This page has been validated.
What is the Nature of Learning?
CHAPTER 1
been, at least from the language teacher's point of view, the major contribution of post-Chomskian linguistics. Most evident has been the study of relationships among surface structures, with resultant postulation of deep structures. (cf. the discussion of enate and agnate relationships on p. 12f, above.)
8. The job of a teacher consists of two parts:
a.
Somehow, he must induce, his student to rearrange his own intracranial molecules in ways which will dispose him toward appropriate new kinds of behavior. The student may accomplish this rearrangement with the help of an explanation of the 'grammar point' that is involved. Or he may accomplish it as a result of consciously figuring out the system from examples which he encounters either systematically or non-systematically. Sometimes, perhaps, his rearranging of his molecules is done in sheer self-defense, as a way of rattling off dialogs or drills fast enough to escape being branded 'non-cooperative' (Brown, 1967, p. xvi) or inept. Adherents of one approach to this task are likely to scoff at the value, or even the practicability, of some or all of the others. Nevertheless, every 'method' ('an overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material' Anthony, 1963) must provide one way of achieving temporary rearrangement. This book is as neutral as possible concerning the choice of means to that end.
19
