Multiple choice questions based on Current Trends in the Development and
Teaching of the Four Language Skills
Chapter one: Approaches to language learning and teaching
1. The main goal in communicative approaches to language teaching over the last
few decades has been to develop learner’s ..........
a. communicative competence
self-esteem in language skills
autonomy and self-dependence
awareness of linguistic features
2. Three approaches have been discussed with regard to the history of language
learning namely ..........
a. environmentalist, innatist and the interactionist
structuralist, generativist and cognitivist
structuralis, transformationalist, generativist
environmentalist, innatist and generativist
3. The linguistic school affecting the environmentalist approach to language teaching
was that of the .......... lingusitics
a. structural
generative
transformational
cognitive
4. .......... linguists assumed that language was primarily an oral phenomenon based
on the evidence that many languages did not have a written form and that people
learnt to speak before they learnt to read or write
Structural
Generative
Transformational
Cognitive
5. To the .........., language was viewed as consisting of different elements related to
each other in a linear way by means of a series of structures or rules, these elements
being phonemes, morphemes, words, and sentence types.
a. structuralists
Generativists
Transformationalists
Cognitivists
6. To the .........., the target of language learning was to master all the elements of the
system and to learn the rules by which these elements were combined, from
phoneme to morpheme to word to phrase to sentence.
a. structuralists
Generativists
Transformationalists
Cognitivists
7. In psychology, the .......... school (Skinner 1957) dominated thinking in the field of
language teaching during the 1940s and 1950s.
a. behaviorist
psychoanalysts
functionalists
positivists
8. The approach in .......... school of psychology stemmed from early learning
theorists who attempted to describe the learning process in terms of conditioning.
a. behaviorist
psychoanalysts
functionalists
positivists
9. To the .........., behavior happened in associative stimulus-response chains, and all
learning
was seen as associative learning or habit-formation which became stronger with
reinforcement.
a. behaviorists
psychoanalysts
functionalists
positivists
10. To the behaviorists, the occurrence of behavior was dependent
upon three crucial elements in learning: a .........., which elicited the behavior;
a .........., which was triggered by the stimulus; and .........., which marked the
response as being appropriate or inappropriate and encouraged repetition or
suppression of the response.
a. stimulus / response/ reinforcement
reinforcement / stimulus / response
stimulus / reinforcement / response/
reinforcement / response/ stimulus
11. Behaviorist theory placed emphasis on the role of the .......... and denied the
existence of .........., which was regarded as inaccessible to proper scientific
investigation.
a. environment/ internal mental process
internal mental process / environment
stimulus / self
self / stimulus
12. according to Skinner (1957), .......... were strong contributing factors in the
language learning process.
a. Imitation and practice
mind and ego
thought and personality
imagination and exploration
13. By the 1960s, linguistics saw a paradigm shift from .......... linguistics, which was
based on the mere description of surface forms of utterances, to .......... linguistics,
which was concerned with both surface forms of utterances as well as the abstract
structures underlying sentences, thus emphasizing the creative nature of human
language.
a. structural/ generative
structural / cognitive
generative / structural
cognitive / structural
14. In his book, “Syantactic Structures,” Chomsky (1957) contends that language has
a(n) .......... structure, which consists of the essential meanings, and a(n) ..........
structure, which is made up of the particular way in which ideas are stated.
a. deep/surface
surface / deep
internal / external
external / internal
15. In his book, “Syntactic Structures,” Chomsky (1957) contends that there is one
type of rules, .......... rules, which generate deep structures, and a second type, called
.......... rules, which are responsible for converting deep structure into surface
structure.
a. phrase structure/ transformational
transformational / phrase structure
deep / surface
surface / deep
16. Following Saussure’s (1915) dichotomy of langue (the language system) and
parole (actual speech), Chomsky made the theoretical distinction between ..........
a. competence and performance
depth and surface
phrase structure rules and transformational rules
syntax and semantics
17. By criticizing behavioristic approaches to language learning, Chomsky claimed
that children were innately predisposed to acquire the language of the community
into which they were born because they were born with some kind of .......... to tackle
the language learning task.
