Prognosis in Foreign Language in Secondary Schools

Abstract

It is not the purpose of this article to deal in detail with the various principles underlying the prognosis of pupil performance in any of the varied high-school subjects. Principles such as those relating to the correlation of pedagogical abilities and the constancy of the intelligence quotient have been well covered in modern textbooks dealing with educational research. We should, however, understand that this correlation and constancy must exist, to some extent at least, if there is to be any such thing as prognosis or the carrying out of any systematic scheme of educational guidance. The purpose of this article is rather to report the results of two years of personal research in, and observation of, pupil prognosis. As the writer has been a teacher of foreign languages at various times and has noted, often with discouragement, the somewhat dismal struggles of many students to make satisfactory headway in foreignlanguage study, the idea of prognosticating with a view to group selection has occurred to him as a possible solution worthy of investigation. For prognostic research in foreign language there are two types of tests available. There are, of course, the usual mental-ability