Current Trends in the Teaching of English in France

Abstract

those of their American counterparts, and the influence of the work done by the Army Specialized Training Program at Monterey is evident, but the new methods being developed in France differ significantly from our own. This fact is not surprising; for many years French linguistic research has been moving in a different direction from ours, and foreign language pedagogy has long been different also. These differences date generally from the turn of the century. Ferdinand de Saussure in his Cours de Linguistique Generale,l established the fundamental principles of modern linguistics, and his theories of language have been and are a considerable influence on linguists in France. Of particular importance to those linguists concerned with foreign language teaching is his concept of the signe. An expression which conveys meaning can be called a signe (sign or symbol). The signe has two completely interdependent parts: the signifiants-the sounds which make up the expression, and the signifies-the ideas conveyed by the expression. Andre Martinet has added to this his concept of the double articulation of any given language. The first articulation is the one according to which one's need to communicate something