Soviet Psychology

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Chapter I: The learning and Mastery of Language

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Chapter I

THE LEARNING AND MASTERY OF LANGUAGE

In our everyday speech and in precise scientific writing w e

often use the expression "knowing a language." What does this
mean? Can we strictly define the concept of "language mas-
tery"? If so, how?
There is no doubt that we a r e "masters" of our native lan-
guage. But does that mean that we have command over the en-
t i r e wealth of the Russian language, everything contained in,
let u s say, the seventeen-volume Academic dictionary of mod-
e r n literary Russian? The answer, of course, is no: whatever
criterion we might select to divide the vocabulary of a language
into what is essential and what is nonessential for "mastery"
of that language, it would never prove satisfactory. For ex-
ample, we might draw the line on the basis of frequency; but
it is common knowledge that every language contains words
that, although far from frequent in that language, are neverthe-
less essential for genuinely mastering it as a foreign lan-
guage (1)- not to mention as a native language!
So it seems that we cannot arrive a t a definition of the con-
cept of "language mastery" via linguistics. Let us t r y another
route - the psychological approach. This route leads via the
concepts of speech skills and speech habits. We agree with
A. A. Mirolyubov & V. S. Tsetlin that mastering a language
.
"means shaping skills and habits of understanding.. and ex-
pressing one's thoughts." (?)
Although there is no universally accepted definition of these
concepts in psychology, there is a certain consensus in the
way they are interpreted in practice. For the sake of simplicity,
we shall mention only one particular way of viewing and defining

3
4 Learning a Second Language

these concepts. This view, which also will underlie all our dis-
cussions throughout this book, is that of the school of Soviet
psychology whose roots reach back to L. S. Vygotskiy more-
precisely, the school of the psychology of learning headed by
P. Ya. Gal'perin. According to this view, inner (theoretical,
mental, intellectual) activity is intimately linked with external
(practical) activity. Acts with material objects are interiorized,
consolidated, and generalized to become skills; later, after they
have been made automatic and become components of more
complex acts, these skills are transformed into habits. (3)
The view propounded by Gal'perin and other psycholog&ts
of Vygotskiy's school follows that school's general theory of
activity. Since we shall have to return to the problem of ac-
tivity in more detail in a later chapter, we shall at this point
mention only one aspect of the question: the psychological dif-
ference between an activity as a whole, a n act, and an operation.
An activity has an independent goal, of w z h the subject of
that activity is consciously aware. It is organized to attain
-
that goal in the optimal manner with a minimal expenditure
of time and effort. An activity consists of a sequence of indi-
vidual acts, each of which has an intermediate goal that is sub-
ordinate to the overall goal of the activity. For example, to
turn a machine part on a lathe, a worker has to mount and se-
cure the part, set the turning tool, make the right adjustments
on the lathe, and so on. But acts a r e not immediately formed
-
as acts; initially they a r e independent activities that is, they
have an independent, conscious goal. To learn to work on a
lathe, the worker first has to take each act that goes to make
up h i s activity and practice it separately until he has mastered
it. H e does not set for himself the overall task of turning out
a finished machine part; rather, he directs himself to a partial
-
task to secure the part properly in the lathe, and s o on. Once
he has learned the individual acts, he begins to combine them;
what previously were independent goals for him now recede
into the background. H i s acts normally begin to be unconscious
(or, more accurately, as we shall see later, they are conscious-
l y controlled), and they emerge into the worker's "clear field
The Learning and Mastery of Language 5

