Foreign Language Teaching under the Army Specialized Training Program

Abstract

THIS SHORT REPORT is intended primarily as a descriptive summary of the work done at Queens College Army Specialized Training Program in the intensive teaching of French, German and Spanish. Your reporter's is the teaching of German; therefore specific examples will be taken from the teaching of that language. But since the program in French and Spanish is similar in nature to the instruction in German, the implications of report should apply to all three languages. In so far as report deals the description of the organization and procedures of the language teaching at Queens, it should be reasonably accurate, for, though variations do, and should exist, there is nevertheless agreement on fundamentals in the various departments and among members of the teaching staff. When report attempts to raise issues of an evaluative nature, it is to be taken as the personal opinion of your reporter, and not necessarily the opinion of the department and faculty members concerned. Objectives: The directive on the teaching of foreign languages of the Army Specialized Training Program establishes the speaking aim--a command of the colloquial spoken form of the language. In the language of the directive this command includes the ability to speak the language fluently, accurately, and an acceptable approximation to a native pronunciation. It also implies that the student will have a practically perfect auditory comprehension of the language as spoken by natives. This emphasis on aural comprehension and oral competence relegates to a subsidiary place the ability to read the language, and omits almost entirely the ability to write the language. In any case, such reading and writing as the student may be called upon to do, should be exclusively for the purpose of strengthening the ability to understand the spoken word and to speak. The directive maintains that experience has shown that the proper methodology the objective can be achieved in six to nine months. The phrase with an acceptable approximation to a native pronunciation is open to varying interpretations, and it is difficult, in