How to teach a foreign language
l. The advantage of the English men-of-war was to be found in their
construction.
I have myself, in teaching advanced pupils, in a similar way, let them re-write a half a page or so of a historical work. It has always interested them, and the comparison of the results, which often presented the most varied expressions for the same thought, was always very instructive.
Parallel with the reading of a grammar as a supplement to, and a summary of all the grammatical knowledge which has been gained in the ways suggested, it might seem to be a good plan to go through a systematical collection of the lexical material--of course not an ordinary dictionary, since the alphabetical arrangement is about as unsystematical as possible, but a sensibly arranged vocabulary, something in the line of Roget’s _Thesaurus_. But it ought, at any rate, to be much smaller, and only include words and expressions which are actually necessary; even then, however, the unavoidable dryness of such a book, and the absence of connection between the single words, would make it unfit for use in teaching, even if it were not to be employed in imparting new material, but only to recall words which have already been learned. It would be better worth while for pupils, who have reached a somewhat advanced stage, to go through a little systematic collection of phrases, especially of such turns of expression as play a great part in ordinary daily intercourse, but which are seldom met with in literature. Franke’s _Phrases de tous les jours_ is the best specimen I know of--but I have it from the very best source that this little book was never intended as a text-book for beginners.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Obwohl ich mich seit geraumer zeit mit der theorie der sprachen beschäftige, hege ich noch heutzutage eine abneigung gegen die systematischen sprachlehren.--_Auf anlass des volapüks._ Berlin, 1888, p. 38.
[29] If the text-book itself does not recommend certain exercises for each piece.
[30] On the whole teachers who read connected pieces with their pupils in the thorough manner which I have suggested, will be surprised at the strong powers of association produced by successiveness; one word always recalls the whole context in which it has been learned. In one of the exercises given by Walter, pupil A mentions one of the words which the class has had and then the name of pupil B, who is thereupon expected to give the whole sentence in which the word occurs. Of course this can be done now and then by way of recreation; as a rule it is not necessary. This new method of always learning and remembering the words in their natural context may be compared to the newest methods in natural history teaching, according to which the pupils must see the animals and plants as they are at home in their natural surroundings, acted upon by them and in turn acting upon them.
[31] Each phenomenon which is taken up should, however, be treated to the end with as much thoroughness as is possible at _that_ standpoint. Grammar ought not to be taken up during the lesson merely as a matter of secondary importance, subordinated to other exercises, whose object is to help the pupils to understand the text, or to develop their practical skill in the language. If the teacher does not want to devote a whole hour to the grammar, he can at least draw a sharp line between these exercises in theory and the other exercises. One thing at a time, and that done well!
[32] Or when a period is reached, he may give all the substantives which he has found one at a time--the rest as above. The advantage of this is that the connexion is kept intact.
[33] Dr. Sweet tries to throw ridicule on my suggestion as to inventional grammar (_The Practical Study of Languages_, 1899, p. 115-116); he seems to forget the distinction between independent grammatical research and teaching in schools; and when he speaks about the boys having to sort “a hundredweight or so of slips,” I think his exaggeration needs no further refutation than the above statements, which are nothing but an amplification of what I wrote in 1886. Fortunately, on p. 117, Dr. Sweet recommends practically the same course as is outlined here, only carried out to a less extent.
[34] The French superlative is a purely syntactical, the comparative, a mixed phenomenon.
[35] I have treated accidence and syntax together in my own little English grammar (_Kortfattet engelsk grammatik for tale- og skriftsproget_, Copenhagen, 1st edition 1885, 4th ed. 1903).
[36] With reference to grammatical systematization, I may refer to my preliminary remarks in _Progress in Language_ (London, Sonnenschein 894), p. 138 ff.
[37] I am tempted here to enlarge upon Gouin’s method of teaching languages, but I have neither the space, nor exactly the desire, to do so since I have never seen it carried out in practice. I can refer to R. Kron’s (certainly too enthusiastic) description (_Die neueren sprachen_, III, also published separately), and to Brekke’s (for me absolutely convincing) criticism: “Indberetning om en stipendierejse til England for at studere Gouins metode for undervisning i sprog” (Quousque Tandem No. = Norske univ. og skoleannaler, 1894).
X
Here, last but not least, comes the treatment of the _pronunciation_, which for several reasons I have not taken up first, although the questions which are here to be discussed necessarily play a part already from the very first lesson in a foreign language. I have now for many years advocated the use of phonetics--yes, even of phonetical transcription, in the teaching of foreign languages, and have to a large extent put my theories into practice both in dealing with children of all ages and with grown persons. New things always frighten people; they think with terror that here the pupils are to be burdened with an entirely new and difficult science and with a new kind of writing; we had trouble enough with the old kind, they say, and now we are to be bothered with this new alphabet with its barbarous letters! Every educator must see how objectionable it is; now we have learned languages for so many years without such modern inventions, and the old way ought to be good enough for us still.
That is about the run of the objections raised. This the answer: Phonetics is a science, to be sure, and, like all other sciences, it is not without its difficult and mooted points. Yet the fact that large volumes can be written about botany does not frighten us from teaching our children _some_ botany. In mathematics there are many things which are beyond the comprehension of ordinary school-children, but yet they have to learn _some_ mathematics. Phonetics is not a new study that we want to add to the school curriculum; we only want to take as much of the science as will really be a positive help in learning something which has to be learned _anyway_. We must remember what science is, and what part it plays. Of course in our days every science collects more and more material and requires more and more specialization, so that parts of it become quite inaccessible for all persons except the specialists themselves; but the whole idea of science is that it shall be _unified knowledge_ (Spencer), a summing up of all the numerous details of reality under large, comprehensive points of view, the establishing of great, general laws, which apply to all single cases. That is also why science can be termed “ökonomie des denkens,” and that is why science can suggest means of facilitating thought and the acquirement of knowledge. We want to have some phonetics introduced into our schools, because theory has convinced us, and experiment has proved to us, that by means of this science we can, with decidedly greater certainty, and in an essentially easier way, give an absolutely better pronunciation in a much shorter space of time than would be possible without phonetics.
And as for that hobgoblin called phonetical transcription--well, it is no “new alphabet,” not even as new as the Gothic (German) letters are, and much less so than the Greek alphabet, with which the pupils are burdened (without their being of the slightest use[38]), to say nothing of the new names for the letters. In learning Greek the pupils have to operate with thirty odd new symbols; in our phonetical transcription for school use, we do not need more than from five to eight new symbols for each language; otherwise it consists of the ordinary letters, and every letter in it retains one of its familiar values, which is used consistently everywhere, the new symbols being mostly modifications of the known letters; ʃ reminds us of s, ʒ of z, ɛ and ə of e, ŋ of n. The whole thing is no worse than that.
If you refer to your experience in opposition to these new ways of teaching, you only invite the answer: Yes, your experience shows how a _poor_ pronunciation may be learned!
Why must we learn how to pronounce the foreign languages at all? Well, in the first place, it must be because there is the possibility that we may meet natives some time later. Otherwise we might, perhaps, be satisfied with _reading_ the foreign words according to English principles of pronunciation, French _pain_ like English “pain,” Werther as “worth her,” etc. I have known old parsons who have taught themselves English so as to be able to read novels, and who read English with Danish vowels, pronounced the _k_ in _knight_, etc. For a superficial “getting the gist” of shilling shockers and penny dreadfuls, this is sufficient perhaps, but I maintain that for a penetrating, delicate comprehension of real works of literature this manner of reading is not enough. Language cannot be separated from sound, and that is the sum of the matter; only he who hears the foreign language within himself in exactly or approximately the same way as a native hears it can really appreciate and enjoy not only poetry, where phonetic effects must needs always play an important part, but also all the higher forms of prose. Then there is the mnemonic benefit of a correct pronunciation. It helps the pupil to keep foreign languages distinct from each other; for instance, he will never be misled to think that _jeune_ means “pretty” on account of its resemblance to _schön_, and he will not be apt to confuse French _joli_, _journée_, _nouvelle_ with English _jolly_, _journey_, _novel_. In the second place, Madvig is right--and this applies to the living languages too--when he writes: “Finally there is scarcely any doubt that progress in the dead languages would become more rapid if, so far as possible, for instance, through reading and pronouncing distinctly and through memorizing new expressions, the language came not only through the eye, but more through the ear than it does in most places now.”
Our pronunciation according to the old school is extremely poor, indeed, much more frightful than most people imagine. It has among others these two disadvantages, that we do not understand the natives, and that we are not understood by them.
The very first lesson in a foreign language ought to be devoted to initiating the pupils into the world of sounds; if the class has already had such an elementary course in sounds, either in connection with the study of their mother tongue (something we ought to come to in the course of time at any rate), or in connection with another foreign language, it can of course be made briefer; it is scarcely safe to omit it entirely. The conversation may be formed as simply as the following one, where all scientific terms are avoided; not even the word “organ” is necessary. (Of course the answers will not always be as prompt and decided as here, and much will need to be repeated several times with different pupils.)