of consciousness" only when difficulties arise (in accordance

with "Clarapede's law"). In principle, the same thing happens
when a person learns a foreign language: to be able to speak
in the language he has to practice each individual act. We shall
return to this point later on.
We a r e still left with operations. These a r e the components
of acts. But whereas acts, as we just mentioned, have to be
consciously experienced from the very beginning, individual
operations depend on the circumstances surrounding the act:
a person does not have to be consciously aware of his opera-
tions and, as a rule, is not. The origin of operations is dif-
ferent from the origin of acts. They may be automatized acts,
which have completely lost their conscious nature, o r they may
be primordial operations, so to speak - that is, they may have
been shaped through the passive adaptation of an act to the
conditions under which it is performed. (4)
Turning now to the concept of skills and habits, w e can begin
by setting up a working definition of a skill as the ability to
perform a particular act according to the optimal parameters
-
of that act that is, in the best possible way, so that the ac-
complishment of that act corresponds to the goal and the con-
ditions under which it is performed. From what w e have said
earlier, it is obvious that this is always an acquired ability.
A skill is intimately connected with habits and is impossible
-
without them. We can define a habit again, this is a working
-
definition as the ability to perform a particular operation
optimally. (5) Of course, the very concept of optimality dif-
fers somewkt in these two definitions, since the parameters
for performing an operation a r e not the same as those for per-
forming an act.
Any activity, especially one as complex as speech, requires
a whole system of skills and habits. This system is not shaped
all at once in the child o r , later, in the adult; rather, it de-
velops gradually, stage by stage. Of course, both the four-
or five-year-old child, the schoolchild, the adult who has never
received any formal education, and the university graduate all
are masters of their native language in a certain sense. But
6 Learning a Second Language

in what sense? Only in the sense that they a r e equally adept

at conducting themselves appropriately and correctly in a lim-
ited number of elementary speech situations. But communica-
tion poses difficulties for them i f these situations a r e not ele-
mentary. For example, everyone knows of the young child who
seems to have full command of speech and yet suddenly be-
comes speechless if he has to explain something over the tele-
phone, with no living, visible person to talk with. Similarly,
w e all know that by no means every adult can, for example,
speak in public without a written text o r without at least some
form of outline. These few examples alone show that "mastery"
of one's native language is quite relative.
Let us t r y briefly to characterize the hierarchical interre-
lationship of speech skills of varying degrees of complexity.
For the time being, we shall limit ourselves to one's native lan-
guage.
Let us begin by stating a fact quite familiar to psychologists,
namely, that the very young child's speech is situation bound.
We can understand the content of the child's speech only i f we
know and take into account the situation that the child is talking
about, his facial expressions, gestures, intonation, and so on.
There is no essential distinction in this case between speech
and nonverbal behavior. An example of this sort of situation-
bound utterance (it would be premature to speak of speech, as
such, in this case) occurred when my 14-month-old daughter
brought her friend into my room and said "Daddy" - obviously
using that word to define the surrounding circumstances. It
would have been absolutely impossible to understand her utter-
ance outside its situation.
Later, the child's speech becomes contextual. This means
that it can be understood in a definite communicative context
as part of a more general conversation with a unified content;
but the child is incapable of talking about a particular object,
phenomenon, and s o on outside the concrete situation o r the
specific context. H i s speech remains bound to external -
which by now may be verbal as well as nonverbal - stimulation.
As soon as the child's speech becomes potentially nonsitu-
The Learning and Mastery of Language 7

ational and noncontextual, we can say that he has mastered a

minimum of speech skills, that he has learned his native lan-
-
guage to a minimal degree, perhaps, but nevertheless he has
learned it. H i s further progress toward more complex speech
leads along several paths.
First, the child gradually becomes more consciously aware
of his own speech. The term "conscious awareness," however,
is not really accurate here; as the child sets out along this
path there is no conscious awareness as such, but rather - vol-
untary production of speech, and then the singling out of i t s
components. By "voluntary" we mean that the child can produce
speech by a special act of his own will; as early as the begin-
ning of his second year, the child can voluntarily produce an
utterance as a whole, and later on he extends this ability to the
individual components of an utterance - syntagms, words,
syllables, and, finally, individual sounds. Voluntary speech
also involves singling out speech components; by this we mean
that the child unconsciously "feels out" his own speech, iso-
lating and discriminating certain fundamental characteristics
within the spoken chain that emerge into his sphere of con-
sciousness, as it were, when he is faced with the necessity of
analyzing speech. This blind "feeling out" does not involve ac-
tive, conscious acts with speech; it gives the impression of
being something spontaneous and inborn. Thus, if w e ask the
preschooler to break down a word, he can divide it into dis-
crete syllables, but not into sounds or phonemes; within the
syllable itself he can "feel out" only the initial consonantal
part. Here, by the way, is the root of the first-grader's typ-
ical mistake of leaving out the letters that denote vowels when
he writes words (for instance, writing - ksh o r even -
shk instead
-
of kasha).
When the child is faced with the task of learning to read and
write, he is forced to develop (or, more accurately, we develop
in him) the skills of voluntary phonetic analysis of speech.
Once he possesses these skills, it is already much easier for
-
him to begin learning a new code the code of written speech.
Moreover, for the first time the child now encounters a definite
8 Learning a Second Language

