How to teach a foreign language — Text and Context

isted upon that exactly this is their real value. But it is not necessary to waste many words on this matter, especially since all competent classical scholars--also those who insist upon a privileged position for the classical languages in our schools--have long ago given up as unscholarly the idea that the Latin (or Greek) language should be more logical in construction than, for instance, French or English. And there is no doubt much truth in what Robert Browning says: “Learning Greek teaches Greek, and nothing else; certainly not common sense, if that have failed to precede the teaching!”[1]

But on the other hand it must not be overlooked that everything which is learned with a sensible end in view, and according to a sensible method, tends in itself more or less directly to develop valuable faculties, and that especially the teaching of languages, in addition to the actual results which it gives through the contents of what one reads in foreign languages, is an excellent means of training such important faculties as--

the faculty of observing (of observing correctly, of observing independently),

the faculty of classifying under different points of view that which has been observed,

the faculty of deducing general laws from the material collected by observation,

the faculty of drawing conclusions and applying them to other cases than the ones hitherto met with,

--all, of course, faculties that are nearly related--also

the ability to read in general, to read intelligently, and with reflection.

In the construction of our method of teaching, especially if it is to be used in schools, we must also take these things into consideration. Any instruction in languages which merely consisted in a parrot-like repetition of the words of the teacher or the book, if indeed such a method is conceivable, would not be in place in our schools, and besides, no one, so far as I know, has ever tried to introduce such a pure parrot-method there.

The teacher must make the pupils feel interested in the subject; they must have a vivid conception of the reward that their work will bring them, so that it will seem worth while for them to exert themselves. They must feel that their instruction in languages gives them a key, and that there are plenty of treasures that it will open for them; they must see that the literature to which they have gained access contains numerous works which also have messages for them; and they must, to so great an extent as possible in the course of the instruction in a certain language, also have got an interest in the land and people concerned, so that they themselves will make an effort to extend their knowledge about these things. There is thus laid a good foundation for their whole life--and the saying “non scholæ sed vitæ” ought not to be interpreted, as too many (especially parents) do: learn not for the school, but in order to pass a good examination, so that you may prosper in life, and by virtue of your examination get a good position. The school ought to equip its youth in the very best manner for life, and the teacher ought not out of consideration for examination requirements to neglect or hinder anything which otherwise is good. A word about examinations later; here I simply want to warn the teacher against troubling the examination until the examination troubles him. Many of the things which I have to recommend in the following pages, I have time and again heard teachers recognize as really sensible, but they are only afraid of them on account of the examination for which they have to prepare their pupils. The answer to that is, teach in the right way, then there will be life and love in it all, and when the examination comes your pupils will know more than if your teaching from the very beginning had been fettered by examination requirements. The pupils really learn most when they continually have a feeling that it is all something useful and valuable, and that it is not too far elevated above that actual life which they either know or are beginning to get some notion of.

We learn languages, then (our native tongue as well as others), so as to be enabled to get sensible first-hand communications about the thoughts of others, and so as to have for ourselves too (if possible) a means of making others partakers of our own thoughts; and if we consider what kind of communications we may be more likely to get through a foreign language than through our own, the highest purpose in the teaching of languages may perhaps be said to be the access to the best thoughts and institutions of a foreign nation, its literature, culture--in short, the spirit of the nation in the widest sense of the word. But at the same time we must remember that we cannot reach the goal with one bound, and that there are many other things on the way which are also worth taking in. We do not learn our native tongue merely so as to be able to read Shakespeare and Browning, and neither do we learn it for the sake of giving orders to the shoemaker or making out the washerwoman’s bill. So likewise in the case of foreign languages, we ought not exclusively to soar above the earth, nor on the other hand exclusively to grovel on the ground; between those two spheres there are large fields in manifold shades where it might be of great value for us to stand in direct communication with other nations.

[1] Preface to his translation of the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus.

We may already from what has been said draw some conclusions as to the method which we ought to use. We ought to learn a language through sensible communications; there must be (and this as far as possible from the very first day) a certain connection in the thoughts communicated in the new language. Disconnected words are but stones for bread; one cannot say anything sensible with mere lists of words. Indeed not even disconnected sentences ought to be used, at all events, not in such a manner and to such an extent as in most books according to the old method. For there is generally just as little connexion between them as there would be in a newspaper if the same line were read all the way across from column to column. I shall take a few specimens at random from a French reader that is much used: “My aunt is my mother’s friend. My dear friend, you are speaking too rapidly. That is a good book. We are too old. This gentleman is quite sad. The boy has drowned many dogs.” When people say that instruction in languages ought to be a kind of mental gymnastics, I do not know if one of the things they have in mind is such sudden and violent leaps from one range of ideas to another.

In another French schoolbook we find: “Nous sommes à Paris, vous êtes à Londres. Louise et Amélie, où êtes-vous? Nous avons trouvé la lettre sur la table. Avez-vous pris le livre? Avons-nous été à Berlin? Amélie, vous êtes triste. Louis, avez-vous vu Philippe? Sommes-nous à Londres?”