Teacher: John, can you say _papa_? Papa.--How do you go about it? Say it once more.--_Papa._ First, I open my mouth, and then I open it once again.--Yes, and in the meantime you must, of course, have closed it. Look at me, all of you, and see if I too go about it in that way--_Papa_. What did I do, William?--First you opened your mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.--What did I close it with?--With the lips.--Now, when I say _op_, _ap_, _ep_, what do I do?--Close the lips every time, and then open them again.--Then I do that every time I say _p_. Robert, can you find any other sounds where I also close my lips? No.--Try the word _mama_.--Yes, in _m_.--Now, say _baby_ and _bib_.--Also in _b_.--Good; then we have three sounds now where the lips are closed, _p_, _b_, _m_. Let us write them in a row on the blackboard. Is it necessary to close the lips in all sounds?--No.--What is your name?--John Gordon Hunter.--All of you look at him while he says it. John Gordon Hunter.--Did he close his lips at all? No.--Then all the sounds which are in the whole of his name must be said with other parts of the mouth than the lips. What else have we that we use to speak with?--The tongue.--Now, when we say _n_, for instance, _John_, _Anna_, what do we do?--Close with the tongue behind the teeth.--What part of the tongue?--The point.--Now try _t_ in _atta_.--There we also close with the point of the tongue behind the teeth. And _d_ in _adda_.--Likewise.--Then we use the point of the tongue for _t_, _d_, _n_. Let us write them down under _p_, _b_, _m_. Now _k_ in _akka_?--Look into my mouth. What do I do?--You close with the tongue farther back in the mouth.--Yes, we call that the back of the tongue. Howard, look into Edward’s mouth while he says _akka_. Now _g_ in _agga_ (the sound _g_, of course, not the name dʒi· of the letter). Then we can write them down in a third row. _p_, _b_, _m_ were what kind of sounds?--Lip-sounds.--And _t_, _d_, _n_, were what kind? Point-of-the-tongue sounds.--And the third row?--Back-of-the-tongue sounds.--Yes, we might also say simply point-sounds and back-sounds. [Here some one will ask]: Why are there not three there?--Yes, there are three sounds there too, but we have no letter for the third. Say _tinker_, and then _tin-kettle_. Is there no difference? Yes, in _tin-kettle_ we have a pure _n_, but not in _tinker_; here we have another sound before _k_.--Now try _finger_.--There we have the same before _g_.--And in _singer_?--The same without a real _g_.--Look into my mouth when I say (s)_inger_ [without s]. We can make a letter for this new sound by writing an _n_, with the last stroke lengthened below the line and slightly curled, as in _g_: ŋ.--James, come up here and write down the four words as they sound, making use of the new letter.--(He writes first _tin-kettle_).--No, do you hear more than one _t_? and can you hear any _e_ after _l_?--No.--What then? _tinketl_. (It is not worth while at this stage to require greater phonetical exactness than _tinketl_, _tiŋker_, _fiŋger_, _siŋer_, passing over the fact that the final _er_ in the words does not really sound like e + r). You see, if you were a Frenchman trying to learn English, you would not know that _n_ in _tin-kettle_ and in the other words were different sounds, and that the _e_ was silent, and you would pronounce the words incorrectly; but if the one were written _tinketl_ and the other _tiŋker_, it would be much easier for you to learn how to pronounce them. And then take _fringe_; it looks as if it were simply _finger_ with the _r_ in another place, and yet it is quite a different sound, so we see that the two letters _ng_ may stand for three entirely different sounds. We also write _knight_, and say “nait”; we write _busy_ and say “bizi.” Can you find any other words which we spell differently from the way in which we pronounce them? [Various examples are found and analyzed.] When we write the words exactly as they sound, we call it _phonetical transcription_. Now, in the beginning, we shall write all French words phonetically, so that you can more easily learn how to pronounce them. But you saw in the case of _tinker_ that we occasionally need a new symbol in this transcription, which we do not use otherwise. You will learn a few more of them in the course of time.... Then we have seen that in order to say different sounds, we can use the lips and the point of the tongue and the back of the tongue. Is there nothing else that we need to speak with?--The nose? Yes, that is all right in a way, but--can you move your nose? Look at my nose; do I move it when I speak?--No.--But is it not possible to use it without moving it? Now, see if I use my nose when I say a···· [very long drawn out].[39] Now, I suddenly hold my nose with two fingers, and press the nostrils together. Does that make the sound different?--No.--But now I say m in the same way m···· and pinch the nostrils together in the same way. Did anything happen?--Yes, there was no sound.--Now you can try it yourselves. First you, George; say a···, and then the boy next to you can suddenly pinch your nose together with two fingers. And then say m···, and let Fred pinch your nose again. Can you say m while your nostrils are closed?--No, at any rate the sound soon disappears. All of you try it; say a· just as long as I do, and pinch the nose together several times with your fingers whenever you see me do it; and now likewise with m. That is because the air has to escape through the nose in order that the sound m may be made. It is the soft palate that you use in order to open the inner entrance to the nose, so that the air can escape through the nostrils. You can feel the palate behind the teeth, there it is hard; but if you pass your fingers farther back, you will soon feel that it becomes soft and flexible. See how it can go up and down in my mouth. Look in the mirror[40], and see how your own palate is. First try breathing in and out silently, and then say _a_; then you will see how your soft palate suddenly jumps up; that is because it has to close the entrance to the nose, so that no air can get out that way. But when you say m it remains hanging down, so that the air can come out through the nose, the passage through the mouth being closed by the lips. [At this point, you might make a rough sketch on the blackboard, showing a cross-section through the mouth, with the soft palate in the two positions.] In producing n and ŋ, you have the same position of the soft palate as in the case of m. [Try to pinch the nose together.]
Now we have seen how we use the nose and the mouth when we speak, but are they the only things that are necessary in speaking? [If the pupils cannot think of “voice” of their own accord, the teacher may put them on the track by saying: when someone speaks (or sings) very well, we say that he has a good...]--Voice.--Where is the voice?--In the vocal chords.--And where are they?--In Adam’s apple.--[Here it might be a good thing not to despise the anecdote about the apple which stuck in Adam’s throat.] Now we also call that the larynx. In there, there are two vocal chords stretched parallel to each other, and when they vibrate a tone is produced, and that is what we call voice. It is just as when a string of a violin is brought into vibration and gives forth a tone; or a bell or a wine-glass, which is made to quiver violently. Now do we always use the voice when we speak? You do not know; well, then we can experiment. [Whisper a sentence.] Did I use my voice then?--No.--Now try first to say an a··· quite loudly and forcibly (or sing it), and take firm hold of Adam’s apple with your thumb and forefinger; then you will feel it quiver. Have you never tried to touch a piano with your finger tips while someone was playing on it? Then you will have felt the same kind of delicate, rapid, quivering movements as you feel on touching the larynx while the voice is in activity. In both cases you can _feel_ those movements with your fingers which you _hear_ with your ear as a tone. But now whisper an a··· and feel your larynx; do you feel anything?--No, there are no vibrations.--And try to say s··· [by no means the name of the letter, _es_, but the hissing sound itself.] Is there voice in that? Do you feel any vibration?--No.--Then s is a _voiceless_ sound, but a is a _voiced_ sound. Now, try m··· [not _em_!] Is it voiced? and n···? Notice that you can sing the voiced sounds [test several of them], but not the voiceless sounds.[41] That f··· is voiceless, and that v··· (with strong buzzing!) is voiced, is easily discovered. In the same way, we have for every voiceless sound a corresponding voiced sound. Say s···, and now produce the corresponding voiced sound with the buzzing element. They are the sounds we have in _so_ and _zoo_, _seal_ and _zebra_. We have also a third corresponding pair ʃ and ʒ; ʃ is the sound in _shilling_, _shall_, etc.; ʒ is the sound in _measure_, _pleasure_, etc. Then we may write down:
f s ʃ voiceless v z ʒ voiced.
Now pronounce each sound in chorus as I point to the letter, and continue drawing it out until I take the chalk away from the letter.[42] Thereupon the pupils may be tested singly, the teacher skipping from one sound to the other. Exercises may also be given with the consonants between two vowels: afffa, avvva, asssa, azzza; afa, ava, asa, aza.