system of acts with linguistic material, a system designed,

above all, to demonstrate to him the systematic nature of lin-
guistic phenomena. Later on he will be able to use this system
of acts, this system of skills, in operating on linguistic phe-
nomena, not merely by means of them; he will be able to apply
-
the system to higher levels of language grammar, semantics,
and stylistics. (We can leave aside the third function of teach-
ing reading and writing - its function as a necessary tool for
all other subjects of instruction: the child who has not mastered
the fundamentals of reading and writing will never make it
through a single textbook.)
Things are much the same in teaching the child the grammar
of his native language. Here we lay the foundations for the
skill of freely operating with syntactic units, thus enabling the
child consciously to select his linguistic tools.
Native-language instruction in school has one other essential
aspect, It leads to the distinction between "correct" and "in-
correct ,"between the normative and the non-normative, and,
what is especially important, to the functional specialization
of the child's linguistic tools, the skill of using them efficiently
and expressively in concrete situations of communication. We
have now arrived a t the appropriate place to examine the sec-
ond path the child follows in developing more complex speech -
the transition from dialogue to various types of monologue.
Dialogue is in very large measure situational - that is, it
is bound to the circumstances within which a conversation takes
- -
place and contextual that is, each successive utterance is
determined largely by the one before it. For this reason it is
abbreviated and elliptical: much that is overtly expressed in
monologue is simply implied in dialogue, because both conver-
sation partners know the situation. This is why a transcribed
dialogue is almost unintelligible to the outside reader o r lis-
tener. Its unintelligibility also stems from the fact that non-
linguistic communicative means (for example, intonation),
which are auxiliary in monologue, assume a n independent role
in dialogue and often even replace missing linguistic compo-
nents of an utterance. Furthermore, dialogue is involuntary,
The Learning and Mastery of Language 9

reactive speech: a remark in dialogue is usually either an im-

mediate verbal response to a nonverbal stimulus (for example,
a person slams the door on his finger and exclaims "Ouch!
Damn it: ") or an utterance whose content is "imposed" upon it
by the preceding utterance (in the situation described, the usual
reply would be something like: "Be more careful! I?). Occa-
sionally even the form of the utterance is imposed upon it; it
then becomes a reformulation (paraphrase) of the preceding
remark. Take, for example, the following transcriptions of
living speech:

"Did your mother's place burn dawn?"

"She lived with her mother. Everything burned to
.
the ground.. ."
"Did they steal everything you had?"
"They stole almost everything."

Finally, dialogue has a very low level of organization: even if

an utterance has a structure, it is only a very simple one.
Dialogue sort of "flows" of itself; each new utterance is com-
pletely determined by the situation and by the preceding utter-
ances (the context). Various kinds of c1iche)s and stereotyped
phrases, habitual word combinations, habitual remarks, and
s o on, play an enormous role in dialogue.
It is evident from what we have just said that dialogue is
more elementary, s o to speak, than other forms of speech.
The characteristic traits of monologue, in particular, a r e in
a certain sense the inverse of those inherent in dialogue. First,
monologue is a relatively expanded form of speech. This means
that in monologue we make relatively little use of nonverbal in-
formation that we o r our partner might obtain from the situation
of the conversation. In monologue, instead of pointing to an
object we are forced a t the very least to refer to that object,
to nitme it and, i f our listeners a r e unfamiliar with the situ-
ation, to describe it as well. Second, monologue is to a large
extent voluntary speech; the speaker has a certain content (or,
more accurately, the intention of expressing a content), and he
10 Learning a Second Language

