systematic sketch of educational linguistics . To combine these as was attempted in this volume does not do full justice to either purpose. Finally, as Di Pietro has not failed to notice, there are some pretty bad errors in this book. However, it is unnecessary to take Spolsky to task (as Di Pietro does on page 465 of his review) for thinking that ulpanim (page 37) are countries, when in the context of the passage it is quite obvious that it is a misprint for certain types of courses. But the publisher has nothmg to be proud of if he allows that kind of error to slip through or if he does not notice that Lenneberg is twice misspelt as Lennenberg (pages 104, 1 06) or if he allows the Netherland Antilles to be introduced as the Netherlands America (p. 50). These defects-all the more regrettable in a first work on educational linguistics­ should, however, not lead us to overlook the very important directions indicated in this work: 1 . Spolsky delineates educational linguistics, presenting it as a multi-disciplinary specialization within applied linguistics. 2. He identifies the main contributing disciplines and offers an interesting theoretical model to represent their interaction with language education. 3. He emphasizes the fundamental unity of all language education whether we practise it in the form of native language, foreign language, or bilingual education. 4. He points out the possibilities and limitations of intervention in the process of language development. In spite of its faults, this work, as the first to put educational linguistics on the map, deserves the attention of applied linguis:s and invites discussion-not out-of-hand con­ demnation-of the concept of educational linguistics.

REVIEWS Statisticsfor Linguists Rowley, Mass . : Newbury House, 1 978. Pp ix, 73 . FRANK ANSHEN,

Applied Linguistics, Vol. I,

No I

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The book under review, which uses, for the most part, data from sociolinguistic surveys as examples, represents an attempt to help students learn enough statistics to be competent linguists. It would be pleasant to report that the attempt succeeded. It did not. The book is far too brief to explain its subject adequately. In only 46 pages, the text covers the conversion of observations into numeric form (12 pages), statistics of central tendency and variability (3 pages), statistical inference (9 pages), correlation (9 pages), sampling (4 pages), electronic calculators and computers (6 pages), and variable rules (3 pages). I n addition, there is an introduction (3 pages), a set of exercises without answers (1 1 pages), references (2 pages), and three statistical tables in an appendix (1 1 pages)-binomial probabilities, areas under the normal curve, and per­ centile values for chi-square. It is surely an astonishing ambition to attempt to cover so much ground in so little space. The author would have been better advised to present fewer topics but to discuss them at greater length. His sketchy presentation is likely to befuddle anyone not already conversant with statistics, while people who have studied statistics have no need for this book. This is not to argue that linguists have to understand the derivation of statistical formulas in order to apply them appropriately. But any learner of statistics requires greater elaboration than this text provides on most of the topics it treats. For example, after introducing the reader to the notion of the variance, the text continues ( 1 8): 'It turns out that the square root of the variance is a more useful statistic. It is called the standard deviation and has the property that for large samples there will tend to be a predictable portion of observed results within a given number of standard deviation� to the mean. That is, if we have data with a mean value of 100 and a standard deviation of 1 0, we would expect that about 68 per cent of the observed values would be between 90 and 1 10 (i .e., ± 1 standard deviation of the mean), that about 95 per cent of the observed values would be between 80 and 1 20 (± 2 standard deviations), that about 1 9 per cent o f the values would be between 1 00 and 1 05 ( + 0.5 standard deviations), etc. Tables are available (including one at the back of this book) which show the expected percentage of the scores occurring within a given number of standard deviations from the mean. ' This i s the entire treatment devoted t o the standard deviation and to areas under the normal curve. How many students without prior training in statistics are likely to understand it? There is not even an explanation of how to read the table referred to. (None of the statistical tables in the appendix is explained. They are quite useless to anyone who has not learned-elsewhere-to read them.) When students are introduced to new concepts, they need more than the bare bones of an explanation. Instruction ought to be fleshed out with restatements and plenty of examples. The book's brevity, even when understood, is likely to be misleading. For example, in the passage quoted above, the student is not told that the ' ponion of observed results within a given number of standard deviations to the mean' is predictable only for dis­ tributions which more or less follow a certain shape. The author may have assumed that most 'large samples' have this shape (the so-called normal distribution) and that it was therefore unnecessary to qualify his discussion by reference to the shape of the dis-

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83

(Received Apri/ 1979)

Reviewed by ROBERT L. COOPER The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

RONALD MACKAY and ALAN MOUNTFORD, English for Specific Purposes. (Applied linguistics and language study.) London: Longman, 1 978. Pp. xii, 227. This is a book which, at first sight, seems likely to offer a good deal to the growing number of teachers of English as a study medium, both in Britain and overseas, who are called on to produce classroom materials to meet highly specific needs. It consists of a collection of papers which draw directly on experience of materials design, three papers (Part II) being contributed by a group of experienced textbook writers, and five (Part III) by university teachers professionally involved in providing special courses for overseas students in Britain. The whole is introduced by a theoretical essay by the editors (Part 1), the purpose of which is to set the more practical contributions within the framework of recent developments in communicative language teaching. Unfortunately, the book is seriously flawed, both in conception and execution, and it suffers from the additional handicap that several other books are now available

Downloaded from applij.oxfordjournals.org by guest on January 1, 2011

tribution . But it is not at all clear that most of the phenomena of interest to linguists, particularly sociolinguistic variation, display normal distributions. There are numerous other examples of how the text's failure to give enough in­ formation is likely to mislead the student. In the discussion of a test of the statistical significance of a difference between the means of two groups, the reader is not told that the test assumes random samples and that the samples must be large (at least 30). Nor is the reader cautioned not to use the test for differences between means when obtained from the same sample. Another example of an omission likely to mislead the student is found with respect to the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. The common computational formula is not provided, so that the naive reader is probably left with the impression that the extremely tedious computational routine which is displayed as a means of explaining the statistic is the usual means of com­ putation. As if all this were not bad enough, conscientious students who try to follow the author's examples are likely to be confused by computational and proofreading errors. For example, the data in Table 3 are inconsistent with the original data on which they are based (Table I) because the responses of one subgroup (black women) on item 9 were shown both for item 9 and for item 1 0. What probably began as a recording error was compounded when subsequent computations were based on the incorrect figures. Thus the statistics reported for two groups (blacks and women) and for one item are wrong and the inferences based on these statistics are faulty. Further, when the figures were then converted to scaled scores (Table 8), at least one of the conversions (black women's total score) was incorrectly computed (or misprinted) even if the figures on which they were based is assumed to be correct. Students who feel insecure about their own computational ability (possibly a sub­ stantial proportion of those attracted to this book) are likely to believe that they themselves are at fault rather than the author when they are unable to understand how he arrived at some of his statistics . How will such students react when they encounter, for example, the presentation of the rank-order correlation coefficient? Substituting N = 20 into the formula's denominator, N{N2- l ) , the author gives us 20{192-1). Such students may well despair. In sum, the inadequacies of this book are so serious that students should be advised to avoid it and to consult instead one of the standard introductory texts on statistics.