Towards an Integration of the Behaviorist,the Cognitivist and the Interactionist Models in SLA in China

Introduction English Language teaching as a profession has enjoyed a long history.And ever since itsinitiation,people have investigated different models in language acquisition/learning andteaching,although only in recent years has attention been paid to the studies of SLA.In theChinese setting,research in foreign language teaching(TEFL)has been made in the fashionof the theories of first language acguisition or SLA,for it is believed that the contributions tostudies of the input provided by mothers(i.e motherese) in L1 acquisition and teachers inter-locuters in SLA are necessarily important for understanding the direction that TEEL researchhas followed,as they have provided both a methodololgy for investigating input and the re-search questions.The behaviorist,the cognitivist and the interactionist approaches have putforward different models in interpreting L1 acquisition and SLA,which obviously have theirown merits and demerits,depending on the level at which they are employed and the purposethey