Imitation And Creation In Language Learning

The history of language teaching is a history of methods. A new method appeared, then declined and alternated by another one. Some of them are quite familiar, and the latter method often emerged as a challenge to and a critique of the former one, such as grammar-translation method and direct method, audiolingualism and cognitive method. Later, in the seventies, many new methods came into being almost at the same time. Some of their names are quite vague and fascinating, such as community language learning, suggestopedia, silent way, total physical response, natural approach and communicative approach.The history of language teaching methods is not long, but rather fascinating and tortuous. For over a century, language educators have attempted to solve the problems of language teaching by focusing attention almost exclusively on teaching method. Albeit Marckwardt (1972:5) saw these "changing winds and shifting sands" as a cyclical pattern in which a new method emerged about every quarter of a century. As a result, foreign language teachers, following the trends and fashion, have just learned to practice one popular teaching method in the classroom, they have to change to another due to the emergence of a new "revolutionary" pedagogy. After several times of "winds" changing and "sands" shifting, some teachers get lost in popularity following, and some others return to their familiar and traditional way of teaching. What is not changed, but remained at the previous level is the achievement of students' learning. Comparative method studies provide sufficient evidence to show it. Actually, all the teaching methods have in common two major weaknesses. "One is that they represent a relatively fixed combination of language teaching beliefs, and another is that they are characterized by the over-emphasis on single aspects as the central issue of language teaching and learning." (H.H. Stem, 1983)And then, in the 1970s, a valuable new direction of thought in language pedagogy - the break with the method concept - emerged to overcome the narrowness, rigidities, and imbalances which have resulted from conceptualizing language teaching purely or mainly through the concept of method.Furthermore, disappointed at the earlier approaches to language learning started form language teaching, people have found a more logical sequence which is to start by investigating how people learn language and then to combine the findings in learning and teaching together. Thus the significance of language learning process study is recognized and emphasized in later research.Anyway, whatever teaching method is applied, everything that is achieved in the classroom depends eventually upon what goes on in the students' minds. Without anunderstanding of how knowledge of other language is stored and learnt, teachers will always be less effective than they could be.The present work, therefore, makes two reversions: (1) reversing the dominated theory-then-research procedure: it may avoid some of the pitfalls of haphazard guesswork and instead engage in learning process itself that is enlightened by research-then-theory approach, and then put linguistic theories at the service of language teaching and learning. (2) reversing the stereotyped teaching-then-learning procedure: it rmy avoid the slants of casual assumptions of learning and instead starting teaching research with learning processes and then combining them together.In this way, the work argues that the most essential and crucial processes in language learning are imitation and creation by providing various empirical evidences and different theoretical explanations. And then, it broadens the scope of imitative and creative learning of language from sociological perspective putting theoretical findings at the service of actual learning practice. Resorting to a more direct explanation of language learning process, psychological perspective of language learning is reviewed and introduced in the following section Especially, many psychological models provide similar distinctions of two processes in language learning underlying the recognition of imitation and creation integration, but from different point of view and with certain uncertainties and defaults.Based on these experimental studies and theoretical findings, the two essential processes in language learning - imitation and creation, and their open and dynamic relationship are defined in great details. Thus the IC theory is formed. IC theory provides a new model of language learning and a general framework for explaining language learning to make its contribution to langu ?%