Cognitive theory assumes that responses are also the result of insight and intentional patterning.
Insight can be directed to (a) the concepts behind language i.e. to traditional grammar.
It can also be directed to (b) language as an operation - sets of communicative functions.
A variety of activities practised in new situations will allow assimilation of what has already been learnt or partly learnt. It will also create further situations for which existing language resources are inadequate and must accordingly be modified or extended - "accommodation". This ensures an awareness and a continuing supply of learning goals as well as aiding the motivation of the learner.
Cognitive theory therefore acknowledges the role of mistakes. See Dakin's Novish lesson in which he sets deliberate traps in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning" by Julian Dakin published by Longman 1973. Dakin: "We must design our lessons and language laboratory tapes so as to invite the learner to make the minimum number of mistakes consonant with, and conducive to, learning new rules. Equally important to the principles underlying the use of "meaningful drills" and also relevant to the role of mistakes in cognotive theory is the association of mentalism with notionalism.
Trainers of English language teachers can achieve practical coverage of cognitive learning theory by reviewing the history of language teaching, especially the period in the mid 20th century when "meaningful drills" were being advocated and the shortcomings of "meaningless drills" were being highlighted. Although drilling and rote learning became subject to considerable prejudice in some educational circles in the late 20th century, no language learner will proceed very far without recognition of language structure and nobody will succeed in learning much without practice and repetition. Knowledge of the "types of drill" which the accomplished language teacher or informed computer learning program can employ provide a full toolkit for anybody responsible for learning and teaching. A fuller examination of drills is therefore contained below.
Another ploy often used by teacher trainers is to put trainee teachers into the situations encountered by language learners. This is often done through demonstrations where new languages (of which trainees have no knowledge) are presented. As homework (especially on MA Courses where "Reflective Learning" features as a component) students are often required to learn new languages (and alphabets!) to a basic level. It is hoped that they will be reminded of the problems, especially the conceptual ones. Often, there is not enough time to do this on short teacher training courses. However, there is a famous chapter which trainees can read where the experience of learning a new language is simulated. This is Julian Dakin's introduction to "Novish" [ a fictitious language designed especially to simulate conditions experienced in real language learning situations ]. The chapter appears in "The Language Laboratory and Language Learning". This is possibly the best book ever written on language learning - the reference in the title to the language laboratory reflects a technology in fashion in the 1960s and 1970s and does not detract from the book's main treatise on language learning. The chapter on Novish is also reproduced in The Edinburgh Course of Applied Linguistics [ a four volume publication which may be easier to find than Dakin's book in second hand bookshops].
The aim of language practice drills is to train learners to talk and to help them master the basic structural patterns of the target language. As a method of language practice, drills are difficult to reconcile when the language becomes "meaningless".
Lack of context results from behaviourist principle of focussing uniquely on form: the one-step-at-a-time approach which attempts to forestall mistakes. Unique focus on form may succeed in the controlled environment, but the benefits of structural learning may not be transferred into the real environment. Drills attempting to forestall mistakes show only positive instances of what can be done. Negative instances are not given. The meaning conveyed by an utterance (e.g. I'm not going) is a matter of the function of the sentence as a whole in the larger context in which it occurs. A sentence does more than communicate information. It performs a role both in relation to other utterances that have been produced and as part of the interactive process involving the participants.
Without this wider context, drills run the risk of overgeneralisation. They may cause as opposed to correct mistakes. The absence of an element of choice within a drill undermines the semantico-grammatical category of communicative function from which conceptual meaning is derived, thus inhibiting the learning process. When the only changes are vocabulary items controlled by prompts i.e. when drills embody invariant structural patterns, the given structures may just as well be represented by the sounds TUM and TE. [ Julian Dakin 1973 ]
In order to qualify as "meaningful", a drill must provide:
There have been many successful courses which have been largely dependent on drills. An early example was the Minimal Language Acquisition Programme, designed by Charles Fries and Richard Lado. A later example was "Streamline Departures" [Oxford 1979], a UK English course book with a remarkable long shelf life, though the orginal method recommended in the Teacher's Book depended on many of the following drill-types.
Regardless of preferences for behaviourist or cognitive, most teachers would find a place for repetition (for purposes of practice & consolidation), comparison (differentiation through minimal pairs or paired grammatical forms). Depending on their nature and scope, drills may EITHER elicit sequences of unrelated sentences from the learner OR build up something which begins to look like connected spoken prose. Given sufficient definition of aims and the avoidance of monotony, artificiality and inefficiency, drills must surely contribute to language learning by virtue of their many useful applications.
Drills may be tried with the whole class or used on an individual basis, perhaps for remedial purposes. The limitations of drills are clearly matched by useful possibilities.
