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1.1 Correctness and appropriacy

The aims of a language teaching course are very often defined with reference to the four ‘language skills’: understanding speech, speaking, reading and writing. These aims, therefore, relate to the kind of activity which the learners are to perform. But how can we characterize this activity? What is it that learners are expected to understand, speak, read and write? The obvious answer is: the language they are learning. But what exactly do we mean by this? We might mean a selection of lexical items recorded in a dictionary combined with syntactic structures recorded in a grammar. In this view, the teaching of a language involves developing the ability to produce correct sentences. Many teachers would subscribe to this view and it has been productive of a good deal of impressive language teaching material. In some respects, however, it is unsatisfactory. We may readily acknowledge that the ability to produce sentences is a crucial one in the learning of a language. It is important to recognize, however, that it is not the only ability that learners need to acquire. Someone knowing a language knows more than how to understand, speak, read and write sentences. He also knows how sentences are used to communicative effect.

We may conveniently begin by considering an example of a correct English sentence:

The rain destroyed the crops.

Here we have a correct English sentence and we might wish to say that anybody speaking or writing such a sentence gives evidence of a good knowledge of the language. We would judge anybody producing the following sentences, on the other hand, to have an inadequate knowledge:

The rain is destroy the crops.

The rain destruct the crops.

But what would we say if someone produced our correct sentence in the following context?

(A approaches B, a stranger, in the street)

A: Could you tell me the way to the railway station, please?

B: The rain destroyed the crops.

The sentence remains correct, of course, but we might well hesitate to say that B had a good knowledge of English on this evidence. We would be inclined to say that he did not really know the language. It might be objected that nobody in his senses would ever seriously utter this sentence in response to the kind of question that A puts. But why not? The answer is that when we acquire a language we do not only learn how to compose and comprehend correct sentences as isolated linguistic units of random occurrence; we also learn how to use sentences appropriately to achieve a communicative purpose. We are not just walking grammars.

It might appear that the example I have given is somewhat extreme. Let us consider another:

A: What did the rain do?

B: The crops were destroyed by the rain.

This is a distinct improvement on the previous exchange, but as competent speakers of English we can recognize, nevertheless, that B’s reply is still in some way the wrong kind of reply. It does not take on an appropriate form in this context. By the same token we recognize that the following are odd combinations of sentences:

A: What was destroyed by the rain?

B: The rain destroyed the crops.

A: What happened to the crops?

B: The rain destroyed the crops.

We also recognize that the following exchanges are quite normal:

A: What did the rain do?

B: It destroyed the crops.

A: What was destroyed by the rain?

B: The crops.

A: What happened to the crops?

B: They were destroyed by the rain.

Making an appropriate reply is a matter of selecting a sentence which will combine with the sentence used for asking the question. Or it may involve using only part of a sentence, as in the second of the normal exchanges given above.

1.2 Usage and use as aspects of performance

The learning of a language, then, involves acquiring the ability to compose correct sentences. That is one aspect of the matter. But it also involves acquiring an understanding of which sentences, or parts of sentences are appropriate in a particular context. The first kind of ability depends upon a knowledge of the grammatical rules of the language being learned. We can demonstrate this knowledge by producing strings of sentences without regard to context:

The rain destroyed the crops.

The cat sat on the mat.

The unicorn is a mythical beast.

Poor John ran away.

The farmer killed the duckling.

John loves Mary.

My tailor is rich.

To produce sentences like this is to manifest our knowledge of the language system of English. We will say that they are instances of correct English usage. But of course we are not commonly called upon simply to manifest our knowledge in this way in the normal circumstances of daily life. We are generally required to use our knowledge of the language system in order to achieve some kind of communicative purpose. That is to say, we are generally called upon to produce instances of language use: we do not simply manifest the abstract system of the language, we at the same time realize it as meaningful communicative behaviour.

This distinction between usage and use is related to de Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole and Chomsky’s similar distinction between competence and performance.1 It is important to make clear what this distinction is. The notion of competence has to do with a language user’s knowledge of abstract linguistic rules. This knowledge has to be put into effect as behaviour, it has to be revealed through performance. When it is put into effect through the citation of sentences to illustrate these rules, as is done in grammar books, then performance yields instances of usage: abstract knowledge is manifested. When language teachers select structures and vocabulary for their courses they select those items of usage which they judge to be most effective for teaching the underlying rules of the language system. Usage, then, is one aspect of performance, that aspect which makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his knowledge of linguistic rules. Use is another aspect of performance: that which makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his ability to use his knowledge of linguistic rules for effective communication.

