Astronauts + Sauerbraten = What? A Teacher's Plea

Abstract

Some authors of recent grammar textbooks for college sophomores seem to have forgotten the importance of the psychological factor in the learning process. A lesson intended to introduce, drill, and review a certain area in grammar, correct usage, or idiom should appeal to the learner's natural, emotional, interest-prompted associations, which will, in turn, create memory supports. These components can be involved only if the text offers a continuum in the substance used instead of an enormous accumulation of random examples, with which we find ourselves so often faced. In teaching usage and conversation in an intermediate German college course, I have found that the textbook in use-and many others with which I have compared it-offers no coherent thought units when treating a certain language question. Oral drill, with or without the use of the language laboratory, is a necessity in order to acquire a good pronunciation and such fluency that the right choice of expression and the correct use of structure become second nature. However, the drill would be much more effective if it were organically connected with and preceded by some anecdote, an experience at shopping, a meal in a restaurant, a meaningful little incident at work, home, or school; or a short poem or song, preferably in conservative verse form for easier memorization. In the authors' anxiety to provide ample drill material, most second year college textbooks in foreign languages seem to bend over backwards so far that the examples are far too numerous-less would have been more in this instance. Besides, the subject matter jumps with amazing nonchalance and complete incoherence from a thunderstorm and bicycle riding over newspapers and Sauerbraten mit Bratkartoffeln to marriage, astronauts, a bachelor uncle's idiosyncrasies, disease and distrust; all this in one jolly session-a potpourri where no attempt is made to connect the unrelated motifs. I have occasionally observed even top students sweating audibly under the burden of the interminable textual meanderings, which have nothing in common except a grammatical rule. Unlike the crasher courses offered in the U.S. forces or the ulpanim in Israel, both of which aim at quick language integration and concentrate on an organically growing vocabulary, we frequently waste time and efforts using the audio-lingual method unwisely. True, we do use an additional reader for coherence, for knowledge of culture, literature, history and economy. Introducing each grammar unit by a short text, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, would render the task more playful and alleviate the dry, heavy series of exercises. It would thus facilitate word mastery, sentence structure, correctness of usage, idioms, and as a by-product, pronunciation. We learn not only through reason, but through all our