has to select the linguistic form appropriate to that content; it

has to form the basis of an utterance o r a sequence of utter-
ances. Third, monologue is a highly organized form of speech.
Typically, the speaker plans or programs not merely each in-
dividual utterance but all h i s speech, the "monologue" as a
whole. Sometimes this plan of the monologue is kept in the
speaker's head; at other times it is exteriorized - clothed in
linguistic form and put down on paper as an outline o r summary
of the future utterance.
All these specific characteristics of monologue show that it
demands special training. (6) One of the functions of a school
course in native language aGd literature is to shape the skills
necessary for voluntary and expanded speech. The speech
skills associated with the organized structuring of speech, on
the other hand, a r e formed only on the basis of systematic
oratorical and pedagogical practice.
The ability voluntarily to produce a monologue presupposes,
in particular, the skill of selectively using the most appropriate
linguistic means for a given utterance, that is, the skill of using
the word, the phrase, o r the syntactic construction that most
precisely conveys the speaker's original intention. But for
speech that is not merely formally correct, but expressive and
persuasive as well, this is not enough: here the speaker also
has to be able to select freely certain nonlinguistic, but psycho-
logically essential, communicative means. For example, the
speaker must not merely differentiate between an interrogative
and a declarative intonation but also be able to reflect in his
speech different degrees of declaration, different types of ques-
tions. These nonlinguistic means include facial expressions
and gestures, the rate of speech and pauses, various ways of
reflecting in speech the "central articulation" of the utterance,
that is, its logical center, and s o on. All this is a sort of "high-
e r mathematics" of speech activity that must be specially
taught, even to the native speaker.
From the psychological standpoint, written speech is a vari-
ety of monologue all the inherent features of which are carried
to their logical culmination, as it were. Written speech is even
The Learning and Mastery of Language 11

more fully elaborated than the oral monologue: this is because

our partner cannot ask us to repeat a word o r phrase, nor can
we judge from his behavior whether he has understood us o r
understood us correctly; moreover, written speech lacks addi-
tional communicative means such as gestures. So from the
very beginning we mull over and work out everything explicitly
for our partner. This is why written speech is more complex
structurally than oral speech and, correspondingly, more dif-
ficult to understand, which necessitates specially organized
instruction in understanding written speech. Especially sig-
nificant is the fact that written speech is the most voluntary
form of speech; in choosing linguistic means, we do not simply
adapt them to the objectives of communication, but we - con-
sciously evaluate the degree of their suitability o r unsuitability.
Moreover, when an utterance is completed, o r even partially
completed, we can consciously or unconsciously compare it
with the content we wanted t o express. If our utterance turns
out not to have been the best, we can reject it and begin again.
Canceling an alternative that has already been uttered is usu-
ally combined with the use of inner speech, which we shall dis-
cuss in greater detail later.
There is no upper limit to native-language knowledge; more
accurately, that limit lies beyond the bounds of our pedagogical
possibilities, somewhere in the realm of individual stylistics
in artistic or oratorical speech. It is enough to say that even
in the area accessible to us we have numerous gradations in
the complexity of speech skills.
From our psychological-methodological point of view, per-
haps the chief parameter o r index of the varying complexity of
these speech skills is the extent of "freedom," the degree of
voluntariness of these skills, in particular, the extent to which
the speaker is - o r potentially can be- consciously aware of
them.
There is only one view in the contemporary psychology and
physiology of speech that clearly recognizes and outlines the
different levels of conscious awareness. This is the school of
thought that combines the views of L. S. Vygotskiy and N. A.
12 Learning a Second Language

Bernshteyn and is represented in the works of Professor A. N.

