Claude Germain 2018
Claude Germain 2018
Claude Germain 2018
By
Claude Germain
The Neurolinguistic Approach (NLA) for Learning and Teaching
Foreign Languages: Theory and Practice
By Claude Germain
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Acknowledgments ....................................................................................... x
Appendices
Twenty years already! It was the spring of 1997 when my colleague Joan
Netten and I began our discussions about the best way to improve the state
of French-as-a-second-language learning among Anglophone
schoolchildren in Canada. Over time, the Intensive French (IF) curriculum
we designed, developed, and gradually implemented across Canada’s
provinces and territories changed shape. When it was implemented at
China’s South China Normal University (SCNU) for young Chinese
university students enrolled in a specialised French-language programme,
it became known as the Neurolinguistic Approach (NLA).
Soon after, as the NLA spread to neighbouring areas in Asia (Taiwan,
Hong Kong, Japan), an increasing number of stakeholders in the area of
learning and teaching second or foreign languages (L2/FL) expressed the
desire to learn more about the origins of this new approach for adults.
Pressure grew for the publication of a work, accessible to all, which would
set out the foundations of the NLA as well as its results.
To celebrate the NLA’s 20th anniversary, that work has now been
produced and is in your hands.
Over the years, Joan Netten has had to concentrate primarily on the
evolution of IF among young students in Canada, while I have focused
increasingly on the implementation of the NLA at the adult level and in an
international context. While recognising her role in the NLA’s evolution, I
am the sole author of this book.
The present work is first and foremost addressed to current L2/FL
teachers, as well as to students of language education pedagogy, future
language teachers, and future second-language teaching theorists. I hope
that it will also interest language-teaching theorists, as a fair number of the
issues addressed are liable to call into question many “received ideas”,
particularly about the relationships between language learning and
language teaching.
The book is divided into four major parts. Two of these are geared
towards researchers, students in language teaching, and experts in second-
language teaching interested in the approach’s theoretical foundations
(Chapters 1, 2, and 3) as well as in the results obtained (Chapters 7 and 8).
Two other parts are more directly addressed to language teachers
interested in the approach’s pedagogical applications (Chapters 4 and 5)
The Neurolinguistic Approach (NLA) for Learning ix
and Teaching Foreign Languages
Apologies and my thanks also to all those whom I may have forgotten to
mention.
NOTE
While the Neurolinguistic Approach (NLA) for the teaching of second and
foreign languages may be applied to all language-learning classroom
situations, the numerous examples of student work provided in the
discussion that follows come mostly from French-as-a-second/foreign-
language classrooms. The NLA’s principle of authenticity makes it
primordial that such examples genuinely illustrate the issues that can arise
in the classroom, and as the NLA was originally developed for and applied
to learning French at the school level, FSL/FFL classrooms naturally
presented the widest pool of examples to choose from.
These examples of original student work are accompanied in the text
by English translations which attempt to provide equivalent errors to those
found in the original French.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations of quotations from sources
published in languages other than English have been provided by the
translators. Any errors or omissions in the translations are the
responsibility of the translators.
ABBREVIATIONS
L2 Second language
FL Foreign language
This chapter deals with the five lessons that we drew from the
neurosciences in order to improve L2/FL learning/teaching in school
settings. These lessons constitute the theoretical basis for the NLA. Our
approach builds on data produced by recent research in cognitive
psychology, particularly the neurosciences, as well as the design of an
approach in the development of literacy1 skills specific to L2/FL, all from
a neuroeducational2 perspective (as we will see in detail further on).
The neurolinguistic approach (NLA) is a new paradigm, that is, a new
way of conceiving the relationships between appropriating (acquiring
and/or learning) and teaching a second or foreign language (L2/FL), which
aims at creating optimal conditions, in a classroom setting, for
spontaneous communication and successful social interaction.
The NLA was developed by two Canadian scholars: Claude Germain,
a Francophone Québécois, Emeritus Professor at the Université du Québec
à Montréal (UQÀM) and Emeritus Professor at the South China Normal
University (SCNU), and his Anglophone colleague Joan Netten, Member
of the Order of Canada and Honorary Research Professor at Memorial
University of Newfoundland (MUN).
1
Literacy is here defined as the ability “to use the listening, viewing, speaking,
reading and writing strands of language(s), and other ways of representing […] to
think, learn, and communicate effectively” (Government of Newfoundland and
Labrador, 2002). For a more elaborate definition, see next chapter.
2
By neuroeducation, we refer to the study of cerebral mechanisms as applied to
education.
4 Chapter One
3
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2IiMEbMnPM&list=PLtUz1usdFE0
uU_PwD1WNsE0uO6NJIvOug
Five Lessons from the Neurosciences 5
A: eh… no good… eh… ache… and… eh… eh… eh… eh… [long
pauses]… knees… and ankles… eh…
T: What did you do about it?