Now the pupils have already had a little course in elementary phonetics; it interests them and contains nothing that they cannot understand, and nothing that is not useful for them. Nor does it ever really frighten the children; but the very thought of it has actually frightened a number of older teachers, who apparently live in holy terror of trespassing beyond the lines laid out for them in their childhood, and who unfailingly think that everything new must be just as useless, dry and pedantical as most of what they learned in their own schooldays, so they are not inclined to have the bother of making themselves familiar with anything new.[43] In the Danish original of this book, I reprinted as a curiosity a description of the activity of the organs of speech in the production of speech-sounds, which a boy 14 years old, who had never been told anything about the formation of sounds, had written all by himself, without the least instruction or help of any kind (which can easily be seen, among other things, from the fact that he sticks to and analyzes the names of the letters); it shows that this dreaded phonetical science is not so terribly far beyond the horizon of ordinary children after all.
The children always “follow” the teacher so well in these phonetical exercises that it is rather necessary to put a damper on their eagerness to try to produce the sounds than to spur them on. Or, in other words, the teacher has but to organize their natural impulse to imitate the sounds by saying to them, when they begin to whistle and hum: “You may say the sounds yourselves directly, just wait a moment,” and thereupon, after the explanation has been given, by allowing them ample opportunity to pronounce the sounds, both in chorus and singly. Then, both during recess and at home, they will revel to their hearts’ content in the new sounds, and the whole new and amusing world that has been opened to them.
After the introductory course which I have just sketched,[44] I immediately begin with texts in the foreign language. If the teacher will at this point read one or two pages aloud rapidly (or give a little talk) in as characteristically a French or German manner as possible, this is a very good way to give the pupils a preliminary notion of the foreignness of the new language. This impression may be further emphasized by means of a little trick which I may recommend. The teacher practises an English sentence pronounced as a Frenchman (or German respectively) would pronounce it, with French vowels, French accent, etc. He may refer to this sentence now and then in speaking of the single sounds, and it will serve to warn the students against the kind of mistakes that they themselves are to avoid. Then I take up the new sounds in the more accidental order in which they occur in the selection for reading; I repeat every word, together with its meaning, write it down on the blackboard in phonetical transcription, and explain every symbol as it occurs, at the same time articulating the corresponding sound _isolated_ (this is of great importance! also the consonants alone without any vowel, either before or after), and drawing it out very long.[45]
In not a few cases, the pupils will be able to imitate the sound with sufficient exactness, when it has been produced isolated; at all events, they do it far better than when they only hear it among other sounds. But in many other cases their imitation is not successful, or, at least, it is not sure enough to be quite satisfactory; then it is necessary to resort to phonetics for help, on the basis of the introductory course.
Of course, it is not easy for a Dane to give detailed directions for phonetical instruction, as it is to be conducted when an English teacher is teaching English children French or German. Therefore, the following section is necessarily shorter than the corresponding section in the Danish original, where I could treat the subject exhaustively on the basis of my personal experience, as to how good results are to be obtained. But some few remarks may perhaps serve to point out the right way, and any teacher who has thoroughly mastered the first principles of phonetics theoretically, and especially practically, will himself be able to supplement my suggestions.
In the very first French or German sentence in the reader will probably be found one of the sounds [y] (Fr. _sur_, Ger. _über_), or [ø] (Fr. _veut_, Ger. _höhe_). It is best for these two sounds to be practised together, and, in the beginning, in their long form. As experience shows, it is not sufficient for the teacher merely to say these sounds; they generally cause English people much trouble, and all imitations based on the diphthong in Eng. _few_, etc., ought to be strictly discountenanced from the very first lesson. That it is not impossible to learn the correct sounds was brought home to me in a striking manner a few years ago. These sounds are also found in Danish; an English lady who had been in Denmark for some years had not been able, in spite of unceasing efforts, to learn them by imitation. Then I made a bet that I could teach her them in less than ten minutes, and I won the bet through five minutes’ theoretical explanation of rounded and unrounded vowels, and two minutes’ practical exercises. The directions were about as follows: say [u·] (or [uw]) in _too_ very loudly, and hold it as long as you can without taking breath. Once more: observe in the hand-mirror the position of the lips. Then say _tea_ [ti·, tij] in the same way; draw the vowel out until you can hold it no longer; continue all the time to observe the position of the lips in the mirror. Now [u···] again; then [i···]. The lips are rounded for some vowels, slit-shaped for others. Try to pout them rather more than you do usually. Pronounce [u···] a couple of times with the lips as rounded and close to each other as possible, and concentrate your attention on the lips. Then say [i···] a couple of times, paying attention to the position of the tongue; you will feel that the sides of the tongue touch the roof of the mouth or the teeth. Now look in the mirror; say [i···] again, and now suddenly, taking care to keep the tongue in the same position, let your lips take the rounded, pouted position they had before. It may be that the pupil is still unable to produce any [y], because, despite the teacher’s warning, he involuntarily shifts his tongue-position back again to the familiar [u] position. In that case, however, the teacher must not be discouraged, but pass on to the second part of the experiment, which is surer, and which might therefore have been taken first: place your lips in this pouted [u] position, without producing any sound, look in the mirror, and be very careful that the position of the lips remains unchanged, and then try to say [i···]. If the tongue is placed in the correct [i···]-position, the result cannot be anything but an [y]. This sound is retained and repeated until the pupil is perfectly sure of both the articulation and acoustic effect. Then the sound [ø] may be taken up. It may be produced with [y] as a starting-point, the lower jaw being lowered so that both the underlip and the tongue follow it, while the teacher takes care to stop the downward movement in the right place. The result may be controlled by starting with [e] and rounding the lips, that is, by going through a process corresponding to the transition from [i···] to [y···].
One of the most unbecoming mistakes which Englishmen make in their pronunciation of foreign languages is their diphthongizing of long vowels, since long vowels,[46] in ordinary English, are pronounced with an upward glide, so that the jaw and the tongue are raised higher in the last part of the vowels in _see_, _two_, _hay_, _know_, for instance, than in the first part. In vulgar London pronunciation, this English peculiarity is carried further, the beginning of the sound being lowered, at all events in the last two sounds mentioned, so that _lace_ sounds like _lice_, and _pay_ like _pie_. But even if the best pronunciation does not go to this extreme, yet the glide is there, and this glide is for the native Frenchman or German one of the most striking faults in the Englishman’s pronunciation of the respective languages, so the Englishman had best be on his guard in this particular. If the teacher, after a little theoretical explanation, says the English [ei] and the German [e] alternately a number of times, even the dullest pupils cannot help but get their ears trained to detect this difference, but long and patient training is certainly necessary, both with the class in chorus and with the pupils singly, before this deeply rooted tendency to diphthongize can be checked.
Another difficulty is met with in the short (narrow) vowels. French _été_ must be pronounced with two short closed e’s; Englishmen have a tendency to pronounce two long or half-long glide-sounds, which begin with a greater distance between the jaws than they ought to, and close with a smaller distance between the jaws than the genuine French sounds have. Anyone who has become accustomed to the undiphthongized long [e], however, can use this as a starting-point for learning the correct short sound, the best way being the frequent repetition of _tétété···_ Likewise the short sounds in _fini_, _dodo_, _froufrou_, etc.
Nor do the French nasal vowels occur in English; in phonetical transcription, they are indicated by means of ~ over the vowel-symbol, for instance [ɔ̃] in _son_, etc. Here the teacher must immediately make every effort to check the tendency to say [ɔŋ] as in Eng. _long_, and my experience with Danish pupils has been that it is not sufficient for this purpose merely to let the pupils repeat the sound after me. It is necessary to make it perfectly clear to them wherein the difference consists. First the teacher draws out his [ɔ̃] and establishes (by means of questions) that it is only one sound, the same from first to last. Then one of the pupils is to try to draw out the sound [ɔŋ], and it thus becomes clear that it is only the last of the two sounds that is prolonged. On the basis of what has been previously learned (p. 149), the teacher shows the difference of effect caused in closing the nostrils with the fingers, and explains that it is due to the fact that in [ɔŋ] we have first a sound where the air escapes only through the mouth, then another sound where the air only passes out through the nose; but in [ɔ̃], both passages are open at the same time. If a pencil is laid in the mouth so that it rests on the tongue (tolerably far back), it will remain lying quietly when [ɔ̃] is pronounced, but not in the case of [ɔŋ]. In connection with [ɔ̃], the pupils may practise the [ɑ̃] sound in _tant_, [ɛ̃] or, more correctly, [æ̃], the sound in _teint_ and the rounded sound in [œ̃], _un_. The sound [ɥ] in _tuer_ [tɥe], _lui_ [lɥi] is easily learned with sufficient exactness as a [y] which is quickly passed over so that the main stress is allowed to fall on the following sound, the relation between [w] and [u] being brought in by way of comparison.
