Excerpt from The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 4
Copies of the statement made by President Butler in the Educational Review, together with the following hypothetical statement which was prepared by the writer of this article, were sent to a number of prominent professors of Romance Languages:
"It has occurred to me that it might be well to submit the causes that most college teachers of modern languages give for not succeeding in teaching their students to speak the language better than they do. In most colleges and universities, first and second year French are given in classes that meet only three times a week. In elementary work the teacher can scarcely avoid speaking to the class at least one-half of the time. So far as I am able to ascertain the average college class throughout the country has about twenty-five students and the average time given to a lesson is fifty minutes.
"When classes meet three times a week, if the teacher speaks one-half of the time and the students speak during the other half, each student has one minute each day or three minutes a week, which would amount to a total of about two hours practice in speaking French during the year.
"The other handicap to which reference is commonly made is that most college students never expect to visit any place where the foreign language is spoken. Consequently, they are primarily interested in learning to read the language. Here it is again the environment against which the teacher struggles.
"Some of us believe that the reform in teaching modern languages must first be made in the secondary schools. There are, however, in practically every college and university a chosen few that would be willing to work hard enough to learn to speak the language well if they had the opportunity to do so."
The letters that were received in reply are of great interest and offer many constructive suggestions. Unfortunately only the following extracts can be given:
"We are at one in the view that the teaching of modern languages should be better and more effective than it now is, and must be made so. The first and most pressing measure to this end is to establish a scale of salaries which will attract capable men and women to enter the field.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 4 (Classic Reprint) (E. C. Hills)