A: eh… home… doctor… and… legs… eh… eh… walking… no good…
As can be seen, this aphasic person can only use vocabulary words
(verbs, nouns, adjectives), without any hope of forming statements that are
syntactically acceptable: no good, ache, knees, and… ankles, home,
doctor, and… legs, walking, no good… Brain scans of this aphasic patient
would show that it was the neuronal systems associated with his
procedural memory that were affected. His declarative memory, however,
remains intact.
An Anti-Chomskyan Position
This means that Paradis’s position (2004) is resolutely anti-Chomskyan.
According to Chomsky (1965), the brain includes a Language Acquisition
Device (LAD), that is, a specific mechanism for language acquisition, pre-
programmed by universal grammar and distinct from all other types of
cognitive activity.
Many neuroscientists, by contrast, Paradis among them, hold that
language works like any other human cognitive activity. It follows that
there is no LAD, no genetic mechanism containing a universal grammar.
which one has paid attention (Paradis 2009). Paradis’s position is therefore
completely different from the preceding one.
For instance, in the case of a patient suffering from aphasia, one can
state that explicit knowledge is not transformed into an implicit
competence, that is to say a skill underlying spontaneous communication.
Otherwise, one might suppose that, if there existed a direct connection
between these two discrete neuronal systems and a transformation of the
knowledge associated with one into that associated with the other, this
would mean that what can be learnt can affect what is acquired, and vice
versa. It would be as if knowing the explicit rules of grammar would, ipso
facto, allow one to use them unconsciously. We know, however, that they
can only be used explicitly and in a controlled manner.
4
This does not mean that the NLA is simply an application of Krashen’s theory.
To learn about the important distinction between the two approaches, see the next
chapter.
5
Moreover, as Paradis (2004) remarks, it is always possible for the implicit to be
made explicit (as in linguistic studies, for instance), but this never involves the
transformation of the implicit into the explicit.
Five Lessons from the Neurosciences 7
functions in the same way as any other non-linguistic human activity, such
as, for example, swimming.
6
Nick C. Ellis is a specialist in language acquisition and a professor of psychology
and linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States. He has
served as publisher for the prestigious American journal Language Learning. (He
must not be confused with Rod Ellis, an internationally renowned British specialist
who is also recognised in the area of language acquisition.)
8 Chapter One
Fig. 1-1
It should be mentioned that the brain is not merely complex, but also
highly flexible; it is neither frozen in time nor entirely genetically
determined. Current research indicates that the brain’s structure is
continually evolving as people learn and interact with their environment.
This is “one of the most fundamental discoveries of modern neuroscience,”
10 Chapter One
7
Steve Masson, founder of the Association pour la recherche en neuroéducation/
Association for Research in Neuroeducation (ARN), which publishes the online
scientific journal Neuroeducation, is a professor in the Département de didactique/
Education Department of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
8
See Fig. 1-3 below.
9
To learn more about this trend in cognitive linguistics, see Hoffman and
Trousdale (2013). For a synthesis in French of this current, see Mathieu (2003);
more recent sources include Legallois and François (2006) and François (2008).
Five Lessons from the Neurosciences 11
which it was learnt, the greater the odds that the user’s communication
abilities will rise to an adequate level. All the evidence suggests that this is
why it is easier to later locate the data in the brain, by referring to the
contextual similarities.
the social and the individual would go from the social to the individual.
There is even a causal relationship between social interaction and
individual development.
On discovering this audacious theory of Vygotsky’s, we adopted it, for
it allowed us to explain how acquiring L2/FL in a school setting could
have not only utilitarian aims, but also humanist ones—and could thereby
provide the student with cognitive benefits.
Fig. 1-5
These, then, are the five lessons drawn from our explorations in
neurosciences and which form the NLA’s theoretical foundations:
The absence of a direct connection between declarative memory
and procedural memory;
The complexity/flexibility of the brain and two neuronal
mechanisms: the conscious (vocabulary) and unconscious
(lexicon);
Focusing on the meaning or the task in order to develop implicit
competence;
The importance of “Transfer Appropriate Processing” (TAP) and
the limbic system’s role;
Intake and the individual cognitive benefits of social interaction.
This chapter presents and explains the NLA’s five fundamental principles,
highlighting each one’s links to the theoretical bases drawn from the
neurosciences, particularly Paradis’s neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism
(2004). This is followed by a table summarising the links between the
principles and their neuroscientific origins, as well as, more specifically,
the links between Paradis’s theory and the NLA. Finally, we consider
neuromyths.
Beginning in the late 1990s, my colleague Joan Netten and I eventually
formulated the following five fundamental principles governing the NLA:
1. Two grammars, internal and external;
2. Literacy and the pedagogy of the sentence;
3. Emphasising meaning and using a project-based pedagogy;
4. Authenticity;
5. Social interaction.
1
Though the idea of acquiring/learning “two grammars” is ours rather than
Paradis’s, it stems from his theory.