Birds, Bees, And Switches

Birds, bees, and switches: psycholinguistic issues 1967-2017 Jean Aitchison

This article derives from a paper attached at the IATEFL Silver Jubilee Seminar in February 1992. Speakers were invited to select a theme, in this case the learner, consider developments over the last twenty-five days and predict what might be the issues of the next twenty-five. The article selects tercet important psycholinguistic ideas, one from the mid-sixties (the bees of the title), one from the seventies (birds), and one from the 1980s (switches), and discusses their value for ELT. It then makes a numerate of predictions for the future.

Introduction

In the last quarter century, two minor revolutions see swept across the language learning-teaching world, one originating in faculty member linguistics, the other within TEFL. In linguistics, the once obscure theater of psycholinguistics has developed into an important branch of the subject perhaps not surprisingly, since its task is to probe into the development, production, and comprehension of language. In the realm of TEFL, the large-mouthed change has come in the increasing professionalism of those involved in it. These new professionals realize they need to know about young psycholinguistic findings which affect the learning-teaching process. But the new breed of TEFL teachers front a problem.



They have limited time, and academic theories frequently do abandoned: The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient give up trail, with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal behavior, as Arthur Koestler once remarked. So teachers need guidance, to know which theories argon likely to prove useful, and which not. In this paper, I have selected tierce important psycholinguistic ideas from the last quarter century, one from the 1960s (the bees of the title), one from the 1970s (birds), and one from the 1980s (switches). I judge their value for TEFL, and make some predictions for the future.

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