Concerning the Objectives and Methodology of the Second Year

Abstract

WE ARE now sufficiently removed in time to appreciate the significance of the year 1924 for the history of modern foreign language teaching in America. Whether we like it or not the Modern Language Study, which was inaugurated in 1924 under a grant from the Carnegie Foundation, has created an entirely different perspective for our work and has modified and is still modifying the work especially of the first college year. The impact of 1924 on our profession is comparable only to the similar impact, a half century ago, of the so-called direct method from a Europe which was profoundly impressed and thrilled at the potentialities of the new psychology and phonetics. It is when we peruse the legion of articles on objectives and methodology which have appeared and are still appearing in the professional journals, and still more when we ponder the new type of elementary textbook which the market offers in ever increasing numbers, that we realize how profoundly the Modern Language Study has affected our work. Most of the textbooks appearing currently have, for example, been constructed in consonance with the vocabulary and idiom frequency counts. This development has proceeded so far that the A.A.T.G. appears to be encouraging the idea that all elementary readers might safely presuppose the two thousand odd basic words and related idioms of the Minimum Standard German Vocabulary, and thus avoid the wasteful expenditure of reprinting them in each individual reader. The vogue of the streamlined grammars which have reduced the bugbear Grammar to its minimum essentials is too marked to need further mention, as is the incessant demand for more so-called 'cultural content' in the reading material. All of this activity in the foreign language field appears to be quite consistent with the general trend in curriculum revision throughout the American college and university. As we well know, there has for some time been a marked trend toward the greater