With respect to the consonants, care must be taken to pronounce [t, d, n] in such a way that the point of the tongue touches the upper teeth; it must, at all events, not be held as far back as in English; the same applies to [l], where this difference is still more important; the hollow sound of the English _l_ is also to be avoided by keeping the whole tongue more flat and not hollowing it out like a spoon. The voiceless sounds [r̥] and [l̥] in [fənɛ·tr̥] _fenêtre_ and [tabl̥] _table_ can easily be deduced from what has been learned about the voice (p. 150-151); it is necessary to guard against making [r̥] into the vowel found at the end of English words like _mister_, etc. The pupils will easily understand that with the correct unvoiced pronunciation, these sounds are apt to disappear in rapid speech. Finally we take up the sound ɲ in [kãpaɲ] _campagne_; it is explained as lying between [nj] and [ŋ]; it is best pronounced with the point of the tongue resting in the lower part of the mouth behind the lower teeth, but in using the word “best” I intend to hint that it is not strictly necessary to require this method of formation; there are also Frenchmen who (at all events before a vowel) pronounce it like English [nj] in _onion_.
With respect to [p, t, k], it is well known that in French they have not the aspiration that they have in English; since the difference is not so great, however, the English sounds may perhaps be used unchanged in the beginning. Then if one of the pupils notices the difference, which he perhaps will express by saying that the teacher pronounces [b] when there stands [p] in the book, or possibly by merely trying to imitate the teacher’s sound by means of his own English [b], his attention may be called to the little breath which there always is between the opening of the English [p] and the vowel itself; this is not found in French, where the vowel after [p, t, k] comes exactly at the same moment as the opening takes place (either by the lips or the tongue), and therefore they sound to us like [b, d, g] (_capitaine_ as if it were gabidɛn). Try a [p] without a vowel after it, first with a strong breath (somewhat like when you pooh-pooh something, but without any voice), then without any breath like a man puffing at his pipe (about the same sound as when soap bubbles burst); and then try to place a vowel after it[47]; it must come immediately, just as quickly as the movements of a soldier after the drill-master’s command. Then [t] and [k] may be taken up in the same manner.
The French division into syllables (_il a_ =i | la, _chaque écolier_ = ʃa | ke | kɔ | lje, | etc.) is best learned by pure imitation, likewise the distribution of stress (accent); by reciting or reading connectedly to the pupils and by always requiring them to say _the whole sentence together without any pause_, the teacher can counteract their tendency to pronounce each word separately in that monotone which is intolerable. Thus _il a été ici_ is said all together in one with the vowels gliding over into each other, _a + é_ sounding somewhat similar to [ai] in _lie_, and _é + i_ to [ei] in _lay_.
German sounds are somewhat easier for Englishmen than French sounds, but yet there are several points to be noticed. In the case of some sounds, any skilled teacher will be able to follow the suggestions given for French, mutatis mutandis; in the case of others, like the two _ch-_ sounds, he must in an analogous manner adapt his theoretical knowledge in phonetics to the practical needs of teaching.
Some people have found it inconsistent that I have no partiality for didactic theorizing in questions of grammar, but myself employ theoretical explanations in questions of phonetics. The explanation is not far to seek. Theoretical grammar, as it is generally studied, is more abstract, it is difficult, it is very comprehensive, and still it does not lead to the desired goal, which is grammatical correctness; the theory of sound which we want introduced is more concrete and it is easy, it is more limited, and it actually leads to the desired goal, which is a good pronunciation. This last assertion is proved by the experiences of numerous teachers in various lands.
Of late years, it has become more and more usual in schools to use a sound-chart in connection with the instruction in languages. On this chart, all the sounds of the language which is being studied are arranged in systematic order, and are indicated with such large letters that they can be seen by the whole class; various finesses are often used, as for instance to give the voiced and voiceless sounds different colours.[48] I myself have not used this contrivance, but I have heard from several foreign teachers, and now from a couple of Danish teachers too, that they are very well satisfied with it. The teacher points to a letter and gets either the whole class or one of the pupils to say the corresponding sound; or the teacher may let A mention some sound or other, and B, who is standing at the blackboard, shows that he has caught it by repeating it and at the same time pointing at the symbol; or if C makes a mistake in the pronunciation of a word which he is reading (or saying) D is to point, first to the symbol for the wrong sound, and then to the right one, etc. In this way, much writing on the blackboard, which would otherwise be necessary, is saved; and besides, it may be of great benefit for the pupils always to have all the sounds in a connected system before their eyes (even if the teacher of course never intends to examine them in the whole phonetical system of the language as such).
The _elements of phonetical transcription_ are learned, as we have seen, together with the corresponding sounds themselves. Now what is the use of the phonetical transcription itself? It seems to be commonly supposed that its votaries claim by its help to have “given the pupils a better comprehension of the single sounds and to have taught them more easily to produce them;” its opponents attack this assertion and strike it down with true Quixotic zeal without stopping to think that it has never been set up by the advocates of phonetical transcription at all. These advocates themselves know as well as anyone what is but natural, namely, that a boy does not of his own accord pronounce a French nasal correctly merely because he has been shown the symbol [ɔ̃]. The pronunciation of the single sounds must be learned in other ways, as has been shown above, and for that purpose alone, all writing could very well be entirely dispensed with without resulting in any essential change in the character of the instruction. When, however, we use phonetical transcription already at the first stage, it is partly on account of the excellent help which it will afford later for quite a different purpose, which I shall come to immediately, partly because it really is of some _help_ in the teaching of the sound-formation proper. It saves the teacher a great deal of repetition, since instead of always saying the sound himself, he can point to the symbol and get one of the clever pupils to say it for the others; it makes the pupils see more clearly how many different sounds there are for them to pay attention to (while in exclusively oral instruction, perhaps one pupil will be inclined to hear [ɑ̃] and [ɛ̃] as one sound, another pupil, [ɑ̃] and [ɔ̃] as one sound); finally, the homogeneousness of the symbols will help the pupils more easily to comprehend the nature of the sounds themselves; when they have learned to pronounce [ɔ̃], they will get the run of all the other nasal vowels more quickly when they see the same flourish over them all; the double parallelism in the four symbols
s ʃ z ʒ
will aid them in learning the corresponding relations between the sounds themselves.
However, in order to understand the greatest and the proper value of phonetical transcription, it is necessary to have well in mind the fact that there are two essentially different kinds of mistakes in pronunciation--
A. Mistakes in the formation of the sounds, and
B. Mistakes in the employment of the sounds.
We have mistakes belonging to Class A, for instance, when Englishmen use the _ng_ combination in place of the French nasals, or when they diphthongize the French long, pure vowels, when they pronounce _ʃ_ or _k_ instead of German _ch_, or [z] or [s] for German _z_ [ts], [ə·], as in _cur_, instead of [œ·r] in French _cœur_, when they pronounce French _dû_ like the English _due_, etc.
Mistakes belonging to Class B arise if you pronounce French _gent_ like _gant_, _peut_ like _put_, or vice versâ _eut_ like [ø], German _frass_ or _fuss_ with a short, or _nass_ or _nuss_ with a long vowel, _bischen_ with [ʃ], etc.
Both kinds of mistakes may occur in the same word, as when _München_ is pronounced [minkən] or [mjuŋkən] instead of [mynçen].
The mistakes belonging to class A are not due to the orthography; those mistakes we can also make in languages whose spelling corresponds to the pronunciation; they are largely due to our native habits of articulation, and they are to be counteracted by means of the phonetical training which has been described above. If the foreign sounds have once been well learned in the introductory course, this kind of mistakes can only occur through carelessness or through the lack of continued practice.
Mistakes in the employment of the sounds (class B) however, are as a rule due to disagreement between the pronunciation and the orthography of each language; they are not caused by our native habits of articulation, and even those that have learned all the foreign sounds perfectly (indeed even the natives themselves) are liable to make them in every new word which they see written, but have never heard.
_It is this last kind of mistake that phonetical transcription helps us to avoid_, it protects us against the mistakes which the different national orthographies actually seduce us to make. Phonetical transcription is necessary in the teaching of all languages, but of course, it may deviate from the ordinary orthography in greater or less degree in the different languages. In Finnish and Spanish, the orthography is so nearly phonetical that only relatively few changes are necessary in order to indicate the pronunciation; in Italian, almost all that is needed is to indicate if _e_ and _o_ are open or closed, if _s_ and _z_ are voiced [z, dz] or voiceless [s, ts], and which single consonants are to be pronounced double (long). In German, the orthography is already much more capricious, but in languages like French, Danish, and English, the number of conflicting rules with all their exceptions is so great that the phonetical transcription necessarily has quite a different appearance from the traditional spelling.
Max Müller once said that the English orthography is a national misfortune, and Viëtor has improved upon this observation by declaring that it is an international misfortune, since it is not only Englishmen but also all educated persons in other lands who have to be bothered with it. Now, by means of phonetical transcription the words of the foreign language are presented to us in a kind of normal or ideal orthography, where every letter always signifies the same sound, and every sound is always indicated in the same manner.
