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the nineteenth century, that to-day Modern-Language teachers, as a rule, whatever their practice, profess to follow this course, and that the British public, with its love of "labels," is demanding the brand of teaching called "The Direct Method."

Even so, the reformers of Modern-Language teaching, hampered as they were by the position of inferiority to which were relegated both the subject and its teachers, and by the appalling lack of co-ordination from which they suffered, not only as between Secondary and University Education, but as between class and class in the selfsame school-surely an unnecessary effect of our justly cherished tradition of the Freedom of the Teacher-would probably have made yet slower progress, had not their efforts synchronized with the spread of the new principles which have revolutionized the whole of education during the last twenty-five years. These principles may perhaps be classed roughly under two main aims: that of adapting curricula and methods. to the age, powers and needs of the pupils, and that of developing systematically in the pupils, by devoting greater attention to the individual, habits of self-training, and so bringing about that collaboration between teacher and taught which, constituting as it does a training in individual thought, is the condition of all fruitful study.

My object in the following pages is to give a general description of this New Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages, bringing out the distinctive characteristics of its theory and practice, so as to form a fairly complete and coherent whole. It is obvious that the complete picture is not to be seen in all schools professing to practise the New Teaching, and that the ratio to one another of the different ingredients of this

new mixture varies from school to school and from teacher to teacher, according to local conditions, teachers' idiosyncrasies and countless other things. Balance and co-ordination are difficult problems in all schools; in many, far too many, they are still insoluble. To take one point only-the question of time. There are still a great many schools which, while professing to practise the New Teaching, do not recognize that it requires more time than was allotted to the subject under the old regime, or, worst of all, do not act on the now well-established principle, that foreign language teaching must be intensive.1

Such essential conditions as these I will assume in my account, as well as the following: competent teachers,2 i. e. teachers that not only know their subject but have the requisite natural gifts and training for their task, suitable material-there are children who are incapable of learning a foreign language with profitsuitable apparatus, homogeneous classes of moderate size, reasonable co-ordination, not only within the language-course, but as between it and the other subjects, and reasonable external examinations, at the end -not in the middle !-of the course.

It will be best for my purpose to select the languagecourse as organized for the first foreign language studied, which in our schools is generally French; for

1 i.e. no second language should be begun until the foundations of the first are securely laid, and, in the Elementary stage at any rate, there should be daily lessons, however short, to ensure the frequent renewal of identical impressions, which is essential in the training of the ear and vocal organs.

2 The supply of these is lamentably inadequate, and will remain so until proper training is insisted on, and both the University courses for Modern Languages and the professional prospects of Modern Language teachers become such as to attract the best brains to this branch of study.

that will naturally afford the most complete description of the method, especially in its initial stages, which are the most important from the point of view of the formation of right mental habits. Roughly speaking, the course may be considered as covering six years: i. e. from ten to sixteen, and falling into three stages of two years each-the Elementary, the Intermediate and the Advanced.1

The New Teaching of foreign languages has been

given many names: Natural Method, Intuitive

Method, Oral Method, New Method, Reform Method, Synthetic Method, Gouin Method, Berlitz Method, Conversational Method, Direct Method, Organized Method, etc.

There are obvious drawbacks to all such labels; but the label "Direct" has the advantage, in my opinion, of expressing clearly, if somewhat roughly, at any rate the chief linguistic aim of any sound method of foreign language teaching, viz. one that will give the pupil a real command of the language-both of the spoken and of the written idiom-differing not in kind but only in degree from his command of his mother-tongue. This aim must be to establish in connection with the foreign

1 It is difficult to state the length of the course in years, owing to the variations existing in different schools and in different parts of the country. Mr. Cloudesley Brereton, in his valuable report written for the L.C.C., puts the regular course at five years-age, 11-12 to 1617. In many schools, and perhaps for the actual numerical majority of children in this country, it falls to four years, which compares very unfavourably with what obtains in France and Germany. In others, again, especially if the Preparatory stage is included, a pupil leaving at 16-17 may be reckoned to have had six or seven years. In any case it may be stated with certainty that the minimum duration of a course adequate to national demands (leaving out of count the preparation of pupils for the University) should be six years, with an average of five to six periods per week, a state of things rarely to be found at present.

language the same Direct Association between experience and expression as exists in regard to the mothertongue. In other words, we must aim at developing in our pupils that instinctive, unerring language-sense, or Sprachgefühl, which we all possess in varying degrees in the mother-tongue, and which, superseding all rules, grammars and dictionaries, and resting at bottom on the Direct Association between experience and expression above mentioned, is the only sure guide in the use of a language, whether in conversation or in literature. This aim is primarily linguistic, but by that very fact it furthers the attainment of the cultural or humanistic aims of foreign language study which the New Teaching, no less than its predecessors, considers most important of all.

Now this language-sense, this Direct Association that we aim at, has its roots in the spoken tongue. Hence the most effective way of achieving our end is to make the pupils constantly hear and speak the foreign language, especially, at first, in the rapid give and take of dialogue, and therefore the spoken idiom must be made the basis and as far as possible the medium of instruction. "Speech first. Writing and Reading second." The ideal method is essentially an

Such is our motto.

oral method.

This is one of the specific points where science has come to the help of foreign-language teaching. For the results of psychological research prove the important part played in the acquisition of language by auditory impressions and motor activities (i.e. the cumulative physical experience of hearing and articulation). The oral method therefore enlists in its service two more mental associations than did the old-fashioned method of teaching foreign languages, which relied mainly

on the visual experience derived from the written or printed word.

But this is not all. That language-sense (Sprachgefühl) of which I have spoken—the sense for an exact correspondence between thought and expression -is most subtly linked with the physical experience of hearing and articulating living speech, wherein, by dint of repetition, a direct association is established between certain groups of speech sounds and certain physical, mental and moral experiences.

This brings us to a second distinctive principle of the ideal method, one which, equally with the first— the oral principle—is determined by the aim formulated above. This second principle is that, to ensure the direct association just mentioned between experience and expression no rival speech sounds must intervene. In other words, the moment the experience in question is clearly apprehended, the mother-tongue must be banished i. e. translation as a means of assimilating new language-forms by practice is barred. If our

1 This categorical statement requires some explanation. It expresses an ideal, an ultimate aim. Only fanatics would maintain that the mother-tongue is never to be used in the foreign language lesson, as is done I believe in Berlitz schools. But it makes all the difference, in practice, whether the teacher aims at avoiding its use whenever possible or at allowing its use whenever it seems necessary. The important point is to do nothing to develop or encourage the habit of translation; and in this connection it should be noted that the danger to be avoided is the intervening of the mothertongue between the foreign expression and the idea, not, in Mr. Kirkman's happy phrase, its "supervening" (vid. The Teaching of Foreign Languages, Clive), which of course is unavoidable, and may often be welcomed as proof that the correct direct association has been formed. It is obviously in the interpretation of new material that it is most difficult to avoid the intrusion of the mother-tongue, and while most teachers are agreed that it must be banished from the processes of assimilation and reproduction, there is much divergence of practice in that of interpretation, some aiming

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