Leont'ev and the author of the present book. This view dis-
tinguishes three or four levels of conscious awareness.
The first of these is central, cognized awareness, which is
present when we are dealing with the - goal of an act o r an ac-
..
tivity as a whole.. The second level is conscious control,
that is, the level on which we are dealing with conscious op-
erations. "By the term 'conscious operation' we mean. a ..
mode of action shaped by the conversion of a previously con-
scious goal-directed act." (?) Figuratively speaking, conscious
control is a sort of vestige of central, cognized awareness with-
in a person's language capacity.
The next level, which the present author introduced in one of
his earlier works (8), is that of unconscious control, which
comes into play when we are dealing with the unconscious con-
trol mechanisms limiting the freedom of the phonetic realiza-
tion of speech; it is this mechanism that corresponds to the
concept of "phonetic word-type'' as used in L. V. Shcherba's
writings, to N. I. Dukel'skiy's concept of "phonemic image,"
and to the concept of the phoneme in several of L. A. Chis-
tovich's works. (9) Finally, the last level is when there is - no
cognized awareness at all.
Thus, content of which the speaker is "centrally aware" -
(or, in D. I. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovskiy's words, the content located
in the "focal point of consciousness," the object of directed
attention) may "descend" to a more elementary level the -
level of conscious control - if it obtains a different place in
activity and comes into play in the form of conscious opera-
tions. On the level of conscious control we do not give any
special attention to a particular speech event so long as it cor-
responds to what we expect in that particular place in speech.
But if a deviation from the norm occurs, if some difficulty arises,
then that speech event o r its absence "rises to the surface": it be-
comes centrally cognized. Take, for example, the activity of a
person reading proof: he does not consciously lookat every single
letter, but in the course of conscious control as soon as he notices
a misprint, that e r r o r becomes the focus of his attention.
The Learning and Mastery of Language 13

Besides operations that have "descended" from a higher

- -
level conscious operations "there a r e operations having
a different origin, a different genesis; these a r e operations
arising through the practical 'adaptation' of an act t o objective
conditions or through the most elementary imitation." (10) It
is precisely in this way that the child masters his n a t i v e a n -
guage. Not until later on, especially during native-language in-
struction in school, do these operations become the object of
- -
central, cognized awareness and a t that level the object
of conscious control.
The "typical" level of speech skills, the one most closely
corresponding to the psychophysiological structure of language
capacity and fully realizing the potential of that capacity, is -
in N. A. Bernshteyn's terms - "spontaneous speech." In this
case the central, cognized awareness is the goal of the utterance.
On the level of unconscious control, we are dealing with gram-
mar and vocabulary; this means that in principle we can con-
sciously select our syntactic and lexical means, but we do s o
only in the exceptional case when it is necessary. Phonology
and, to some extent, morphology and word formation are subject
to unconscious control; and, finally, phonation itself (the pho-
netic realization of speech) is entirely unconscious.
If we compare this schema with what we said earlier, it is
easy to see that speech takes shape in preschool children and
young preschoolers as unconscious imitation, "continuous
realignment'' with the mechanisms of unconscious control being
built up as time goes by. In the older preschooler and the young
schoolchild, speech passes through the level of central, cog-
nized awareness to the level of conscious control. The further
evolution of speech skills consists in raising the degree of con-
-
sciousness of speech the extension of conscious awareness
and voluntariness to increasingly larger structural units of the
text. (What, essentially, does a writer do when he "polishes"
his work if not bring elementary units - words, word groups,
-
and sentences into correspondence with the objective of the
particular episode o r the work as a whole ? )
It is clear from what has been said that the concept of habit
14 Learning a Second Language

is essentially a dual notion. A habit may be generated "from

below" as the result of "continuous realignment'' and imitation,
o r "from above" as the result of automatization and reduction
of skills. (11) The difference between these two aspects of the
concept of habit is clearly illustrated by the example of writing
habits.. . . It might be useful to keep these aspects terminolog-
ically distinct; from here on we shall call these two types of
habits "unconscious" and "conscious ,I' respectively. Let us
emphasize, however, that this terminology is purely a matter
of convention.
Language learning, then, is the learning of speech skills and
habits on a specific level (where that level lies is another
question). And in order to talk about the learning of language,
we must have a clear idea of the specific psychological features
of the speech skills that we must shape in the child, their place
in the overall hierarchy of speech skills, and s o on. In other
words: language learning and language mastery can be defined
only in each particular case through the psychological charac-
teristics of the speech acts that we are shaping. And these
characteristics depend on the communicative and other func-
tional tasks with which our pupils are faced and which we, as
methodologists and teachers, must take into account.
A conclusive answer to the question of what language learning
is (and language mastery) entails an examination of the prob-
lems associated with various types of speech (from a psycho-
logical point of view) and with the various social and functional
factors of communication that bear upon these types.
The criteria for distinguishing the different psychological
types of speech can be broken down into three groups. The
first group includes the criteria linked with the inner organiza-
tion of human language capacity. The second group includes
criteria' associated with the fundamental structure of activity
and with the sociopsychological functions of speech (language).
Finally, the third group is made up of criteria linked with the
characteristic features of the linguistic realization of the ut-
te rance .
I. 1. Which physiological level of the organization of speech
The Learning and Mastery of Language 15

behavior (N. A. Bernshteyn's concept) is the dominant one?

