The Primacy of Speech: An Historical Sketch

Abstract

In the literature of the seventeenth century we found several statements about methods of teaching languages. Various authorities emphasized the importance of communication competence in Latin, rather than the teaching of Latin grammar for grammar's sake. Eichard Lubin' of Amerland suggested that the teaching of formal grammar is an impediment to teaching and that languages can be best acquired through conversational practice. His contemporary, Ezekiel Holberg,2 provided 15 sentences daily which the student had to memorize and recite as the basic activity of language learning. The leading pioneer in the oral approach was, however, John A. Comenius,3 scholarly proponent of many ideas on learning. He pointed up the impo tance of forming direct association between a word and an object in normal conversation situation , rather than working through transl tion. His plan for learning a language was arranged in four stages: stammering, speaking, fluency, and eloquence. He insisted that every language must be learned by practice rather than by rules, and that we should teach systematically all sounds, phrases, and idioms of the particular foreign language. Some of the ideas of Comenius were shared