El cerebro humano

En el ser humano el cerebro es totalmente recubierto de una estructura cortical, la corteza cerebral. Es gracias a la complejidad de esta estructura que se deben nuestras capacidades sensoriales, motoras y perceptivas, la memoria y otras funciones, como el lenguaje, la conciencia, la capacidad lógica, la previsión de las consecuencias de las acciones y la creatividad.

El cerebro, equivalente al telencéfalo, está formado por dos masas simetrícas, los así llamados hemisferios cerebrales; casi todas las regiones de los dos hemisferios se conectan internamente por medio del  cuerpo calloso, el cual es una banda ancha de sustancia blanca que contiene axones que van de un hemisferio a otro y permite cambiar la información entre ellos.

El aprendizaje de un idioma interesa ambos los hemisferios cerebrales, el derecho y el izquierdo:

• el hemisferio derecho coordina la actividad visual y está implicado en la percepción global, simultánea y analógica del contexto y permite la comprensión de los elementos metafóricos, connotativios y de ironía. Recoge las situaciones y las estrategias del pensamiento de una forma total. Integra varios tipos de información (sonidos, imágenes, olores, sensaciones) y los transmite en su totalidad;
• el hemisferio izquierdo tiene la tarea de elaborar la lengua y está implicado en la percepción analítica, secuencial, lógica (relaciones causa-efecto, espacio-temporal) y permite la comprensión de los aspectos denotativos. El hemisferio izquierdo es la parte motriz capaz de reconocer grupos de letras formando palabras, y grupos de palabras formando frases, tanto en lo que se refiere al habla, a la escritura, a la numeración, a las matemáticas y a la lógica, como a las facultades necesarias para transformar un conjunto de informaciones en palabras, gestos y pensamientos.

La adquisición de una lengua procederá entonces al activar ambos los hemisferios. Según el concepto de direccionalidad, en el proceso de aprendizaje el cerebro procederá desde el hemisferio derecho, implicado en forma global (globalidad, visualización, contexto, analogía, simultaneidad), al hemisferio izquierdo, implicado de manera analítica para sistematizar los conocimientos de manera racional (análisis, consignación, lógica, secuencialidad), pues procede “del contexto al texto”.

The grammar-translation method

The grammar–translation method of language teaching, also known as the classical method, is one of the most traditional methods, dating back to the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Initially, this method was widely used to teach “dead” languages and literature, like for example Latin and Greek, which involved little or no spoken communication or listening comprehension.

During the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe, it was believed that the body and mind were two separate things and that teaching modern languages was not useful to develop the mind; therefore modern languages were taught in schools using the grammar-translation method. Nowadays, this method of language teaching is not very common.

This particular method has different main goals:

• to enable students to read and translate literature written in the target language
• to develop students’ general mental discipline
• to translate from one language to another
• to memorize rules.

Grammar-translation classes are commonly taught in the students’ native language. Grammar is taught using long elaborated explanations in the native language; students learn the vocabulary and grammar rules from the teacher or from the book. They practice the language by doing translation exercises both from and into the target language. The content of the translation is not very important due to the fact that particular attention is paid to the form of the sentences and therefore to the grammar; language is learned through rules. Translation is the key to this methodology as is reading and writing. There are no listening or speaking exercises and there is no pronunciation exercise for the students.

The vocabulary in the target language is learned through the direct translation of the native language: in fact, students learn words once they are translated. This method focuses the attention on reading and writing skills, instead of oral communication skills. The language is learned by conscious memorization of grammar rules and vocabulary. Very little teaching is done in the target language: classes are taught in the mother tongue, which means that the teacher will teach the target language using the students’ mother tongue. The readings in the target language are translated and then they are discussed in the native language. With this method, little or no attention is paid to the pronunciation.

The natural approach

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tracy Terrell, a Californian education theorist, along with Stephen Krashen, a linguist at the University of Southern California, developed a new method of language teaching, which aims to foster the natural acquisition of a language. It is based on the language acquisition theory, which was developed by Krashen himself.

This kind of approach was originally developed in 1977 by Terrell, whose aim was to create a new teaching method, in which language plays an important role, by putting the emphasis on comprehension and communication. According to Krashen and Terrell, the main problem of the other methods is that they focus on the grammatical component, rather than focusing on the nature of language itself. In fact, in the natural approach language learning is a reproduction of how humans naturally acquire language. This method rejects earlier methods such as the audio-lingual method and the situational language teaching approach, which Krashen and Terrell believe were not based on “actual theories of language acquisition but theories of the structure of language.

The native language should not be used in the classroom: the students should be exposed to a lot of vocabulary and many activities should be carried out. The natural approach was a method for beginners, based on observation and interpretation on how a person acquires his or her first language. Moreover, its aim is to help students immediately. It rejects the formal organization of language: in fact, it is not based on grammar, but it is based on communication. It also emphasizes comprehensible and meaningful practice activities, rather than the production of grammatically perfect sentences. This method is based on the use of language in communicative situations without recourse to the native language and without any reference to grammatical analysis. The natural approach is based on the principles of a naturalistic language learning process, especially when dealing with children. As previously mentioned, the central component of language is not grammar, but communication: in fact language is viewed as a vehicle for communicating meanings and messages.