Common Sense and Logic: A Plea for Pedagogic Rationalization in the Teaching of German

Abstract

It is a truism of language teaching that language instructors are never satisfied with the textbook they are using unless they wrote it themselves. Even if they have written the textbook, they are probably still somewhat unhappy with it, because, like everything else we do in life, nothing is perfect, and even our best efforts can be improved upon. In addition, our opinions and our approach change over the years, and with the aid of research and experience, methods of teaching are modified and amended. It is thus only natural to expect that the best developments in language instruction-as they emerge in and are established by the profession over the years-would become standard practice and would not only be adopted by language instructors in the classroom, but would also be incorporated in the latest textbooks. This, unfortunately, does not yet seem to be the case. An examination of textbooks published during the past fifteen years' shows that not only is there still apparently a difference of opinion on how best to present certain points of elementary German grammar, but also that there is not even agreement on terminology. Nor has the profession yet agreed on the logical presentation of several basic grammatical issues which, it seems to this writer, should have been universally adopted many years ago. Learning a foreign language is difficult enough; anything that smooths the way and makes the path easier to follow should be welcomed. This is particularly important when a profession, such as the teaching of German, is concerned about its very survival. The easier it is to understand and master the subject, the more satisfaction the student will feel, the more students will be attracted to the subject, and the better chance it has to survive difficult times. In language instruction there will always be differences of approach; and in grammatical explanations, especially today, there is often even disagreement about what is actually happening grammatically in a given sentence and how best to describe it. It is well known that the grammatical system and terminology inherited from the teaching of Latin does not always accurately or adequately describe what is happening in a German (or French or English) sentence. But modern linguistic research has not yet provided us with a generally acceptable system which can replace the traditional one, although attempts have been made to incorporate advances in linguistics into newer textbooks.2 The profession finds itself, so to speak, between two grammatical stools. On the other hand, there are certain elementary features of the language, such as inflections and conjugations, which the student still has to master before aspiring to competence in the language. No matter what linguistic theory one ascribes to, or which pedagogical approach one employs, the student is still faced with certain tasks of comprehension and memorizing. It is clearly the duty of the language instructor to reduce the burden of such tasks as much as possible, and thus speed the learning process, so that the student may progress more rapidly to the point at which reading, writing and speaking become a pleasure. But if we examine the majority of textbooks available to the profession today, we find both that some very elementary pedagogical principles are being violated and that some rather obvious aids to comprehension and mastery are being ignored. In what follows, several different points are discussed, and while they are for the most part separate points of grammar and terminology, they all illustrate the perennial failure of textbook writers to utilize some rather obvious pedagogical aids and to avoid some equally obvious pedagogical sins. They also all reflect the belief that we need to rationalize our approach to the teaching of certain elementary grammatical topics. The points discussed below seem to be obvious examples of matters about which the profession could and should be in more or less general agreement. If poor pedagogy and misleading ter-