Using this criterion we can distinguish communicative speech -
that is, speech in social intercourse; nominative speech that-
is, speech aimed at designating things in reality; echolalic (or
-
imitative) speech that is, when the speaker simply repeats
a word after someone else without being consciously aware of
i t s content; and choral speech.
Jumping ahead somewhat, we might mention here that whereas
communicative speech is most typical of speech in one's native
language, the other types are extremely typical of the process
of learning to master a foreign language, despite their super-
ficial "exoticism." In particular, the last two types of speech
a r e especially characteristic of learning to master phonetics.
2. Is speech stochastic- that is, is it generated as a unique
-
string of interrelated elements or is it constructive - that
is, does an utterance have an inner schema? Using this cri-
terion, we can speak of active speech. Further, w e can speak
of reactive speech (which we have already in relation to dia-
logue). Finally, we can speak of the different variants of speech
that a r e "not actually speech," whose status in this respect is
not entirely clear. In particular, this latter type of speech in-
cludes what B. F. Skinner has labeled "transcription" (the
-
translation of a message from, one form to another for ex-
ample, writing from dictation) and "interverbal" behavior, an
example of which is translation into another language both-
cases that are quite familiar to the methodologist.
3. The degree of participation of consciousness. We have
already discussed this point earlier. The chief types of speech
that can be distinguished according to this criterion are un-
conscious speech (as in the preschooler), controlled speech,
and conscious speech, in which individual elements of the ut-
terance a r e the object of central, cognized awareness. (Jump-
ing ahead, we can straightaway pose the question: Which ele-
ments ? The answer to this question will come in due time.)
11. 1. The place of an utterance in the system of activity as
a whole. In this respect we can speak of planning speech, the
speech - act in the strict sense, and analytic speech.
16 Learning a Second Language

2. The motivation for an utterance. Here we can speak of

spontaneous speech, whose motive comes "from within," s o to
speak. Skinner called this type of motivation a "mand," and he
divided mands into three types: (a) a request, such as "Please
pass the salt! IT; (b) a command, which there is an additional
nonverbal reinforcement: "Hands up: ' I (with the implied rein-
forcement "or I'll shoot! "); (c) a question, such as "What's
your name?" We can also speak of situational, contextual, and
completely unmotivated speech (Skinner's "autoclitics" - as-
sertion, negation, and so on).
3. The functional directedness of the utterance. We will
speak more about this aspect later.
III. 1. Sententiality, that is, whether or not an utterance is
expanded into a sentence. This criterion allows us to distin-
guish nonsentential, sentential, supersentential (those corre-
sponding to a sequence of sentences), and =asententid (those
corresponding to part of a sentence) utterances.
2. The logical-psychological type of utterance (compare, for
example, Luriya's distinction between "communication of events,"
such as "The dog is barking," and "communication of relation-
ships," such as "Socrates is a man").
3. The relatedness of a n utterance to a particular participant
in the conversation. Here we can follow Charles Fries and
classify utterances as "situation" utterances (utterances that
start sentences), "sequence" utterances, and "response" utter-
ances.
The more general characteristics of speech, which we earlier
called functional characteristics, can be broken down according
to three criteria. First, the functional directedness of speech,
occasionally reflected in the functional specialization of speech
resources. Second, various forms of communication (oral and
written). And third, functional-stylistic characteristics of
speech. The reader can consult our earlier works for a dis-
cussion of all these criteria. (12) It is clear, however, that -
a t least for the initial stage of instruction - the stylistic
characteristic of speech is irrelevant for pedagogical pur-
poses.
The Learning and Mastery of Language 17

