Psychology in Foreign Language Teaching (Second Edition)
Steven H. McDonough. London: Allen & Unwin 1986.
Reviewed by
Bikram K. Das
RELC, Singapore
Prophets rarely influence history
as much those that follow and
as
interpret them. When Chomsky
said, in 1965, that linguistics and
psychology probably had little
relevance to language teaching, it
was a foregone conclusion that
his followers (whose name was
legion) would place both disci-
plines squarely at the centre of
language teaching. Likewise,
when the Master said that linguis-
tics was really a branch of cogni-
tive psychology, it was but natu-
ral for psychology to become a
satellite of linguistics -
at least
where language teachers were
concerned. The familiar appa-
ratus of educational psychology,
on which most forms of pedagogy
were once based, is largely disused
if not discredited: its place seems
to have been taken by the new
paradigm provided by psycholin-
guistics. Nearly all forms of
cognition and learning are now
sought to be interpreted in the
light of what we know about
language acquisition -
which is
only another evidence of the in-
fluence that Chomskyan linguis-
tics still has on the contemporary
100
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world view. Certainly, no one can
say now that the role of language
in human existence is ignored or
taken for granted.
The title of McDonough’s book,
with the rather deliberate use of
the word &dquo;Psychology&dquo;, instead
of the more fashionable &dquo;Psycho-
linguistics&dquo; or &dquo;Psychology of
language learning&dquo; suggests (to
this reviewer, at any rate) that the
writer is trying to reconcile the
claims of educational psychology
with those of psycholinguistics
and attempting, further, to fuse
the two into a practical pedagogy
of language teaching -
a
thoroughly laudable if elusive
aim. The result, however, is that
the writer is forced to shift
restlessly from one to the other of
the three different &dquo;pegs&dquo; that
the book apparently hangs from.
As he states in the first chapter,
the intention seems to be to create
an interface or &dquo;linking science&dquo;
between psychological/linguistic
theory and the practical concerns
of language teaching. The writer
chooses to build upon five prin-
ciples of Glaser’s &dquo;science of the
 design of instruction&dquo; (1976),
listed as:
1.analysis of the conditions that
can be manipulated to change
a novice into an expert;
2. analysis of competent perfor-
mance ;
3. of the development
analysis
of competent performance;
4. analysis of the initial state of
the learner;
5. evaluation of the process and
product of learning.
The problems inherent in try-
ing to develop, simultaneously, a
theory of instruction (principle 1)
and of language acquisition (prin-
ciple 3) remain, however, almost
insurmountable - as
who has attempted to teach an in-
troductory course in psycho-
linguistics to a group of ex-
perienced teachers, preoccupied
with &dquo;applications&dquo; of acquisi-
tion theory could attest. I wish I
could say that McDonough has
succeeded in doing just that
would certainly have earned my
undying gratitude if he had.
However, it is a useful attempt.
The classic work in this area is,
of course, Julian Dakin’s The
Language Laboratory and Lan-
. guage Learning (1973), the decep-
tive title of which never quite
managed to disguise the sheer
brilliance of approach and ori-
ginality of Dakin’s mind. One
could sense, in that book, the
presence of the born language
teacher, who could pluck out,
with unerring accuracy, just the
right insight to explain a piece of
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pedagogical deduction. McDon-
ough does, in patches, manage to
take very concrete and down-to-
earth problems in pedagogy, e.g.
the sequencing of language items
in a syllabus, and relate them ef-
fectively to a strand of theory.
Nevertheless, there is little evi-
dence of a coherent framework
within which theory and practice
could mesh: the different pieces
of the puzzle just do not fit.
Clearly, McDonough is no Dakin.
One is unable to decide, in the
end, just what the author’s orien-
tation is: whether he is a &dquo;classi-
cal&dquo; educational psychologist
trying to fit the psycholinguistic
mould (like countless others
anyone before him), a product of the
post-Chomskyan revolution or -
primarily a &dquo;methodologist&dquo; try-
ing to look for solutions to peda-
gogical problems. The different
parts of the book do not, as a
result, hang together very convin-
he
-
cingly.
The book opens, like almost
any other textbook of educa-
tional psychology, with an ac-
count of
Behaviourism. One
hopes to in every new work
find,
that appears on the subject, some
attempt to present a balanced and
impartial acknowledgement . of
the undoubted debt that language
teachers still owe to Behaviour-
ism, despite its many obvious
limitations; certianly, McDonough
is more sympathetic than most
other writers, but no coherent
picture emerges from this
chapter.