Some persons urge the objection against the use of phonetical transcription that it can never be made so perfect that it can show all the shades of intonation, etc., in the spoken language, so that it cannot take the place of a teacher’s oral instruction. But we have never maintained that it could; aside from private study without a teacher, which must needs always be more or less imperfect, we have always emphasized the exceedingly great importance of the teacher pronouncing the words for the pupils, and we have not recommended phonetical transcription as something to replace, but as something to support, the teacher’s oral instruction in pronunciation. Even if it misses some of the very finest shades, it may still be of benefit, just as a table of logarithms can be very useful even if the numbers are not carried out farther than to the fourth decimal place.
Other opponents again have exactly the reverse objection to make, that our system of sound-symbols is too delicately detailed for school use. Even if many people only say this because they confuse the phonetical transcription which is used in scientific works with the far simpler transcription which we want to introduce for school use, and which is by no means beyond the powers of comprehension of an ordinary pupil, still we have an answer right at hand. We are aiming at (and attaining) greater exactness than our predecessors cared for, but this is very necessary too, for the old school pronunciation was too unintelligible to the native. Besides, our system is constructed on such simple principles, that we attain to a higher degree of exactness with less trouble than you do with far more difficult means. When mathematicians began to designate the value of π in decimal form (3·1416) instead of the fractional form 22/7, they not only attained greater exactness but also greater ease in using the quantity in long calculations, since the decimal is easier to handle than the fraction. Our phonetical transcription may pride itself on exactly corresponding advantages.
It has already been tried in many old readers (to say nothing of the dictionaries) to counteract the injurious influence of the orthography on the pronunciation by means of different systems of designating the pronunciation, such as numbers over the vowels, strokes denoting length and curves denoting shortness, italicizing of the _s_’s which ought to be voiced, or in other places italicizing of the silent letters, dots and flourishes above and under the letters. All such systems, just because they try to deviate as little as possible from the orthography, necessarily adopt a number of its caprices and thus become too complicated to be of any real benefit to the pupils. But the phoneticians, by starting out from rational principles, have succeeded in creating systems of phonetical transcription which really meet all reasonable demands in the way of exactness and simplicity.[49] That they really are simple and easy to learn has been proved to me more than once in striking ways; in several schools where my books are used but where the teacher has been afraid of the phonetical transcription, the children have resorted to it of their own accord, when they came to a word that they did not know how to pronounce; several parents have also told me that they have familiarized themselves with the phonetical transcription in the books which their children used and they did not find it at all difficult.
Perhaps it is worth while here to consider the four ways in which it is possible to communicate the material of a foreign language to pupils. Either (1) the teacher may not let them use any writing at all, but give them everything orally; or (2) he may give them the orthography alone; or (3) he may give them orthography and phonetical transcription together; or finally (4) he may give them phonetical transcription alone.
(1) The first way obviously has the advantage that there is no sound-symbol whatever to confuse the clear apprehension of the pupils; it resembles the manner in which a child learns its mother tongue. It will also be the more in place the more the instruction can be brought to resemble the way in which a child first acquires language, that is, where there is only one pupil, or at least very few; where the pupil (pupils) is (are) not very old, and especially not yet quite familiar with the secrets of writing; where the teacher is a native; and above all, where there is ample time. For we must not shut our eyes to the fact that this exclusively oral instruction in languages takes exceedingly much time; much repetition is necessary, and the teacher has to have great patience. In schools it is only possible to have purely oral instruction as a short preliminary course of a couple of months at the most, before passing over to the use of writing in some form or other. Walter, who has tried both, is emphatically of the opinion that in class instruction phonetical transcription is much to be preferred to purely oral instruction, because the latter wastes an enormous amount of time, and the teacher cannot feel nearly so sure that the whole class is able to follow.
(2) The pupils are immediately allowed to see the traditional orthography, and the teacher gives them the pronunciation orally. The eternal repetition and the painful small corrections which this method craves make the lessons bothersome for both the teacher and the pupils, who almost always become slovenly out of sheer discouragement over the prodigious task before them. Of course there are some rules for the relations between orthography and pronunciation, but unfortunately there are so few without exceptions that certainty cannot be attained by their means.
(3) The pupils are taught the traditional spelling from the very beginning, but at the same time they are given an antidote in the shape of phonetical transcription, either in the form that every new word is phonetically transcribed in the glossary, or that (in addition) the reading selections themselves are transcribed. To be sure the advantages of phonetical transcription are made use of by this method; several teachers have expressed their satisfaction at the results thus obtained, and I have no doubt that they are better than when phonetical transcription is dispensed with. However, I am convinced that by this method it is difficult sometimes to prevent the less intelligent pupils from confusing the two systems of spelling, so that they neither learn the pronunciation nor the orthography very well.
(4) Therefore I have always (like the majority of the advocates of phonetical transcription) preferred to let beginners be employed only with phonetical transcription for some time, so that they may become quite familiar not only with the system of sound-symbols, but also with a good deal of the material of the language before they pass on to seeing the words in their orthographical shape too. The principle to be followed here is that of not allowing the difficulties to pile up, but overcoming them one by one. When the pupils know the symbols after the first few lessons, it causes them no difficulty whatever to read the texts; these themselves (together with the meaning of the words, the grammatical forms, etc.) are therefore far more easy to learn than if the caprices of the orthography had to be mastered _at the same time_.
For this method, connected texts in phonetical transcription are of course necessary, but such texts are also to be recommended to those who follow method No. 3, since there are many points of pronunciation which cannot come up at all in the transcriptions of the single words in the glossary, such points as appear only in combinations of words, in connected discourse. There is, for instance, French [ə] in _le_, _de_, _demande_, _devenir_, _quatre_, etc., etc., which is sometimes pronounced and sometimes omitted, according to the number of consonants coming immediately before or after the [ə]: _à devenir_ [advəni·r], _pour devenir_ [purdəvni·r], etc.; there is the varying treatment of the English _r_; there are double forms due to the influence of sentence-stress, such as [kæn] and [kən] (= _can_), and many other phenomena of that kind, which it is really necessary to pay attention to, since no sentence can be pronounced naturally without consideration for these points, and since we cannot understand the natives without being familiar with them[50]--for we cannot require the French to make their language stiff and do violence to all their natural habits of speech to suit us. Only by using connected texts in phonetical transcription can the teacher require the pupils from the very beginning to read the foreign language connectedly, intelligently, and with some expression.
In conversations on the subject, I have so often had to answer the question as to whether I also want the pupils to learn to _write_ phonetical transcription, that I must devote a few lines to that question here too. Of course they must write phonetical transcription, but _learn_ it--well, that is scarcely necessary, for it will not entail the least bit of extra work or trouble for them. They learn the symbols, and when they know them they can write any word whatever in phonetical transcription, if they only know how to pronounce it; this is a thing which follows of its own accord from the very nature of phonetical transcription. Dictation, in which the pupils are to write in phonetical transcription what the teacher says to them, presupposes only a correct apprehension of the sounds, and is a very good test as to whether they have heard accurately (cf. p. 95).
How long is a teacher to continue to use exclusively phonetical transcription? That is one of the most difficult questions, and I cannot venture to give a decided answer. The answer will surely always depend partly upon the age and maturity of the pupils and upon how much time can be spent upon the language on the whole. I myself have even dared to go so far that in teaching a class in English, when I only had two hours a week for two years before the final examination, I spent the whole of the first year on phonetical transcription (Sweet’s _Elementarbuch_), and I did not regret it. In French in the lower classes, I once at least used phonetical transcription more than a year, and the only difficulty arose when some boys came in in the course of the year from other schools. At other times, again, I have made the course in phonetical transcription shorter, and on the whole I have experimented in various ways without coming to any certain result--except this: _continue with phonetical transcription as long as possible_. For there is relatively so much more of the language itself learned in this way, that I have not the slightest doubt that the pupil who, with the same number of lessons a week, and at the same age, has read phonetical transcription for two years and orthography for half a year knows more of the language (not only of the pronunciation!) than the pupil who has used phonetical transcription for half a year and thereupon orthography for two and a half years (in all half a year more than the first boy). And then the phonetical transcription itself is such a fine means of training the pupils to minute exactness, because they really have to be constantly on the lookout in order to read neither more nor less than each symbol indicates; therefore I attach great _educational_ significance to phonetical transcription.
But of course we have to begin to learn the orthography some time; and I suppose it is this transition more than anything else that has frightened people away from using phonetical transcription, because they imagine that it must be extremely difficult. But now all those who have dared to try phonetical transcription unanimously declare that they were surprised at the ease with which the transition took place; there was no trouble worth mentioning either for the teacher or the pupils; and they were surprised at the accuracy in orthography displayed by pupils who had been taught in this way. The psychological reason for this is probably to be found in the sharper perception which these pupils necessarily get of the difference between sound and writing, together with the fact that they are not compelled like the others to learn many things at a time (spelling, pronunciation, meaning, inflection), but the orthography is separated out as something which is to be learned by itself about words with whose pronunciation and meaning they have already become quite familiar.