The speakers seem to have a strange sense of locality. First, they say that they themselves are in Paris, but the one (the ones?) that they are speaking with are in London (conversation by telephone?); then they cannot remember if they themselves have been in Berlin; and at last they ask if they themselves are in London. Unfortunately, they get no answer, for the next sentence is, “Pierre, vous avez pris la canne.”

Or take some of the books which are supposed to help Danes learn English. They are no better. In one (which appeared in 1889) we find: “The joiner has made this chair. What a fine sunshine! For whom do you make this bed? Which of you will have this box? I should like to have it. Of whom have you got this cake? I am very fond of cakes. I have borrowed a great deal of books from a public library.”

From a “practical” primer in English, which appeared in its second edition in 1893, I take the following specimens: “Are the king’s horses very old? No; but the duke’s carriage is old. Is it older than your friend’s?... Has the nobleman told you the news? No, sir; but the lady has told me the news about the business and the wedding. Why do you not give the negro a house? No, sir; but I can tell you that the German has given each of the negroes a pretty little house. Has the lady a knife? Yes, the lady has two knives. Why do you not give the ladies the German’s keys to the church? The noblemen have the German’s keys.”

I could give you almost any number of that kind of specimens. The ones I have chosen are not even of the very worst type, since there is (some sort of) meaning in each sentence by itself. But what shall we say when, in a German reader, to the question _Wo seid ihr?_ we find the answer, _Wir sind nicht hier!_ The author of that book also seems to have had a very vivid imagination when it came to the use of pluperfects. “Your book had not been large. Had you been sensible? Your horse had been old.” We ask ourselves in surprise, when did this wonderful horse then cease to be old? But that kind of material information is not given in the book; it stops at the sphinx-like remark: _Dein Pferd war alt gewesen._ Could it really have been that kind of schoolbooks that the Danish writer, Sören Kierkegaard, alluded to when he wrote that language had been given to man, not in order to conceal his thoughts, as Talleyrand asserted, but in order to conceal the fact that he had no thoughts?

Now it must immediately be admitted that there may be a big difference in the schoolbooks made, even according to this single-sentence system. It never seems to have occurred to the authors of some of them that there might be a limit to the amount of rubbish that can be offered children under the pretext of teaching them grammar. Others again try to give sentences which are both sensible and in accordance with a child’s natural range of ideas. With respect to the latter principle, there has been steady progress from the times when the sentences either were moral rules of conduct and philosophical profundities, or selections about Greek heroes, etc. But even in the best modern books the exercises are often strangely disjointed (cf., for instance, this exercise from one of the better books: “My brother had not many lessons yesterday. Where had you been? The weather had been fine for a long time. This boy had only been in our house three or four weeks. Has your uncle had many tulips this year? How long had you had this frock?”), and even if they are not so glaringly nonsensical as some others, yet their very disconnectedness makes them bad enough.

It is easy enough, however, to find something to make fun of in all such books. Let us then rather ask the reason why this system has so long been dominant. Its defenders will, of course, refer to the difficulties in all connected reading exercises; even the simplest stories contain so many grammatical forms, and so many words, that the beginner would be overwhelmed and confused by having them all thrown at him at once. There must be gradual progress in difficulty, that is, the material for instruction must be arranged in stages from very easy to more and more difficult things, and this is supposed to be attainable only by means of disconnected sentences. The principle is sound, but it is unsound to put it into practice in such a manner that other pedagogical principles which are just as sound are neglected. Should pedagogy not also demand some sense in what one treats the children to? But, as we have seen, it is not always so easy to find the sense. And should it not also be of some significance to attract the interest of the pupils? Nothing seems hard to a willing mind. That which is associated with pleasant recollections has a firmer place in the memory than dry stuff. But exercises where it alternates between the Frenchman who has taken the Englishman’s hat and the Englishman who has taken the Frenchman’s cane, or where either Marie sees Louise’s dog or Peter sees Henry’s horse--they cannot be anything but boring, even if they give the pupils ever so gradual practice in the use of the genitive. Grown persons can, of course, put up with a little boredom, if they think they can attain anything by it; but in their heart of hearts they find such things killing, and so they are; yes, even killing for the linguistic sense. Children can, of course, put up with a good deal, too, when they have a teacher who can win their respect and affection; they also put up with many things only for the sake of getting good marks, or when they are stimulated by other equally unsound means. But still, it is better to avoid boring them.

