TOWARD SELF-INSTRUCTION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

Abstract

Publisher Summary The generally neglected components of foreign language instruction can best be interrelated and manipulated to make the design of foreign language teaching systems more effective, efficient, and congruent with the learning theories and the technology currently being developed and applied. The remarkable revolution in foreign language teaching methodology and technology, now labeled the New Key, constitutes both the strength and the weakness of language teaching. The New Key procedure reveals more accurately the structure of spoken French and is pedagogically more efficient. In Intensive Method programs, contact is also intensified by the modification of the traditional foreign language teaching context: small classes, seldom containing more than ten students; variation in class size; and specialization of teaching function, the linguist providing guidance and the native informant functioning as a drilling machine.