The best way of making the transition seems to be in going over some of the selections which have already been read and learned. First, the teacher says a few words about orthography in general, basing his remarks on English spelling; he may call attention to the silent letters in _night_, _know_, the ambiguity of the vowels in _home_, _honest_, etc. Then a French piece the pupils know already is shown to them in orthographical dress; it is gone through word by word in such a way that the pupils themselves may be guided to find out the most important relations between the letters and their sound-values. Here they for the first time have something to do with the accents and the cedilla, whose name they learn.[51]
In the following lessons the comparison between spelling and sound is conducted in the same manner as indicated above for grammatical observations; sometimes starting from a certain sound, the students may point out all the words in which it occurs on a page or so; sometimes starting from the orthography, they may note and classify all the phonetical values of a certain letter. A few lessons will be sufficient for these preliminaries.
Ought the teacher to require the pupils to learn the orthography from the very beginning, that is, ought he to examine them in spelling or let them write dictation? No--that is not generally the practice according to the non-phonetical method either. First let them become accustomed to seeing the spelling, and in the exercises just suggested let them copy out of the book; later on they may be required to learn how to spell the words in the first line of every lesson, and in the course of a few months the pupils will be just as much at home in their French and German orthography as any pedant could require--and much more at home than they generally are now after a long time.[52]
Phonetical transcription ought by no means to be given up on beginning with the orthography: it is too good an aid to be dispensed with at this point. Not only ought whole pieces to be read, occasionally at least, in phonetical transcription, but it ought to be used in connection with all new words (thus especially in the glossary) in order to prevent all guesswork. Thereby is also obtained another important result at a later stage, namely, the teacher may be _just as strict in requiring the pronunciation to be learned as the meaning_, whereas without phonetical transcription he cannot expect the pronunciation to be prepared at home. By steadily keeping up their practice in transposing phonetical transcription into practical pronunciation the pupils have something of value for their whole life, for, when they no longer have a teacher to ask about the pronunciation of a new word, they can obtain information about it themselves. That which was only a few years ago a possibility reserved for the distant future, namely, that all French and English dictionaries should give the pronunciation according to rational principles, is now, as we know, well under way to become a reality at any time.[53]
The use of phonetics and phonetical transcription in the teaching of modern languages must be considered as one of the most important advances in modern pedagogy, because it ensures both considerable facilitation and an exceedingly large gain in exactness. But these means must be employed immediately from the very beginning; just as easy as it is to get a good pronunciation in this way, just as difficult is it to root out the bad habits which may become inveterate during a very short period of instruction according to a wrong or antiquated method. Timotheus, an old well-known music-teacher, used to demand double payment of all those pupils who had taken instruction with other teachers before they came to him; the reason that he gave was that he had much more trouble in teaching these pupils than those who had not already acquired bad habits for him to break them of. Go ye and do likewise, ye teachers of languages!
I shall add a few words on the use of the phonograph. The apparatus has been very much perfected of late years and renders beautifully most vowels and all the general features of stress, intonation, etc. But the rendering of most consonants is still far from perfect; you cannot always tell whether you hear a _p_ or an _f_, etc., and it is impossible to rely on a phonographic record for minute shades of _s_-sounds and the like. It is clear, too, that even if the apparatus were nearer the ideal than it is now, it could not replace the teacher. But in the hands of an able teacher I have no doubt that it will prove a valuable help: it is patient and will repeat the same sentences scores of times, if required, without tiring or changing a single sound or intonation; you may also have different records of the same short piece as pronounced by one man from Berlin, another man from Hanover, a third from Munich, and a fourth from Vienna, which may be very useful for comparisons, even if, as a matter of course, in your ordinary teaching you stick to one particular standard of pronunciation--and in various other ways phonographic records may be used to stimulate the pupils. But everything they hear in this way should at the same time be presented to them in phonetic writing--either in their readers or on the blackboard. Perhaps, at some future day, the “telegraphone” invented by my countryman V. Poulsen will supplant Edison’s phonograph in this as well as in other respects.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Greek could just as well be read with Latin letters, for they are almost as much like the letters which Demosthenes used as the late black-letters are which we print as Greek.
[39] A dot after the letter and above the line is the best indication of length. _a_ is here taken phonetically, the vowel in _arm_.
[40] A hand-mirror is a useful thing to have in these preliminary phonetical exercises. In several places, the teacher requires each pupil to bring his own along.
[41] Here also the experiment in hearing the voice distinctly by holding the hands flat against the ears.
[42] I have often also conducted the exercise in such a way that the class had to voice the sound when I raised my hand, and unvoice it when I lowered my hand; thus I have made them articulate fffvvvffvvvff, ssszzsss, etc., without any pauses.
[43] That I am not exaggerating (as people certainly will suspect in about ten years from now), I could easily prove by means of a long series of opinions from pedagogical meetings, articles in pedagogical periodicals, newspaper reviews, etc.
[44] I have sometimes made the introduction longer, sometimes shorter than here indicated; some teachers make it more complete, so that they get a whole system of sounds tabulated before they pass on to the reading.
[45] But stopped consonants, like _p_, _t_, _k_, are exceptions to these instructions to isolate the sounds--every phonetician knows the reason why. They should be uttered with a vowel before and one after, e.g. _ata_.
[46] With the exception of the vowels [a·] in _alms_, [ɔ·] in _war_, and [ə·] in _sir_.
[47] This method of procedure follows in the main the suggestions of Klinghardt.
[48] If the teacher does not care to prepare such charts himself, he can use Viëtor’s Lauttafeln.
[49] Besides, the different systems of modern phoneticians all resemble each other very much--far more than did the earlier arbitrary methods of designating the pronunciation (for instance, Walker’s, Flügel’s, Toussaint-Langenscheidt’s, Tanger’s, etc.). Any one who has learned Sweet’s phonetical transcription can easily read Passy’s or my own, and vice versâ; the differences are hardly worth speaking of.
[50] I remember a lady’s dismay when a Frenchman used the combination [stane] in a sentence; she could not understand the sentence until I repeated it, inserting [sɛtane]. “O well,” she rejoined, “if he had only said [sɛtane]; we always said it that way in school.” (_Cette année._)
[51] The use of the French or German names of the letters of the alphabet when words are being spelled in English is merely affectation, and deserves only a shrug of the shoulders, especially since, as a rule, it is not consistently carried through, but is applied only to some few letters, _y_ being called [igræk] or _ypsilon_, _ch_, [seaʃ] or [tseha], according to circumstances, and this in the midst of other letters which are allowed to retain their English names with diphthongs and everything. It is quite a different thing when the teaching is wholly conducted in the foreign language; then it is necessary to practise the foreign names of the letters, but then it must be carried through consistently.
[52] Wer jemals in der schule die lautschrift als hilfsmittel zur erzielung einer besseren aussprache benutzt hat, der weiss, welcher nutzen aus ihr entspringt; der weiss aber auch, dass der schaden, welchen sie bezüglich der orthographie anrichten kann, sich nur auf wenige wochen erstreckt und äusserst gering ist, _jedenfalls viel geringer als der schaden, welchen eine schlechte aussprache in der orthographie anrichtet_. H. P. Junker, _Die neueren sprachen_, v. 99.
[53] See especially Murray, Bradley, and Craigie’s _New English Dictionary_, A. Schröer’s edition of Grieb’s _Englisch-deutsches wörterbuch_, and Rangel-Nielsen’s _Fransk-danske ordbog_. I am myself transcribing the English words in Brynildsen’s _Engelsk-dansk-norske ordbog_, two-thirds of which have already appeared. Edgren’s French Dictionary should perhaps also be mentioned, but I have never seen it myself.
XI
Like most works on pedagogy, this one too has been mostly concerned with the teaching of beginners. But now and then there has been a word about the instruction of advanced pupils, and now I shall add a few more suggestions about it. It is best to continue on the same lines as during the first years, only making those changes which circumstances necessarily demand.
The pupils must _read_--read more and more, read better and better books, books whose contents are of a nature to hold their attention and to give them as much all round information and development as possible--accordingly, as has been previously suggested, not solely works of literature. That sort of reading is especially good which gives the pupils some insight into the foreign nation’s peculiarity in the widest sense of the word, and best of all is that reading which is apt to make the pupils love what is best in the foreign people. Tennyson is right when he says, “It is the authors, more than the diplomats, who make nations love one another”;[54] and teachers of modern languages should ever remember that it is their mission to make their countrymen know and understand foreign nations. By making their pupils read good literature as well as by capacitating the younger generations of different countries for intelligent intercourse with one another, language-teachers all over the world may ultimately prove more efficacious in establishing good permanent relations between the nations than Peace Congresses at the Hague.
