Automaticity And Its Implications For College English Teaching And Learning: A Cognitive Consideration

Behaviorist learning theory views language acquisition as the process of stimulus-response (S-R), and thus habit-formation is viewed as a central point to language learning. Behaviorists emphasize the importance of external environment, neglecting the internal states of language learners. As a result, it was under great attack by mentalism, which, on the contrary, holds that it is the special internal Language Acquisition Device (LAD) or universal grammar (UG) that serves to trigger the initial stage for further learning. The mentalists minimize the role of input and explain language development primarily in terms of the learner's internal processing mechanism. However, many researchers have criticized the mentalists of the position that input to learners was degenerated; furthermore, there is no substantial proof of LAD. A new theory, therefore, is needed to account for the language acquisition process, including both internal and external factors. Since the 1950s, theories of cognition began to influence second language acquisition theories and second language pedagogy. Some researchers pointed out that second language acquisition could not be understood completely without a description of the interaction between language and cognition.One of the characteristics of behaviorism is that language processing is regarded as to be automatic, but it is impossible for the simple S-R theory to explain the total learning procedure. With behaviorism having been greatly criticized by Chomsky and his adherents, people have depreciated the theory of S-R, avoiding the ideas concerning automatic response and automaticity in language learning process; further, people are frightened to talk about S-R and automaticity because these concepts are too hypersensitive. However, research results of psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics always refer to the effects of automaticity. Behaviorist learning theory accounts S-R with its consequence, automaticity, as the only mechanism that enables learners to learn a language, totally ignoring the internal learning and processing ability; however, cognitive linguistics treats S-R and automaticity as the lower-level cognitive activity on one hand, interacted with other complex, higher level cognitive activities on the other. Thus, automaticity should be re-evaluated in the field of cognition.Within the study of automaticity, it is believed that learners' working memory and attention are closely related to learners' capacity to process information when they are acquiring language skills. With consistent mapping or practice with the target language, learners are able to broaden their working memory capacity by using large numbers of chunks, and to free their limited attentional resources to those elements which are not familiar to them. Both Logan's Instance Theory and Anderson's ACT (Adaptive Control of Thought) theory try to explain the process of automaticity within learners. Comparatively speaking, Anderson's ACT is more close to the steps concerning language acquisition as kind of skill acquisition. There have also been many empirical research works to investigate the effects of automaticity in the language learning process.An empirical study was carried out to investigate the effects of automaticity on both lower- and higher-level language processing in this paper. The lower-level language processing concerned the combination of two sentences into one relative clause using proper relative pronouns; higher-level processing involved spontaneous oral work of picture-depicting and story-telling. Items on the lower-level, as expected, were processed faster after consistent practice, in that the amount of time used to perform the tasks dropped significantly compared to the control group. Contrary to some previously held belief that items on the higher-level processing are difficult to be automatized, this study still found the effects of automaticity in spontaneous oral processing, which is regarded to be the best indicator of automaticity. However, the automatization of language skills on the higher-level is prone to be influenced by some other factors.The results of the study have some implications on language acquisition and pedagogy, one of which is that developing the automaticity component of fluency requires repetition with consistent associations between stimuli and the learner's cognitive responses to them, another being that communicative activities that make learners use the same expressions and formulas in different ways and repeatedly are advocated.