ABSTRACT
N. Chomsky’s attack on the behaviourist underpinnings of structural linguistics in the late 1950s proved decisive, and its associated pedagogical approach – Audiolingualism – began to fall out of favour. The flurry of research inspired by Chomsky’s ideas did much to stimulate the development of the field of second language acquisition and its psychological counterpart, psycholinguistics. Technology was advancing throughout the century, but the advent of powerful and affordable personal computers probably has had the greatest impact on applied linguistics. Computer technology has also facilitated the incorporation of audio and video input into learning programs on a scale previously unimaginable. If learners were, in fact, active participants then it followed that what these learners did would make a difference in the quality and speed of their learning. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