In normal circumstances, linguistic performance involves the simultaneous manifestation of the language system as usage and its realization as use. But we can separate one from the other if we wish by focusing our attention on one rather than the other. When we are engaged in conversation we do not as a rule take note of such usage phenomena as grammatical irregularities (which may be quite frequent) in the speech of the person we are talking to, unless they force themselves on our attention by impeding communication. Our concern is with use and this concern filters out such irregularities of usage. If we assume the role of linguists in search of data, on the other hand, we might well adjust our focus of attention and concentrate on our interlocutor’s usage, take note of his hesitations and repetitions, the peculiarites of his pronunciation and so on. The terms we have in English for referring to performance reflect these two aspects of behaviour. An expression like ‘She speaks indistinctly’, for example, refers to usage and an expression like ‘He speaks persuasively’ refers to use. I shall return to the relevance of the usage/use distinction to a definition of the so-called ‘language skills’ in Chapter 3.

Although there is a natural coincidence of usage and use in normal language behaviour, these two aspects of performance tend to be treated separately by people concerned with the description and the teaching of languages. Thus the grammarian illustrates the abstract rules of the system of the language he is describing by devising sentences in isolation which manifest these rules. The language teacher designing materials has also generally been inclined to concentrate on usage: the common practice is to select and organize language items with a view to demonstrating how the rules of the system can be manifested through sentences. There has been less concern with demonstrating how such rules can be realized for communicative purposes as use. So when the teacher introduces a sentence like:

A book is on the table.

he does so to manifest the operation of a set of rules for sentence formation. He is not offering it as an example of a meaningful act of communication. In fact, utterances of sentences of this kind are of relatively rare occurrence as instances of use.

1.3 Usage and use in classroom presentation

I want now to consider some examples of how language is presented in the classroom and how this presentation, in concentrating on usage, may sometimes involve an inappropriate use of language. The following is an example of a familiar oral drill in which the learner is required to repeat a sentence pattern by using different ‘call-words’

What is going on here? We have a series of responses to a verbal cue but these responses are not replies in any normal sense. The pupils are demonstrating their knowledge of usage by manipulating the sentence pattern but they are not doing so for any other purpose.

Let us now adjust the drill so that we get what appears to be a more normal question and answer sequence:

Here we can recognize that some account is taken of use. To begin with, for the pupils to give an answer there must be a book on the table and a bag on the floor: there must be some simple situation to refer to. The pupils are not simply spinning sentences out without any reference to what the words mean, as they are in the first drill. But although there is some concern for use in this respect, it is still usage which has the dominant emphasis. Although the pupils’ response is a reply to a question and not just a reaction to a prompt, the form of the reply is inappropriate. We can compare the drill with the following exchanges where the replies take on a more normal appearance:

A: What is on the table?

B: A book.

A: Where is the bag?

B: On the floor.

Even in this form, however, the language cannot necessarily be regarded as demonstrating appropriate use. To see why this is so, we have to ask ourselves: ‘Why does A ask this question?’ If a book is seen to be on the table, and a bag seen to be on the floor, and if everybody is aware of the location of these objects, then why does A need to ask where they are? If there is a book on the table in front of the whole class, then, as has been pointed out, the question is contextualised to the extent that it refers to something outside language and is not just a manipulation of the language itself. But by the same token, the fact that there is a book on the table, visible to everybody, makes it extremely unnatural to ask if it is there. Thus the provision of a situation may lead away from usage in one respect but lead back to usage in another. Only if the pupils know that the teacher cannot see the bag and is genuinely looking for it does his question as to its whereabouts take on the character of natural use. The following classroom exchange, for example, would commonly take on this genuine quality of real communication:

We may say that the realization of language as use involves two kinds of ability. One kind is the ability to select which form of sentence is appropriate for a particular linguistic context. The second is the ability to recognize which function is fulfilled by a sentence in a particular communicative situation. Let us look again at our examples.

If this is part of a drill and there is a book on the table which everybody can see, then the teacher’s question is not fulfilling a normal function since in ordinary circumstances we do not ask questions about something we already know. So the teacher’s question and the pupils’ answer do not fulfil a communicative function in this particular situation. Furthermore, a question of this form does not normally require a response which takes the form of sentence which the pupils give, so their reply is not appropriate in this particular linguistic context. This exchange, then, illustrates both inappropriate function in relation to the situation and inappropriate form in relation to the context. Let us now consider a second example:

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For accounts of these distinctions and their relevance to language teaching see:

J. P. B. Allen: ‘Some basic concepts in linguistics’ in The Edinburgh Course in Applied Linguistics (henceforth ECAL) Volume 2: Edited by J. P. B. Allen & S. Pit Corder, Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 37–40.

D. A. Wilkins: Linguistics in Language Teaching, Arnold, 1972, PP. 33–6.