Some reading must be taken thoroughly, some may be _cursory_; it is perhaps best to have several gradations. Whereas in the beginning it is necessary to chew well in order to get all the linguistic nourishment out of the reading, later on it may of course be taken in larger and larger bites. Already rather early in the course of instruction, those pieces may be more lightly passed over whose contents are scarcely fit to be taken too seriously or which contain words which it is not absolutely necessary to remember. The teacher may simply let the pupils read such pieces aloud, explaining every word which they do not understand, but without basing any questions on them, and without requiring them to be studied for the next time. Later on, in the midst of more serious work, a month or two may be taken for reading a light novel through in the same easy manner. The pupils may also have private reading to do at home in addition to what they read in school. The teacher that I had in French and English in the upper classes in Frederiksborg School (H. Mathiesen) had an excellent way of making us desire of our own accord to read novels in the language studied; each one of us was ambitious to give in the longest list of volumes read when the teacher called for the lists at the first lesson in every month, and even if we of course read very rapidly and never looked up any words, yet we learned a good deal, and I consider the habit of reading which I thus acquired to be one of the most valuable acquisitions that I got during my last years in school. In order to test whether we really had read the books as stated, our teacher sometimes talked to us about their contents, but he talked in Danish, sometimes he only made us open the books at random and translate a little piece. It is no doubt better to organize this practice, as it is now done in some parts of Germany, where the whole class reads the same book at home and must have read a certain amount by a certain day (after a fortnight’s or a month’s interval). Then they must be able to give an account of the contents in the foreign language, must also ask each other questions about the book, and may even occasionally be required to write down the contents as a written exercise; after the teacher has looked through these accounts, the pupils may deliver them orally and more freely, and this will give occasion for further conversation--all in the foreign language.
Most important, however, is the reading which is done _thoroughly_, so thoroughly that the pupils completely master both contents and language, and which therefore in both these respects ought to be as good as possible. In exercises with questions and answers, the contents naturally play an important part, and even if the pupils feel it is one aim, and a very important one, to acquire skill in the language, yet this aim is not always directly kept in view as such; neither does a child talk in order to practise using its mother-tongue, but in order to get some information and in order to communicate itself to others--and thereby it learns the language. This feeling of reality becomes more and more prominent as the pupils become more advanced; in the conversations, the pupils show directly, that they understand the contents, indirectly that they understand the language.
The pupils must _talk_--about what they have read, and that the talks are not mere farces with conventional “parleur” phrases, as our opponents would like to make out, I hope that I have shown sufficiently well.[55] When a certain teacher wrote somewhere that all the conversation that there is time for consists of the following five questions, which are asked of the monitor (and only of him) at the beginning of every lesson: “Who is the monitor? What date is it to-day? What day of the week is it? Who is absent? What have you prepared for to-day?”, and that he owes it to the truth to confess that it is only the minority of the pupils who at the end of the year are able to answer these questions correctly without hesitation, then this deplorable result is primarily due to the fewness of the questions; he who only gets the tip of his finger dipped in the water three times in twenty weeks will never learn how to swim. It is secondarily due to the fact that the questions are stereotyped and have no connection with what the class is reading. Furthermore this same teacher says that he generally cannot spend more than a few minutes of each lesson on these “elementary exercises,” since the reading, translation and grammar requires the rest of the time, in the middle classes, indeed, all the time, so that at this stage there is no time at all for any conversation. But if the talks are used for interpreting the text, two big birds are killed with one stone, and then it will soon be seen that skill in speaking increases like wealth; if you have only reached a certain point, the rest comes of its own accord; the accumulated capital multiplies surprisingly fast and willingly.
The pupils must _write_--original papers in the foreign language, not translations--that is, the form of language used must be as little as possible suggested by English turns of expression. But the subject must be concrete and limited. The chief danger that there may be in such original written exercises, namely that the pupils avoid all the difficulties and only use a slender supply of expressions, which they feel sure of, this danger is greater the vaguer or more comprehensive the subject is. For instance, it is best not to give broad literary subjects, such as “Die romantische schule,” etc. A more limited subject is far better, both as an exercise and as a test; for instance, an account of a little anecdote or of the newspaper report of some event, which the teacher has read to the class; a description of what is to be seen on a picture, a renarration of some episode in the novel or in the historical selection which is being read in class, possibly in the form of a letter;[56] a summing up of everything relating to one of the characters in the text read; a review of the line of thought in (a section of) some essay which has been read; a paraphrase of some poem. Still more limited are such exercises in which a certain number of questions have to be answered, or such exercises in the use of synonymous words and expressions as have been described on p. 139.
* * * * *
But can such a method of instruction as has here been described really be carried out under existing circumstances? Are there not obstacles to be encountered on every hand? Yes; unfortunately there are things which stand in the way and make a good deal of trouble, but luckily they do not make it quite impossible for the new system to be used. As hindrances may be mentioned the shortness of the time, the apportionment of the time, the examinations, the teachers.
The _time_ which is now set apart for modern languages is too brief. Therefore all teachers of modern languages ought to unite, and, together with all the parents who are dissatisfied with the arrangements in our grammar schools (and they are not few), they ought to agitate for the removal of that burden which weighs heavily on the school and which prevents the growing generation from getting an education which can meet the urgent demands of our times, I mean, the school must be delivered from the classical languages; then there will be air and space for all that is now shoved into the background, among other things the modern foreign languages.[57] But--even in the scanty time which is now at disposal, there is much that can be done differently and better than hitherto, and the more the teachers in modern languages show this, and the more they can keep out of the old jogtrot way, the more will their subject be respected, and the more willingness will there be to extend the time when future reforms demand it.
The _apportionment_ of the time is poor. When will people finally realize that everything cannot be learned at once? Many subjects, and with so few hours a week for each that the pupils forget what they have learned from one lesson to the next--that is a frightful waste of time.
No, learn a few things or one thing at a time, learn everything well and learn it to the end before passing on to the next.[58] And especially with respect to languages, there can be no doubt that it is best to take them up one after the other, not side by side; to every language that is taken up should be devoted many hours a week, and as a rule two years ought to be allowed to pass before commencing a new language; then the first is so firmly rooted in the minds of the pupils that merely a very few lessons a week will be sufficient for keeping it up and extending it,[59] and then the two languages do not injure each other nearly as much as if they were studied side by side before the pupils have mastered either one of them. As to the question at what age the children ought to begin to learn foreign languages, I dare not express any decided opinion; I think I should be afraid to begin too early rather than too late; first let the mother tongue have time enough to take a firm and lasting hold of the child’s mind before other languages are admitted.
The worst canker in our school-system[60] is the _examinations_. Everything is arranged with a view to examinations; the parents, the children, and unfortunately also a number of the teachers care for nothing but the results attained in the examinations; the daily instruction is left to shift for itself, but the authorities will take ample care to guard against the least bit of negligence which might be shown by the examiners.
Examinations compel the teachers to lay undue stress on cramming. “Cram may be defined as the accumulation of undigested facts and second-hand theories to be reproduced on paper, handed in to the examiner, and then forgotten for ever. A crammed examinee differs from a crammed Strasburg goose in not assimilating his nutriment, and this would be a real advantage were it not that the process leaves him with a nauseated appetite, enfeebled reasoning powers, though abnormally enlarged memory, and a general distaste for disinterested study.”[61]
Examinations cause the mental and physical ruin of many more young men than we can afford. As a test of what a young man is worth in life, an examination is without any value whatever; as a test of how much really valuable knowledge he has, it is not worth much; and even as a test of how much he knows of what happens to be asked him on such an occasion, an examination is not nearly as reliable as people like to imagine.[62] And then examinations tend in so many ways to impede instruction which would otherwise be really profitable. The question “will that be required for the examination?” is always, either consciously or unconsciously, present in the schoolroom; it smothers the teacher’s enthusiasm for communicating to his pupils what interests himself most; and it discourages the pupils’ natural thirst for knowledge for its own sake. Just before the examinations, the whole school is seized with its yearly attack of its chronic examination-catarrh. In all departments, it is considered necessary to recapitulate for examinations; for a couple of months, the pupils are transformed into mental ruminants; they receive no new mental sustenance whatever, but have to be satisfied with going through the whole year’s work once or twice more at as rapid a pace as possible. The matter which they have been given does not become more savoury on being served again; all the juice and strength, all that makes it tempting is lost, and nothing remains but what is toughest and dryest.
