IN recent years we have had the opportunity to watch numerous experiments in the teaching of basic language courses. The intensified courses adopted in a few colleges seemed for a time to be the answer to our problems: seven to twelve contact hours a week in sections of only ten or twelve students. This arrangement makes real oral training possible from the beginning, and oral facility, being the demanding skill that it is, provides an excellent basis for the ready acquisition of other skills: listening, writing, reading. But these intensified courses have not been as contagious as many of us have hoped; in fact, some of those that were established are disappearing again because of crowded conditions, a shortage of competent teachers, financial strain and the plain fact that serious language study is still far from popular. The battle for small classes and more time is yet to be won. Beginning college classes of twenty-five, thirty or more students meeting from three to five hours a week are still the order of the day. And at least half of the students in these classes are not returning for a second year of study. In view of all this, language teachers have recently done a great deal of casting about for an approach that can be used effectively in the first year without prejudice to either the one-year student or the student who continues. If we agree that reading is still the major objective of college German study, it does not seem fair or efficient to offer the one-year student chiefly active grammar and composition. On the other hand, if the course is designed to teach passive grammar and silent reading from the beginning, it ignores the spoken language and consequently falls into the danger of becoming unnatural and lifeless. I believe that we have found one possible solution to this problem in an experimental beginners' course at the University of Colorado. This course was tried out on a small scale last year, and again last summer, and is now being conducted in most of our beginning liberal arts classes. The course places equal major stress on the skills of reading and listening, and it postpones training in speaking and writing until the following years of study. Grammar is treated passively throughout most of the first year. This does not mean, however, that it is not treated thoroughly. Let me point out some of the most important reasons for the adoption of an approach which makes ability to with the ear a major aim along with ability to read with the eye. To begin with, auditory comprehension is a language skill which can be developed effectively in large beginning classes. Other things being equal,