Modern Trends in the Teaching of German

Abstract

IN THE summer of 1946 I had the opportunity of working under Charles C. Fries in the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan in an experiment in which I, who know no Chinese, along with a few other teachers, undertook to teach English to an intelligent Chinese man, who had studied English grammar for six years in China but could neither speak the language nor understand it. This may seem amusing but, unfortunately, I am constantly aware that this same situation too often exists in respect to our American students studying a foreign language in our colleges and universities. After eight weeks of intensive training, my Chinese student was capable of handling almost any situation in English. Naturally, after that experience, I wondered if some similar training might be given in German, or any other foreign language, with similar results. The only feasible means of getting this information seemed to be to send out a questionnaire, although I reallized that the answers received, as well as the questions themselves, might be misleading, and the information would often be affected by the subjective nature of the replies. As the returns came in, many other questions came to mind which perhaps should have been included, and I am sure that this paper is only a beginning and that the subject could well be pursued to advantage. The results of each question asked have been tabulated, but only the figures of greatest interest will be repeated in the body of the paper.' Although my purpose in sending out the questionnaire was to try to discover the trends German teaching was taking today, the replies presented not so much the trends as the problems existing. Only a very few schools are experimenting with new methods and procedures, and later on I will quote some of the men who described their new approaches. The vast majority of schools are following the same patterns that have been in use in language teaching for decades, but most of them have come to realize that their methods are giving rise to some very pressing problems. In a few instances the difficulties seemed local or regional; but it was remarkable, on the whole, how men from all parts of the country voiced the same problems. It is these problems that I would like to present. For most of them I have no solution, except to say that if we all become