Abstract In this paper, the Chomskyan view, linguistic competence, as well as, communicative competence, a broad version of language competence, are examined carefully. On the basis of the assessment, it is proposed that proponents of communicative language teaching ( C.L.T. ) should not employ this broad version as an important basis to helping learners acquire and produce foreign and second languages. What is proposed, instead, is that they adopt and use Frierian pedagogy as the foundational core to educating learners, several of whom are taught in urban centres of economically prosperous societies within Western Europe and North America. INTRODUCTION Several years ago, when I was a senior high school student in British Guiana, the sole British colonial possession on the Latin American mainland, I read numerous works about slavery. This is a phenomenon which the brilliant historian, Fisher ( 1949, pp. 1028 - 1031 ) described as marking a special note of European infamy, a terrible commentary on Christian civilisation. What was so terrible? Fisher says the longest period of slave raiding known to history was initiated by the actions of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, and Britain after the Christian faith had - for more than a thousand years - been the established religion of Western Europe. These actions, clearly motivated by European demand for sugar, tobacco, and cotton, were fed by the labour of African slaves “...herded in barracks, working in gangs, and regimented, as they had been recruited, by soulless and mercenary violence.” ( Fisher, 1949, p. 1030 ). The historian contends that the inability of the Protestant religion to ameliorate the horrific nature of the traffic in slaves is all the more serious, because the British were the most successful and, thus, the most guilty of European traders. The guilt could not be divorced from the eighteenth century, a period in which Fisher notes no colonies were so valuable as the British West Indian islands. He adds that since they were cultivated by African slave labour, the entire West Indian interest was arrayed against any proposal to abate or destroy the traffic upon which its profits depended. From readings in my high school days, I was well aware that the interest was strongly represented by the white plantocracy whose members adopted the views: at the beginning of the eighteenth century the British West Indian possessions were jewels in the English crown. Sugar was established as King and he was a wealthy monarch. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1806 and slavery itself in 1854 but like its European competitors, continued its illegal ownership and dominance in African, Asian, and Caribbean colonies. Much of the dominance was defined by the imposition of European languages on these foreign lands, most of which, are no longer colonies. The languages were usually taught by Europeans who boasted openly about the cultural superiority of their societies. Today, the former illegal occupiers prefer to, and use, routes of economic, rather than physical power to maintain domination within the ex-colonies. A powerful correlate of such use is existence of a profitable enterprise commonly known as foreign and second language teaching which takes place in the ex-colonies, as well as, large cities of previous colonising powers. Britain’s Liverpool and Bristol, whose prosperity Fisher says was based largely on the slave trade, come to mind, immediately. So do capitals in o，英语论文范文，英语论文题目 |
