*FLIP*
This pattern of sharing words but not grammatical properties is reflected in early French teaching. In the time before the Renaissance, French was taught in England with "elementary grammars, rhyming vocabularies, and treatises" (Simonini). Instead of bringing focus to sentence structure and placement of adjectives, these early textbooks mirrored traveler's bilingual dictionaries. Their purpose was to move the student (or, étudiant) quickly to the level of comfortable conversation. They were functional. They dealt with "the occupations of daily life." They told you how to ask for directions. In essence, they 'shared words' without explaining the underlying reasons for their arrangement. This wasn't the fault of incompetent teachers--many of them were "foreign refugees coming into the country"--but of lack of resources. They used these French pamphlets because no textbooks had yet been created. (Since these tutors were refugees, they probably had more on their minds than making grammar guides for their English pupils.)*FLOP*
In modern times, the approach to French teaching has done a 180 (or, demi-tour). Instead of diving into conversation from the beginning, the focus is more on grammar. Of course, beginning French classes still include a lot of vocabulary words and phrases, and on the other end, college-level courses do a bit more with conversation. But most of a student's first rendez-vous with French is concerned with what William E. Littlewood calls ""pre-communicative" knowledge and skills." Basically, instead of speaking a negative sentence in practice, they'll concentrate on knowing how to write and writing a negative sentence. Because of this, many students exit their French learning experience with some structural rules safely intact, but not much "success in terms of communicative ability." And what a shame it is! Without these skills, and without worksheets, textbooks, and a monsieur breathing down their neck, students lose their French langue (the same word for "language" and for "tongue"!) rather rapidly.
So what should we do to provide the best experience for French (and all foreign language) students? The answer seems obvious: combine the distant past with the recent past. Drill that writing and grammar, but share the time with the spoken word. This would help those students who don't have the monetary means to do a study abroad, or who end their French career after high school. Indeed, it would give every student the opportunity to use their French in a meaningful way.
Works Cited
Simonini, R. C. "The Genesis of Modern Foreign Language Teaching." The Modern
Language Journal (1951): 185-86. EBSCO. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
Littlewood, William T. "Form and Meaning in Language-Teaching Methodology." The
Modern Language Journal (1980): 441. EBSCO. Web. 3 Dec. 2014.
I find it interesting that the evolution has gone from conversational ability to a written, grammatical approach. In my mind it is the conversation that is important, it is when we are immersed in the language that we really learn it. To me it seems that they went from a bottom up approach to a top down one. In thinking about how we learn a language in the first place, it seems to me that we start with conversation, then once we make it to school we begin to understand the grammar behind the language we already speak. You mention that it should be a combination of the two, what is that combination? And what are the possible drawbacks of it?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Joseph completely! It seems really odd that teaching a second language would be taught in a manner different from how you learn the first one. However, I wonder if this is done because you can't truly immerse yourself in it like you could the first? When first learning English, I think most of us had the advantage of it being inescapable. It was spoken at school, at home, at church . . . even the street signs! So I wonder if this grammar-oriented technique is designed to compensate for the fact that the student isn't hearing the structure and grammar day in and day out?
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