German as the Classroom Language at Andover

Abstract

Until four years ago, Phillips Academy offered a rather traditional German course: grammar in the first year, concentration on reading in the second and third years, and an introduction to German literature in the fourth year. Although it had been stated for many years in the Andover catalogue that German was to be spoken in class, the subject was approached from the point of view of English. After considerable soul-searching, we decided in 1957 to change the contents of the German curriculum completely. We realized that the development of the students' hearing and speaking facility required a different approach; we hoped that through this new approach, which would introduce German as the basic classroom language, the students' total contact time with the language could be greatly increased, and we expected that as a result of this change we should be able to prepare our students better for the Advanced Placement Program and hence for advanced college courses. We began by introducing a new book in the first-year course. From the first meeting of the class we speak German exclusively in order to force the students into German thought and speech patterns. Later on, an occasional English word is not necessarily taboo. The agony of spending fifteen minutes explaining the meaning of a single German word is senseless. It is most important, however, that German be never abandoned as the basic language. The students should emerge from the classroom with the feeling that their instructor speaks only German, though he may know some English. Direct method purists may not agree with this view, but it appears to us to be closest to the situation of an American student in Germany whom nobody would ever expect not to use a dictionary just for the sake of the direct method. The successful use of this new text and the new standards it very quickly set prompted us to examine thoroughly the contents of our second and third year courses, as well as the ultimate aim of the entire program. We came to the conclusion that no major changes in the advanced courses, i.e. in the fourth and fifth years, were necessary, since the new method did not lead to a new goal. We are still firmly convinced that the experience of intimate intellectual contact with