An ethnographic case study of communication: A child views language as both tool and object of study

Both traditional linguists and applied linguists have more interest in the disciplines of linguistic syntax and semantic synesis for the use of academic professionals than in the practice of language pedagogy for the use of ordinary teachers and learners. Therefore, the actual use of the target language as a tool has been ignored in school pedagogy, especially in EFL settings. The basic posture of the study is that language as an communicative medium should be employed as an acquiring tool as well as regarded as a learning object when we take learners into consideration and expect a language instruction to be effective.; Though Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) had been promoted to meet the demanding needs of communication as early as in 1972 by Sandra J. Savignon, yet the ineffectiveness in language classroom instruction hasn't been much improved. Since proponents of CLT consciously or unconsciously refrain from distinguishing CLT from the scientific spell of linguistics, CLT, therefore, doesn't make much difference in actual pedagogy from earlier linguistic paradigms. With the consideration of linguistic assessment, both grammatical competence and discourse competence have been inappropriately highlighted in CLT paradigm as a primary learning object. Actual communication has, therefore, been neglected and even regarded as more a slogan or a jargon than a feasible approach.; British linguist Halliday's paradigm in functional use of language has been believed as one of the paradigms that are compatible with CLT most. Halliday, a Chinese language expert, has remarkably infused many ancient Chinese linguistic ideas into his paradigm of applied linguistics. To further broaden the representation of current functional use of language in CLT, I review ancient Chinese philosophies from the perspective of humanism and argue that infusing the concern of humanism from ancient Chinese philosophy into current Western linguistic traditions is one of the best possible ways not only to increase actual human communication but also to broaden the representation of CLT.; Since both research and pedagogical paradigms have decisive impacts on language teaching and learning, this project takes an in-depth ethnographic approach to observe and record the actual occurrence of communication in my son Andrew's English practice in the U.S. setting. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...