a perception of achievement are fundamental to learning.
Language, thus, cannot be learned effectively and efficiently outside of a motivating context. The current tendency is to teach language in its cultural context, rather than as an arid linguistic code. As in whole language, basal textbooks are replaced by real fictional and non-fictional examples of the target-language literature--even though they are selected on the basis of their degree of syntactical and lexical simplicity. Basals have proved boring to children and particularly to secondary-school children and to adults. Not only are they boring, but they do not teach language the way it is spoken and written in everyday life. They present language as series of disconnected out-of-context syntactical segmentary paradigms. Based on this approach to language arts, learners may become able to translate paradigmatic segments of the target language into the source language (and, more rarely, vice versa), but they are never able to understand and appreciate the deep meanings of written or spoken language: they behave as translating-machines which do a reasonable job of literal translation, i.e. they apprehend denotation (explicit)--dictionary definitions, but not connotation (implicit)--the contextual meanings. Until recently, most foreign-language methods--but the direct method, resorted to basal-type texts and segmentary learning of the target-language.
The current tendency is towards a holistic approach to learning. "Language," says Catherine Walsh (1987), "is a sociocultural phenomenon." "Individuals can only be understood in terms of their specific sociohistorical setting... Children come to school with this speaking consciousness already well developed... It is through language that individuals learn to act as members of society... It is the development of speech along with ways of thinking, feeling, and acting that are culturally embedded and socially det...