101
 This chapter also shows
what, to me, is a somewhat unfor-
tunate feature of the book - its
tendency to beg too many ques-
tions. In trying to respond to the
book I found myself using the only
frame of reference that was avail-
able to me: that of a person trying
to teach an introductory course in
psycholinguistics to a group of
language teachers (primarily)
from countries in Southeast Asia,
representing varied backgrounds
as well as proficiency in the
language of instruction. It is dif-
ficult to identify a textbook
which can satisfy the needs of
most such &dquo;pupils&dquo; -
and I
must say I started perusing the
book with rather high hopes. The
author, it seems to me, is unable
to decide just what kind of reader
he is addressing -
what kind of
he can
background knowledge
assume.
To Illustrate: the first paragraph
of Chapter 2 reads:
This chapter is concerned
with the ideas of a particularly
influential school of psychology
who pioneered the use of con-
trolled observation to discover
laws of behaviour. In distin-
guishing behaviourism from
alternative schools, such as the
functionalism of the 1930s,
there is a danger that the dif-
ferences between the schools
can be overemphasised at the
expense of the differences
within them. For example,
later in this chapter we shall
see how several of the major
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up criticisms of behaviourist
thought attributed to cognitive
psychologists actually arose
within the behaviourist school
in discussion of animal beha-
viour...
Here, the author begins to talk
about &dquo;alternative schools&dquo; of
behaviourism, &dquo;differences be-
tween and within them&dquo; and
&dquo;major criticisms of behaviourist
thought&dquo; even before he has spelt
out, for the uninitiated reader,
what the principal tenets of beha-
viourism are. Only a reader who
is familiar with the area can, for
instance, make sense of the refer-
ences to &dquo;functionalism&dquo; and
&dquo;the Gestalt schools of the
1930s&dquo;; yet, surely, the well-
informed reader has no need for
the kind of textbookish analysis
that this chapter provides.
Chapter 3 is devoted to &dquo;infor-
mation-processing approaches&dquo;
-
a clever and fashionable alter-
native to the usual labels of &dquo;cog-
nitive&dquo; approaches. Again, this
follows the conventional and
rather predictable pattern of any
textbook on educational psycho-
logy.
The section on &dquo;Language
learning as skill learning&dquo; in _
Chapter 3 is interesting as well as
valuable: surely, this aspect of
language learning deserves much
more attention than it has been
receiving, thanks largely to the
influence of Krashenism. Unfor-
tunately, the author does not go
deep enough into the subject.
One can only hope that in any
subsequent edition this section
will be expanded and updated.
Chapter 4 (&dquo;Comprehension
and production of language&dquo;) is
another instance of question-
begging. Here, the writer appa-
rently decided to abandon the
usual diachronic treatment of
Chomskyan psycholinguistics and
to plunge directly into some ques-
tions of application. Again, it is
not clear just how much familia-
rity with transformation-genera-
tive theory is being assumed. The
questions raised here have been
discussed in an infinitely more in-
formative and interesting manner
by Jean Aitchison, in &dquo;The Arti-
culate Mammal&dquo; - the only flaw
of which, in my opinion, is to
play down the significance of
behaviouristic theory.
Chapter 5, on &dquo;Memory&dquo;,
in my view
represents -
pro- -
bably the best part of the book,
though one is rather puzzled by
the reasons for its appearance in
the scheme of the book. Students
brought up purely on Chomskyan
psycholinguistics often lack ex-
actly the kind of insights from ex-
perimental psychology which this
chapter provides.
Chapter 6 (&dquo;Social and inter-
personal factors&dquo;) is, once again,
as useful as it may be confusing
to someone encountering these
ideas for the first time. The socio-
linguistic dimension of language
acquisition, as may be expected,
gets short shrift from writers like
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Aitchison who seem to belong to
the Chomskyan persuasion. Mc-
Donough provides a very useful
introduction to some of the main
trends but the &dquo;transitions&dquo;
-
between this chapter and the rest
do not become very clear.
-
The rest of the book follows
the usual pattern one expects of
introductory textbooks in First/
Second Language Acquisition,
although here McDonough’s
book would suffer in comparison
with &dquo;Understanding Second
Language Acquisition&dquo; by Rod
Ellis (1985), which must become
the definitive work on Second
Language Acquisition for teacher
education courses.
To sumup: McDonough de-
serves credit for making a brave
and worthwhile attempt to bring
together, in one slim volume, re-
cent ideas in psycholinguistics
and some fairly traditional ones
in educational psychology which
deserves much greater attention,
in what appears to be a pedagogi-
cal framework. This, however, is
the weakness of the book: there is
too much substance here for one
little book. In case the book was
written with the language teacher
in mind (which it apparently
was), its usefulness will depend
on the extent to which the reader
has been exposed to some of
these ideas before. As an intro-
ductory textbook, particularly
four readers from the Southeast
Asian region, it leaves something
to be desired.
103