How to Teach a Foreign Language by Otto Jespersen
The book is a comprehensive guide for language teachers looking to improve their methods and techniques. Originally published in 1912, Jespersen's work has been translated into English to reach a wider audience and provide valuable insights into language instruction.
 |
| How to Teach a Foreign Language by Otto Jespersen |
Reading from "How to Teach a Foreign Language"
So much for the reading selections—now for the way in which they ought to be used in the classroom. I have a very vivid recollection of how most of the language lessons were conducted when I went to school, and I have a suspicion that this method of procedure has not yet quite died out, even if in many places it has more or less felt the influence of the law of change.
First the "old lesson" is gone through, and that must take as little time as possible, therefore the pupil is required to be able to translate it fluently without reading it aloud first.
Then we come to the " new lesson." A boy stands up and reads a little piece out of the reader—stuttering; the words are separated from each other by pauses and various unaesthetic hm- and er- sounds, and sometimes by the teacher's corrections, or " now hurry," " what a terrible pronunciation ! " " how do you pronounce g before e ? well, you know that just as well as I do, you blockhead," etc.
All that the boy thinks about, whenever he gets an opportunity, is, what in the world can be the meaning of that word I am coming to. Then he translates, interrupted by the teacher's corrections, or "look out," "where is the verb," "but what case is it," etc. Then there are, perhaps, some grammatical questhe is to give the principal parts of a verb or two, 'explain the use of a subjunctive, etc. ; the questions are not asked in the foreign language and are not to be answered in that , tongue.
The next boy is called upon to recite in the same way, and so on until the lesson has been gone through ; if there is time enough, perhaps we go through it once more, but that must be in a hurry, so we do not stop to read it first this time. The last five or six minutes are devoted to look- ing through the lesson for next time ; the teacher translates it while the pupils follow it in their books, and perhaps exert themselves to write down the meaning of some difficult word in the margin of the reader or in a note-book.
The most prominent feature of the teaching is haste; there is much to be done, especially as examination draws on. It seems to be an established custom that the examina- tion marks are determined by the quality of the translation, and it is in order to get practice in translating that the reading selections are gone through as many times as possible.
There is not much time for reading aloud; why, when one has only learned the main principles of pro- nunciation, one can generally infer the pronunciation of any word from the spelling, especially in German, but also in French. I suppose it is more or less in this confidence that the teachers let a piece be translated three or four times for every time it is read aloud in the original. How much of the foreign language does the pupil hear in the course of such a lesson ? The teacher says a word now and then— for instance, when a pupil translates in- correctly; but then the attention is not directed to the pronunciation.