Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1944-11-19

adapt to their own use the Armys
way OF teaching foreign languages?
In the Army specialized training
program familiar foreign languages
like French and Spanish, and UNI
familiar ones. like Bengal and
Arabic, were taught by team
an experienced language teacher to
explain grammar, formation
and other structural elements. bas-
ing his approach on the findings of
linguistic science and a foreign born
informant, or "driilmaSter. to
speak the language as a model and
to converse with the students. From
tWo-thirds to tour-ffths of the time
was devoted to the latter.
The Armys aim was to produce
quickly a thorough competence in
speaking and understanding Ian
guage; the aim was not reading or
spelling or translation, although
equal success resulted in these fields
at the same time. With the shrink
age of the globe by every airplane
flight, does our high school language
instruction need retooling? 1t took
the Army only six to nine months at
Is hours per week to teach even the
most difficult languages. Can this
total time be redistributed to meet
high school conditions? The Army
students were highly selected, the
upper Is per cent in ability. Are
the Army methods. effective with less
able students?
Washington is the only city which
has had high school language class
taught eXperimentally under the
sponsorship of the intensive Ian
guage program of the American
Council OF Learned Societies, from
which the Army methods sprang,
1t was tried out last year at Wood
row Wilson in French and German.
The methods used were those of the
Army classes, adapted to high school
level.
Drillmaster Set Up.
A composite description of how
such a class was conducted would
run something like this: The drill
master reads conversationally a few
phrases OF proper difficulty in practi-
cal, non-literary vocabulary pre-
pared by the teacher or taken from
the textbook. Possibly they are
questions and answers about meet
ing people, shopping. the weather.
or eating. He keeps repeating them
driving them home by gesture,
information and facial expression.
listening while each student in
dividually mimicks everything about
his speech. Then the class does it
in chorus, after which a printed
version is handed to each student
and all read as they speak. Each
questions the student next to him
and receives the answer; the answer
becomes the questioner of the third
and so on until every one has prac-
ticed over and over.
All this time the drillmaster is
listening for errors, correcting them
by giving the right form or by
analogy, but never by grammar. In
the Washington experiment this
went on for an hour day, with the
number of students in each class
under 10. The next day the regular
language teacher takes apart the
material practiced the day before
and thoroughly explains it in Eng
llsh, using the grammar freely as a
means. but only as a means and not
an end in itself. The actual use of
the language is the core of the in
struction.
Students Liked Course.
There is no magic to this. It is
not painless process. It takes men
tai sweat. A poor teacher can weak
en- it. A poor drillmaster can ruin it
But the Washington students who
studied French, for instance, felt
that they really learned to speak
French, that they could put it into
use as fast as they learned it. and
that the whole thing was worthwhile
and fun in. the bargain. That's
pretty good testimony from students
who had to get to school an hour
earlier in the morning because the
drill session could not be fitted into
the regular schedule; for, after all,
the drill session was their home
work, supervised, and was simply
practice, practice, and more prac-
tice.
Whether other cities will follow
Washington's lead and do some ex-
perimenting remains to be seen: or
what Washington itself will do with
the results of its brief experiment
is equally problematical. The exper-
iment did not 60 far enough or long
enough to prove much of anything,
Among language teachers every
where there is discussion of the
Army methods. We all know 1t is one
thing to build language class by