A Wartime Trend in Language Teaching

Abstract

The pendulum in modern language study is swinging to one side these days. After an overemphasis on the reading knowledge, we have now become aware of the lack of training in the spoken language. That fault is being remedied and all the more rapidly through the insistence of the Language and Area courses of the Army Specialized Training Program on the teaching of the foreign language as it is spoken in the foreign country. The presentation of interesting material for conversation, vocabularies carefully selected as belonging to the speech actually used in daily life, a reduction of grammatical drill though not its exclusion, and acquaintance with the foreign people through their ordinary idioms of speech, these are the requirements for the textbooks that are following this new trend. We can safely say that the influence will be a lasting one and also, with equal assurance, that the influence is a healthy one. The popular notion of acquiring a living foreign language is still universally expressed in the question: CAN YOU SPEAK IT? Our old type of teaching represented the other end of the pendulum's swing: acquaintance with the literary classics. After a few months of rapid grammatical study, a plunge into Dante's Divine Comedy, or in Spanish the reading of Don Quixote, in German Wilhelm Tell, Minna von Barnhelm or G6tz, Tasso or even Faust. The proud answer of the scholar was: Any waiter can master enough of the spoken language, we want the cultural advantages of the best contained in the foreign literatures. Well and good!! But the responsibility of the modern language teacher does not end there. To really master a language it is necessary to approach it from all angles, attack the fortress from every side, remembering the old and truthful words often attributed to Francis Bacon: Reading maketh a broad man, writing an exact and conversation a ready man. These approaches are all three equally important, but at present the requirements of the ready man loom largest and must be satisfied. Wisely the curriculum is not being confined to three hours a week of classroom study but extended to ten times that amount supplemented by tutorial assistance.