a. language acquisition device
mental transformation ability
learning potential
universal linguistic rules
18. Chomsky and his followers (Chomsky 1981; Cook 1988; White 1989) replaced
the old term .......... by the idea of ...........
a. LAD/ universal grammar
universal grammar / LAD
language acquisition device / mental transformation ability
learning potential / universal linguistic rules
19. In its initial years of existence, .......... aimed to test Chomsky’s innatist theory of
language acquisition.
a. psycholinguistics
sociolinguistics
pragmatics
psychoanalysis
20. @ studies (Klima and Bellugi 1966; Slobin 1970; Brown 1973) showed
conclusively that children were active rather than passive participants in the language
learning process, since they inferred rules to test how language worked.
a. psycholinguistic
sociolinguistic
pragmatic
psychoanalytic
21. By the 1970s, researchers in the linguistics field, began to turn their attention to
.......... or language beyond the sentence (Schiffrin 1994).
a. discourse
semantics
pragmatics
sociolinguistics
22. The functional analysis of language by Halliday’s systemic grammar (1970,
1973, 1974, 1975) attempted to explain how the .......... of language determines the
.......... of language.
a. Function/ form
form / function
structure / meaning
meaning / structure
23. Halliday (1975) postulated a total of .......... communicative functions
characterizing the child’s early communicative development, all of which were
related to aspects of social life.
a. 7
4
5
6
24. The .......... function of language by Halliday (1957) involves the use of language
to get things.
instrumental,
regulatory
interactional
personal
25. The .......... function of language by Halliday (1957) involves the use of language
to regulate people’s behavior;
regulatory,
instrumental
interactional
personal
26. The .......... function of language by Halliday (1957) involves the use of language
to interact with other people
interactional,
regulatory
instrumental
personal
27. The .......... function of language by Halliday (1957) involves the use of language
to express one’s feelings;
personal,
interactional
regulatory
instrumental
28. The .......... function of language by Halliday (1957) involves the use of language
to explore the outside world;
heuristic,
imaginative
representational
instrumental
29. The .......... function of language by Halliday (1957) involves the use of language
to create an environment,
imaginative,
heuristic
representational
instrumental
30. The .......... function of language by Halliday (1957) involves the use of language
to communicate information.
representational,
heuristic
imaginative
instrumental
31. the .......... (Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968; Schank and Abelson 1977), was mainly
concerned with the way human beings take in information, process it and act upon it.
information processing approach
32. the.........., was mainly concerned with the way human beings make their own
personal understanding from the experiences that surround them.
constructivist approach
33. Hymes (1971) introduced the term.........., which included not only Chomsky’s
(1965) grammatical competence but also the rules of language use in social context
and the sociolinguistic norms of appropriacy.
communicative competence
34. The .......... ideas in language learning emphasized the role of the linguistic
environment in interaction with the child’s innate predisposition to language
development.
Interactionist
35. The model of communicative compentence by Canale and Swain (1980)
presented an integrative theoretical framework consisting of four main competencies
namely.......... competence.
grammatical, sociolinguistic, strategic, and discourse
36. In Canale and Swain’s model of communicative competence (1980), ..........
competence refers to the knowledge of the language code. It includes knowledge of
vocabulary, rules of pronunciation and spelling, word formation and sentence
structure.
grammatical
37. In Canale and Swain’s model of communicative competence (1980), ..........
competence refers to the knowledge of the sociocultural rules of use in a particular
context.
Sociolinguistic
38. In Canale and Swain’s model of communicative competence (1980), ..........
competence involves the knowledge of how to use verbal and nonverbal
communication strategies to handle
breakdowns in communication.
strategic
39. In Canale and Swain’s model of communicative competence (1980), ..........
competence is concerned with the knowledge of achieving coherence and cohesion
in a spoken or written text.
Discourse
40. Bachman (1987) developed a model of communicative language ability in which
three components were included namely ..........
language competence, strategic competence and psychomotor skills.
