Underlying Principles and Aims of Present-Day Modern Language Teaching

Abstract

THE recent Modern Foreign Language Investigation, called the Study, has already begun to have one important effect upon the teaching of our subject. It has forced upon our attention the importance of having well-defined objectives. During the past generation they had become confused. Much of the teaching had broken away from the objectives and practices set up by the Committee of Twelve and had come under the influence of the so-called Reform Movement, constructed on much broader lines and intended for much longer courses than prevail in this country. The result has been an ill-defined relationship between the several factors of the course. It is wise, therefore, that we should in the light of the findings of the Study take account of stock, that we should attempt anew to find a better solution, if possible, for our manifestly difficult problems. In the time at my disposal I can scarcely do more than touch upon a few points that seem to me in the light of my experience to relate most deeply to the subject assigned me. The learning of a foreign language involves the acquisition of a number of more or less interrelated skills commonly listed under the headings, speaking, understanding, reading and writing. To gain even a fair mastery of a foreign language, one at all comparable to ones ability to use the mother tongue, one would hardly choose the school as the most suitable place. Environment, time, size of classes, kinds of pupils and teachers are highly unfavorable to the acquisition of the many skills involved. Tradition, however, and lack of better facilities have placed the study within the school, and the question has always been, what is best to be done under the circumstances. The answer has really always been to teach pupils to read even though at times that objective has been obscured. In earlier days, even today in many places, of the four aspects, reading was the only one of the skills that the teacher was at all prepared to teach. It was not reading in the true sense, to be sure; pupils were rather taught to translate. And even in the days when the term reading was synonymous with the term translation, the objective was often lost sight of due to the r61e that grammar played 1 Address given at the Atlantic City meeting of the N. E. A., June 28, 1932.