语言学导论阅读题,简答题汇总.docxVIP

Ⅲ. READING COMPREHENSION. Passage One (Questions 1-6)Psychologists and educators have known for a long time that active learning is by far superior to passive learning and in the discussion in section 3.1.1 we have rejected the notion of teaching language through some automatic conditioning process. Both of these considerations point to the crucial role of learner factors in language acquisition and to the importance of knowing just what the learner contributes to the learning process so that it can be taken into account in the teaching process.Intelligence is usually conceived of as the ability to learn and thus it is to be expected that I.Q. will be related to second-language learning as well, and indeed the evidence we have corroborated this expectation. This relationship, under conditions of school learning, appears to be in the order of 15 to 20 percent of the contributing variance. The importance of intelligence in second-language learning can be interpreted as stemming from the fact that the teaching process is incapable of making it completely clear just what the learner is to acquire. Thus the variance contribution of intelligence can be expected to increase under conditions where instructional procedures are weak and amorphous and decrease under conditions where they are effective and well integrated. In this sense, the correlation between intelligence and achievement can be viewed as an indication of the quality of instruction. The 20 percent variance contribution just referred to thus indicates that within the present conditions of language teaching in schools, given the criterion definitions and goals, and distribution of aptitude and perseverance factors that now prevail, the quality of instruction is quite high and the amount of possible improvement fairly limited. This conclusion, if valid, is quite significant, since it suggests that in order to increase the success of the FL curriculum in schools the major changes and improvements will have to come