Dakin's introduction to Novish (The Language Laboratory & Language Learning Longman 1973) is hardly a programme which invites "the minimum number of mistakes consonant with, and conducive to, learning new rules." Indeed, he readily admits that he was going deliberately out of his way to trap us.
The Novish structures, which contain the conceptual difficulties, perform such basic functions as identification and verification of class (N.B. whether a thing grows or not is of great social & cultural importance to native Novish speakers).
The behaviourist could not realistically avoid the "sademane" / "sadegru" distinction through selection or careful grading.
Dakin forces us into traps by including problem-solving in the drills he presents in his programme for learning Novish. Our mistakes very often derive from lack of conceptual awareness and failure to grasp important semantic criteria. However, Novish children make the same mistakes! The conversion of "rule" to speaking habit is likely to be a slower more conscious process in the case of L2 learners!
Under Skinner's model of language behaviour formed through the application of "habits", consciousness of underlying rules is not of any importance.
Chomsky's conception of language as "rule-governed" would imply that we must at the very least allow our students to induce the rules.
Carroll defines "rule" as "simply a formal, usually vebal, statement of the conditions under which something is expected to occur or not to occur under certain sanctions." He adds that it is a construct in some sense independent of actual behaviour.
Carroll illustrates this claim by citing the fact that people can speak a language without any conscious knowledge or application of the rules that underlie their language.
Novish Frame 2 six different objects. "Sademane" is apparently used to define them. Insufficient knowledge of Novish to allow many L2 analogies, so we are tempted to measure each new item using L1 concepts as a gauge.
Novish Frame 3 introduces a refinement. Correct form is "Sademanena gal". However, the underlying rule is less important since a Novish speaker would probably understand our meaning if we said "Sademanena gal".
Novish Frame 6 introduces the use of "Sademane" in a question. It is noticeable that "Sademane" or "Sademanena" is replaced by "Sadestil" when verification is given.
At this stage, we think we know what is being verified just as we think we know what is being asked, but we are already on dangerous ground.
From this point, conceptual awareness of the distinction which Novish speakers make between things that grow and things that don't becomes increasingly important.
Novish Frame 9. The learner will quickly recognise "sadegru" as a second word he will sometimes have to use (as opposed to "sademane") in giving confirmation. Dakin has deliberately selected nouns which will lead to a false distinction: objects v people.
Whether it is justifiable for a teacher to lead his students into a trap and then to mystify them with "Ye sadegru opl" is a question in its own right.
Clearly the proper distinction is one of some importance and any mystification should certainly not be prolonged beyond the point where Ss recognise that they have something new to learn.
To depend on "mim-mem" techniques to somehow unconsciously teach this distinction is clearly ludicrous.
It is widely recognised that learning language purely by imitation and repetition is uneconomical and that if each new speech pattern had to be learnt by imitation the task would be endless.
The catalogue of things which grow and don't grow is enormous and the structure under consideration is of fundamental importance and seems likely to allow further creation by analogy. Therefore in frames 9-12 the underlying rule must be realised.
Novish Frames 13 & 14 at first sight seem to be analogous to language concepts with which we are familiar. "Nu sadegru poi, sadestil tavl!" would appear to mean "No, it isn't a boy, it's a table.
Little do we suspect that the first phrase indicates that the table "doesn't grow like a boy".
We cannot develop a sound basis for further analogy until we have encountered steps 15 & 16.
Novish Frames 15 & 16. Here we learn that in comparing and contrasting different objects or people Novish speakers are vitally concerned with difference or even similarity of class as well as difference in identity.
The words "Ye" or "Nu" are applied essentially to class likenesses and differences and not to precise definition of what an object or person is or is not.
I can imagine many potential misunderstandings in situations where English speakers might use or take "Ye" to indicate a particular identity when what a Novish speaker understands is common membership of a certain group:
Q: Ki ku sademane? A: Ye sadegru ku, sadegru Margaret Thatcher!
Students should be given the chance to share the concepts of their target language. To deny them of what they are ready for, is to overlook what Chomsky recognised as the "creative aspect" of language use. Such a denial would serve to discourage creation by analogy, to kill the spirit of enquiry and to isolate the learner from a knowledge of the utterances which represent his achievements.
Not all rules met in elementary English classes are so complex as those of Novish. Many things in English are much easier to work out from examples than this, and so might not need such "rules".
There are still a number of things that do appear to require explicit explanation, such as "mass" and "unit" nouns, the contrast between Present Perfect and Past, etc.
Sophisticated behaviourists like Fries [ in "Language Learning" ] did not suppose that the mind was a mechanism of habits, and no more. Fries merely argued that, given that it was very sophisticated and subtle, the human mind was capable of inferring underlying rules if the examples were well-chosen. Fries thought that the best way to infer underlying rules was through practice (of the pattern drill type) supported by judicious explanation of rules at times. Read Fries' own introduction to English Pattern Practices.