41. According to Bachman’s proposed model of communicative competence (1987),
Language competence is divided into two components, namely ..........
organizational and pragmatic competence.
42. According to Bachman’s proposed model of communicative competence (1987),
organizational competence consists of ..........
grammatical competence and textual competence,
43. According to Bachman’s proposed model of communicative competence (1987),
pragmatic competence is divided into two subcomponents, namely ..........
competence, which refers to the knowledge of the pragmatic conventions for
performing acceptable language functions, and .......... competence, which deals with
the knowledge of the sociolinguistic conventions for performing language functions
appropriately in a given context.
Illocutionary/ sociolinguistic
44. Bachman (1987, 1990) considered two more components of communicative
language ability, namely .......... which allows language users to employ the elements
included within language competence depending on the context in which
communication takes place in order to negotiate meaning, and .......... which involve
the receptive or productive mode in which competence is performed through a
particular type of channel: oral or visual in the case of receptive language use, and
aural or visual in the case of productive language use.
strategic skills/ psychomotor skills
45. Meyer (1991) defines .......... as “the ability of a person to behave adequately in a
flexible manner when confronted with actions, attitudes and expectations of
representatives of foreign cultures.”
intercultural communicative competence
Chapter Two: Towards acquiring communicative competence through listening
1. Up to the end of the .........., listening was viewed as a passive process with no role
in language learning.
1960s
2. According to Brown (1990), during the .......... period of language learning, the
listeners’ main role was simply based on the recognition and discrimination of
sounds rather than the understanding of what they were listening to.
Environmentalist
3. In the .......... period of language learning, listening was viewed as the primary
channel by which access could be gained to L2 input, while in turn serving as the
trigger for acquisition.
Innatist
4. According to Rost (2002) .......... refers to the fact that listening should be the first
aspect to be tackled in the language classroom).
initial listening or listening first
5. Asher (1969), in .......... believed that once learners had been exposed to an
extended period of listening and had been able to understand this spoken language
through non-verbal actions, they could be ready for oral practice.
Total Physical Response
6. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, listening was seen as the.......... .
promoter of language learning
7. the .......... view of listening claimed that comprehension of a given message only
occurred when it was internally reproduced in the listeners’ mind.
information processing
8. the .......... view of listening emphasized the fact that listeners did not merely
receive and process
meaning, but rather constructed such meaning according to their own purposes for
listening as well as their own prior knowledge.
Constructivist
9. The theory proposed by Rumelhart (1980) involves the collection of prior
knowledge
and experience that is stored in listeners’ memory and assists the process of
comprehension.
Schema
10. Schemata can be of two types: schemata and schemata (Lynch and Mendelsohn
2002). The former includes topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous
experience with a particular field. The latter involves knowledge about discourse
forms, rhetorical conventions as well as the structural organization of different text
types, such as an
academic lecture.
content/ formal
11. In the .......... approach to listening, learners are engaged in a listening and using
model in which they are first asked to listen to authentic language samples and then
to carry out a particular task using the information received.
Task-Based
12. In the .......... approach to listening, learners follow a decoding, critical-thinking,
speaking model in which they have to first decode the information they hear, react to
it by processing it critically,
and finally produce an appropriate response.
Interactive
13. .......... competence implies an understanding of how language operates at a level
above the sentence. It involves knowledge of discourse features such as markers,
coherence and cohesion as well as formal schemata in relation to the particular
purpose and situational context of the spoken text.
Discourse
14. competence involves an understanding of the function or illocutionary force of a
spoken utterance in a given situation, as well as the sociopragmatic factors necessary
to recognize not just what that utterance says, in linguistic terms, but also what it is
meant by it.
Pragmatic
15. .......... competence implies having knowledge of both cultural and non-verbal
communicative factors in order to appropriately interpret a given spoken text.
Intercultural
16. .......... competence involves the mastery of both communication and
learning strategies that will allow listeners to successfully construct meaning
from oral input.
Strategic