-
Which forms of speech, then, do we teach in particular,
which do we teach in the initial stage ?
Our main task, of course, involves communicative speech.
But do we teach communicative speech (utterances such as
"The dog is barking") and nominative speech (utterances such
as "This is a chair") in equal measure? With what do we
begin? Ordinarily, we begin with nominative speech. The de-
gree to which we are correct in doing so is far from obvious.
Further, in principle we teach active speech. In method-
ological practice, however, we give preference to reactive
speech, which assumes a place here that does not correspond
to its real significance for the pupil. We do everything pos-
sible to encourage the student's habits of reactive speech and
then are surprised that he does not have an active command
of speech. It is likely that the highly intensive language course
designed by G. Lozanov for active mastery of the language owed
its success to the fact that it was oriented completely toward
active speech. We should probably begin with communicative
and active speech as the most typical forms of the normal
speech situation, from which we later can "branch off" t o other
types of speech. Here we agree completely with N. I. Zhin-
kin (13) and E. P. Shubin (14),who in different ways emphasize
the need to lay a certain "foundation," to accumulate a basic
store of speech skills and habits as well as a certain minimum
of linguistic resources to secure these skills and habits.
We must also begin, of course, with practical speech acts,
with speech used for influencing; and not until after this stage
should we go on to "theorizing in the language,'' that is, to
analytic speech and, finally, to speech as a tool for planning.
The criterion of motivation would seem to suggest that
spontaneous speech should come first for the pupil. This fol-
lows from the same logic that w e used in proposing earlier
that primary attention be given to active and communicative
-
speech namely, that it is easier to reduce and adapt ex-
isting speech skills and habits than to develop completely new
ones (we assume throughout that the pupil has a good command
of his native language).
18 Learning a Second Language

Naturally, among the various specialized forms of speech,

-
we should give preference to the "null" form ordinary speech
unburdened by any special o r additional functions. However,
we must also point out the absolute necessity of teaching certain
-
%on-null" forms of speech something that is not being done
at present. "Photic" (or contact) speech varies from language
to language, for example, and a person with a perfectly adequate
command of ordinary speech can experience difficulties , say,
in conversing over the telephone.
The primary forms of communication are , of course, oral
speech and dialogue.
With regard to the problems of monologue and dialogue, here
the question is more complex. From what we have said earlier
about the greater psychological complexity of monologue com-
pared with dialogue, it follows that certain methodologists-
E. P. Shubin, in particular- err in concentrating exclusively
on teaching dialogue. (15) If monologue training is not to be
limited to mere retelling and the student is to be presented with
more complex tasks entailing active, creative, intellectual work
on a text (tasks that help shape complex skills of speech and
verbal thought in the pupil (16),then it is precisely monologue
on which the methodologist should focus his attention: monologue
must be specially taught, whereas dialogue demands drill on
the basis of a limited number of speech stereotypes, (17) It
is no coincidence that a person placed in a foreign-language
environment without any special background in that language
-
easily learns one particular speech form dialogue. Thus the
authors of General methods of foreign-languag e teaching in
secondary schools [ s e e note 21 a r e correct in their critical
attitude toward instruction directed exclusively toward mono-
logue o r exclusively toward dialogue. But, in our opinion, they
mistakenly exaggerate the difficulties of dialogue and under-
estimate those of monologue.
Up to now we have characterized the primary o r secondary
status of certain forms and types of speech within the inner
logic of -
one language, so to speak, without regard for the spe-
cific psychological features that mark transition from one lan-
The Learning and Mastery of Language 19

guage to another. But such a position, though common in the

methodology of foreign-language teaching, is actually of ex-
tremely limited value.
Perhaps the most precise analysis - from a psychological
-
standpoint of the similarities and differences between learn-
ing a native language and learning a foreign language is that
offered by Vygotskiy, who wrote:
It might be said that acquisition of a foreign language
proceeds along a path that is exactly the opposite of the
one followed by native-language development. No child
ever begins learning his native language with a study of
the alphabet, with reading and writing, with the conscious
and deliberate construction of sentences, with the lexical
definition of word meanings, o r with a study of grammar.
But all this does constitute the initial stage of acquiring
a foreign language. The child acquires his native lan-
guage unconsciously and involuntarily, but begins learn-
ing a foreign language with conscious awareness and
deliberate control. Thus one might say that the develop-
ment of one's native language proceeds upward, whereas
the development of aforeign language proceeds downward.
In the first case, the elementary aspects of speech are
acquired before the more complex ones. The latter pre-
supposes a conscious awareness of the phonetic con-
struction of the language, its grammatical forms, and
the voluntary structure of speech. In the second case,
it is the higher, more complex aspects of speech that are
-
first developed those aspects entailing conscious
awareness and deliberate control. Only later do the more
elementary aspects involved in the free, spontaneous use
of foreign speech develop. (18)
But, Vygotskiy continues, "Thisconscious and deliberate
acquisition of a foreign language is quite obviously contingent
on a certain degree of maturity in one's native language." (19)
Here we must correct certain points in what Vygotskiy said-
earlier. The necessity f o r these corrections can best be illus-
trated with examples from phonetics.
20 Learning a Second Language