I suppose it is also of pedagogical importance for the teaching to be correct. But here we have just one of those points where we see what evil results may come of the system of disconnected sentences: it is so extremely easy for them to become stilted; indeed, even incorrect. Some examples may be found in the exercise already cited on p. 12, where the sentence, “For whom do you make this bed?” is not good English, at any rate, and where “a great deal of books” is a bad blunder for “a great many books.” It is really easier to write a long connected piece in a foreign language about something that one is interested in than to construct merely eight disconnected sentences for the illustration of a couple of grammatical rules, and without using other words than those the pupils already have had. As impossible, even if not positively incorrect, I consider such sentences as the following, to which any one can find many parallels:--“Tie. Do not tie. Fetch. Do not fetch.... Give. Do not give.”... Judged as thoughts they are unfinished or half-finished ideas. Judged as language, they are also very problematical. Such questions, as “Do I take?” require the necessary information as to what and when. Such fragments of sentences are never heard in real life.

Finally, sentences of this kind give the pupil quite an erroneous notion of what language is on the whole, and of the relation between different languages. He is too apt to get the impression that language means a collection of words which are isolated and independent, and that there must be a corresponding word in his native tongue for each new foreign word that he learns. These words are then shoved about without any real purpose according to certain given rules, somewhat after the manner of a puzzle that was popular some years ago. The mistake thus made is by Sweet called the arithmetical fallacy, because languages are taken as collections of units where the order of the addends and the factors is immaterial. Everything that is idiomatic in the languages is quite set aside, at all events for the time being, without consideration for the fact that the most indispensable expressions often are those irrational groups which cannot be constructed merely of words and grammatical rules, expressions like “What’s the matter? I couldn’t help laughing. Serve you right. Ça va sans dire. Ça y est. Voilà qui est drôle. Wie spät haben Sie? Wer ist jetzt an der Reihe? Sie sind dran. Was ist denn los?” Where the Englishman circumstantially says “ring the bell,” the Frenchman has the short “sonnez,” etc., etc. When the pupil does not get a good deal of that kind of thing as soon as possible, but for years continues translating word-groups of the arithmetical kind until he is well drilled in all the rules of the grammar, the result is that when he is left to his own resources he takes each word of the English phrase that happens to occur to him and translates it literally into the language which he is trying to speak.[2] That is how we come to hear such ridiculous things as “Ich konnte nicht helfen zu lachen.”

It is grammar that plays the chief rôle. A characteristic teacher’s report is: “In the course of the school-year we have gone through accidence as far as the third class of verbs.” The raison d’être of each sentence lies merely in its value for the grammatical exercises, so that by reading schoolbooks one often gets the impression that Frenchmen must be strictly systematical beings, who one day speak merely in futures, another day in passé définis, and who say the most disconnected things only for the sake of being able to use all the persons in the tense which for the time being happens to be the subject for conversation, while they carefully postpone the use of the subjunctive until next year.

Now, as misfortune will have it, although the whole system is planned for drilling in grammar, this end is by no means attained by these too systematical exercises. The pupils get the scent of what is to be used in a certain exercise, and they use it mechanically there, but they do not learn how to transfer it to other connexions, so if they suddenly have to use a future in an exercise on the pluperfect the future form is apt to bear a suspicious resemblance to the pluperfect form; when the pupils are being drilled in the endings of the fourth declension, and a word belonging to the third declension happens to have crept in, it is very difficult to get it correctly declined without any reminiscence of fourth-class endings, etc. I once read a pedagogical article by a German schoolmaster, I think it was, who had discovered that the reason why there were so many poor Latin exercises written was that the pupils often had to apply several rules of syntax in one and the same sentence; if the sentences were only so made that each one of them contained but one grammatical phenomenon, it would soon be seen how clever the pupils could be. Yes, how pleasant it would be if life too could be so arranged as to have the difficulties come one at a time.

As previously remarked, there is too little attention paid to what is idiomatical, and sentences constructed by non-natives are apt to be of the kind that never would occur to a native, even if it may be difficult enough to find positive “mistakes” in them. Many of the French and German sentences in our schoolbooks must surely have the same air of unreality for a native as not a few of those found in English primers published abroad have for an Englishman.

Very closely connected with the idiomatical elements of a language are its characteristics of style, and in this respect too our schoolbooks are clumsy enough, for words which belong merely to elevated or specially poetical style are bundled together with every-day words in the very beginning of the first primer without any caution to the pupil against using them. A foreigner who wants to learn English has first of all use for words like “grief, sorrow,” but he had better postpone acquaintance with “woe,” otherwise he is as likely as not to make himself ridiculous by saying “it was a great woe to me.” “Unwilling” is more necessary than “loth,” “wash” than “lave,” “lonely” or “forsaken” than “forlorn,” etc. But on one of the very first pages of Listov’s English Reader which is written for beginners, we find “I bid him go,” which is altogether old-fashioned, stiff and bookish (for: I told him to go, I asked him to go, or I ordered ...), and in the same book “foe” is preferred to the ordinary, indispensable “enemy.” And in several English primers the unnatural “commence” is used all the way through instead of the natural “begin”; likewise the rare “purchase” for the everyday “buy”--the only reason which I can think of is that the ordinary, indispensable words follow irregular declensions and inflexions.