关于理论的本质_2012概要1.pptVIP

The Nature of TheoriesBased on Theories in SLAby Bill VanPatten and Jessica Williams’s Dr. YU Hongliang hongliang_yu118@126.com An Introduction What is common to all the theories is that they are about natural phenomena, or about things that we observe everyday. Theories are a fundamental staple in science, and all advances in science are, in some way or another, advances in theory development. If you ask scientists, they would tell you that the sciences could not proceed without theories. And if you are applied scientists (such as those who develop medicines or attempt to solve the problem of how to travel from Earth to Mars), they would tell you that a good deal of their work is derived from theoretical insights. Theories are also used in the social and behavioral sciences, such as psychology, sociology, and economics. As in the natural sciences, social sciences attempt to explain observed phenomena such as why people remember some things better than others under certain conditions or why the stock market behaves the way it does. In the field of SLA research, theories have also come to occupy a central position. Some would even say that the only way SLA could advance as a research field is to be theory driven. What is a Theory? At its most fundamental level, a theory is a set of statements about natural phenomena that explains why these phenomena occur the way they do. In the sciences, theories are used in what Kuhn (1996) calls the job of “puzzle solving.” By this Kuhn means that scientists look at observable phenomena as puzzles or questions to be solved. Examples: the earth revolving around the sun but not flying off into space? humans are bipedal but the other primates are knuckle-walkers? The first duty of a theory is to account for or explain observed phenomena. But a theory ought to do more than that. A theory also ought to make predictions about what would occur under specific conditions. Examples: experimentation by Louis Pasteur on microbes; a t