The core of the problem is that, as we have tried to show,

the process of native-language acquisition cannot be reduced
to the simple accumulation of certain skills and, even more,
of certain ready-made elements. It actually centers on some-
thing quite different: the fixation, so to speak, and the linking
up in the child of the various functional systems required in
the production of speech. (20) Thus for the first time an inter-
connection between the artculatory and the acoustic aspects
of speech is established in the child (the concrete forms of this
interconnection is another, secondary question). For the first
time there arises a specific correlation between (to use N. I.
Zhinkin's terms) the "dynamic" and "static" systems that gen-
erate the phonetic aspect of speech, that is, between word for-
mation and articulation (again, their concrete correlation in a
given language, and so on, is secondary).
When the child then begins learning a foreign language, he
by no means has to build up all these levels of the generative
mechanism, for they have already been built. It is important
that they be amended somewhat, that in each particular case
the nature of their correlation be changed, but not the fact of
correlation itself. Thus Vygotskiy's thesis of the "opposite
paths of development" in the acquisition of native and foreign
language is valid only in a very general way.
This thesis has to be limited even more i f we recall that in
the overwhelming majority of cases these processes of ac-
quisition are not simultaneous. In teaching a second language
we are, as a rule, dealing with pupils who, in one way or an-
other, have already learned reading and writing and the grammar
of their native language. In other words, they are beginning to
learn a foreign language at a point when they are already capa-
ble of becoming consciously aware of the language; and in
striving toward that goal, they make use of the skills and habits
they have already perfected in learning their native language
to a certain extent. This phenomenon of transferring skills
and habits of operating with one's native language to a foreign
language proceeds independently of our attempts to limit it by
means of one o r another "direct" method: it is subject to the
The Learning and Mastery of Language 21

general laws governing transfer of skills or, more accurately,

transfer of corrections; it is more economical to take cogni-
zance of and automatize corrections, to rectify a skill, than to
develop a new skill.
Incidentally, even in cases in which we consciously eschew
the use of native-speech skills and habits, they operate anyway:
if a pupil has already attained conscious awareness and gen-
eralization of his native language, he will of necessity perceive
the foreign language through the prism of that knowledge. (21)
Any other path is psychologically impossible, and any SUCCGS
the direct method may have enjoyed is due precisely to the fact
that such a correlation of the two grammatical systems never-
theless takes place. Is it not better actively to direct this pro-
cess than simply allow it to drift as it will?
Therefore, the optimal path would seem to be to draw up an
algorithm for conscious awareness of the grammatical struc-
ture of the native language that could then later be automatized
and transferred to a foreign language. But to do this, the meth-
odologist must have a clear idea of the psychological mecha-
nisms of conscious awareness and automatization.
Thus the late B. V. Belyaev w a s certainly correct when he
proposed consciousness as a leading principle in Soviet methods
of foreign-language teaching, We shall return to this point in
Chapter III.
Of course, this by no means implies that it is impossible for
a person to acquire a second language in the same way he ac-
quired his native language, that is, by elementary "continuous
realignment" and independently of any conscious awareness of
his native language. This is usually the case when a person
acquires mastery of more than one language in childhood. (22) -
But the exception simply proves the rule.
What we have said s o far suggests that the psychological
problems associated with teaching a foreign language essen-
tially come down to the interrelation between conscious op-
erations on language, on the one hand, and the transfer of ex-
isting speech skills and habits, on the other. What is the concrete
nature of that relationship ? Toanswer that questionwe must above
all analyze the psychological structure of the speech act i n general.