But even if there is much fault to be found with the system of examinations, yet it is not necessary to reform that before we can begin to improve the instruction. The examination requirements are not so great that we cannot meet them even if we do not from the very beginning plan all our instruction exactly with them in view. Although the chief stress in the examination may be laid on the translation and not on speaking, yet that is no reason why the latter should be entirely dispensed with. If by a _receptive_ command of a foreign language is meant the ability to understand it, and by a _productive_ command, the power to express oneself in the language, then I am fully convinced that anyone who merely concerns himself with the receptive side of it injures himself and acquires far less ability to understand it than if he had from the very beginning also aimed at a productive command of the language. Therefore our all round exercises will give our pupils at least just as much receptive knowledge of the language as is attained by the pupils of others; and even if it is rather provoking for a teacher who has taken a good deal of trouble to teach his pupils to speak to see that this counts for little or nothing at the examination, he can comfort himself with a good conscience at any rate--beside the pleasure which he and his pupils have had in their daily work together.
Nor ought any consideration for examinations to prevent anyone from the best kind of recapitulation, which is, not to wait until the approach of examinations, when much that has been read is forgotten, so that the teacher has to be on the lookout all the time to make sure that the pupils understand everything, but to take it up while the matter is still fresh in the memory, so that it is not necessary to sound the pupils on every little point. Every chapter ought to be revised when it is finished, and every section or book ought to be gone over as a whole. Then the thoughts which were formerly occupied with details may be turned to the connected whole, and since the work can be conducted in the form of almost uninterrupted intelligent reading aloud, the pupils will be enabled to get approximately the same impression and the same enjoyment out of the matter read as a native gets.[63] If the reading has thus been gone over a section at a time at each natural break, it will be seen at the examination that these short revisions distributed throughout the year are more advantageous than a long, tedious recapitulation just before the examination, and besides the pupils have been kept fresh by reading something new up to the very end.
As the last possible impediment in the way of the reform method, I mentioned the _teachers_. Those times are now past when it was considered sufficient for a teacher of modern languages to have taken a degree in law or theology--to have studied Tacitus and Plato, and then by way of amusement to have read by himself a few volumes of _Revue des deux mondes_ or some novels by Cherbuliez and Freytag. But even the younger generation of teachers who are better prepared will very often find that it is not so very easy to give good instruction in modern languages. It is a shame how little is done to give high-school teachers opportunities for further improvement; they ought to have abundant access to courses in advanced work, but especially to many and liberal travelling scholarships, so that no conscientious teacher in foreign languages need do without a tolerably long stay among the people whose language he (she) teaches. Poor pay and long hours, too, naturally lead to a teacher’s looking merely to examination results.
But still I continue to hope that more and more teachers will avoid the old rut, and they will surely find that it pays to get out of it, even if, especially in the beginning, they have to expend more time and energy on their teaching, and on their preparation for every lesson, in order to meet the greater demands of the new methods. In Germany and the Scandinavian countries, exceedingly great efforts are being made to reform the instruction in languages; in Norway, much of what has been recommended in this book has even been adopted in the official school-plans issued in 1897;[64] and fortunately the movement is also on the way to becoming strong in England. If this book by a foreigner can contribute ever so little to the encouragement and support of English language-teachers in their zealous and able efforts to introduce newer and better methods, then I am glad to have been enabled in this manner to pay off a little of the debt that I owe to England and to many Englishmen.
In closing let me try to sum up. The old-fashioned disconnected sentences proved to be a failure for many reasons, and one reason was because there was nothing else to do with them but to translate them. They could arouse no interest; they could not even be read aloud intelligently; they could not be remembered in that definite form which they happened to have, so they could not be used as patterns for the construction of other sentences; therefore the rules of the grammar, which was committed to memory, came to play such an important part. It all became monotonous and lifeless.
Our method tries to employ many means which mutually support each other. The pronunciation is not learned merely by the teacher’s saying the word and the pupils repeating it, or by the pupil’s guessing at it through the orthography and the teacher’s correcting him. The latter plan we reject entirely; the former, however, we use even to a larger extent than before, and we adopt in addition to it a rational description and indication of sounds. The improved pronunciation thus acquired also helps in a high degree in the acquiring of the other (signification) side of the language. Where formerly there was no other way of communicating the meaning of words but through translation, we have in addition thereto direct and indirect observation, explanations in the foreign language, etc. Where the pupils formerly had to commit to memory paradigms, rigmaroles and rules, which all had to be taken on faith, we let them investigate for themselves and thus get an insight into the construction of the language. And whereas formerly the only exercises were translation from the mother tongue into the foreign language, we now have a whole scale of varying exercises, namely: direct reproduction (repetition of the teacher’s words; answers to questions which are based directly upon the words of the book)--modified reproduction (repetition of sentences with changes of tense, person, etc.; answers to freer questions; asking of questions)--free reproduction (renarration) and finally--free production (letters, etc.). And since there is a sensible meaning in all that is read or said or done, the interest is awakened and held, and the instruction becomes not only varied, but what especially beseems living languages, it becomes in the deepest and best sense of the word really _living_.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] Alfred Lord Tennyson: a Memoir by his Son. (Tauchnitz ed., IV. p. 84).
[55] Those who have their doubts may also read the accounts given by natives who have visited German schools where the instruction was conducted according to the reformed system, and who have had long talks with the pupils, in Walter, _Englisch nach dem Frankfurter reformplan_, pp. 152-165, and Miss Brebner, _The Method of Teaching_, etc.
[56] The letter-form is on the whole that form of composition which most persons have most use for, and which therefore ought to be practised most frequently. The international students’ letter-exchange, which has just been started a few years ago, will be of great benefit--for those who happen to get good correspondents and who themselves are not afraid of taking a little trouble.
[57] But of course the mother-tongue too; the study of nature, plants, animals, the human race; drawing and manual work, out-door life.
[58] An eloquent recommendation of this principle is to be found in v. Pfeil’s previously mentioned work “Eins,” but the same thought is also gaining ground elsewhere.
[59] Lessons which may be devoted not only to the language itself, but also to the acquisition of useful information in other departments as well; why not learn the geography and history of France in French during the French lessons, etc.
[60] I am here speaking of the Danish school-system, but I have a suspicion that this canker is not unknown in other countries.
[61] A. H. Sayce, _Fortnightly Review_, June 1875.
[62] A certificate from the school would be quite sufficient, if the instruction was under good control during the year.
[63] It has been previously suggested that various exercises in linguistic observation and classification may be given in connection with the revision, and that by means of such exercises the revision may be masked, as it were, and thus receive some of the fresh interest that attaches to something new.
[64] Similarly now in France.
SELECT LIST OF BOOKS.
M. BRÉAL, _De l’enseignement des langues vivantes_. Paris 1893.
M. BREBNER, _The Method of Teaching Modern Languages in Germany_. London 1898.
K. BREUL, _The Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages_. Cambridge 1898.
H. BREYMANN, _Die neusprachliche Reform-litteratur_. Leipz. 1895.
F. FRANKE, _Die praktische Spracherlernung auf Grund der Psychologie und der Physiologie der Sprache_. 3. Aufl. Leipzig 1896.
OTTO JESPERSEN, _Fransk Begynderbog_. 3. Udg. Copenhagen 1901.
---- _Kortfattet engelsk Grammatik_. 4. Udg. Copenh. 1903.
---- _The England and America Reader_. Copenh. 1903.
---- _Fonetik_. Copenhagen 1897-99.
---- _Lehrbuch der Phonetik_. Leipzig 1904.
O. JESPERSEN and CHR. SARAUW, _Engelsk Begynderbog_, I. and II. 3. Udg. Copenhagen 1902, 1903.
H. KLINGHARDT, _Ein Jahr Erfahrungen mit der neuen Methode_. Marb. 1888.
---- _Drei weitere Jahre Erfahrungen_. Marb. 1892.
P. PASSY, _La méthode directe dans l’enseignement des langues vivantes_. Paris 1899.
K. QUIEHL, _Französische Aussprache und Sprachfertigkeit._ 3. Aufl. Marburg 1899.
J. STORM, _Om en forbedret Undervisning i levende Sprog._ Norske universitets- og skoleannaler II.
H. SWEET, _The Practical Study of Languages_. London 1899.
W. VIËTOR, _Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren_. 2. Aufl. Heilbronn 1886.
M. WALTER, _Englisch nach dem Frankfurter Reformplan_. Marburg 1900.
W. H. WIDGERY, _The Teaching of Languages in School_. 2. ed. London 1903.
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
Transcriber's Note
The following apparent errors have been corrected:
p. 19 "go," changed to "go,”"
p. 28 "chose" changed to "choose"
p. 48 "translalation" changed to "translation"
p. 52 "he is" changed to "‘he is"
p. 75 "saver" changed to "savez"
p. 76 "vout" changed to "vont"
p. 88 "“Eins," Beiträge zur erziehung im hause" changed to "“Eins, Beiträge zur erziehung im hause"
p. 99 "rule-of three" changed to "rule-of-three"
p. 101 "paté" changed to "pâté"
p. 110 "follow" changed to "following"
p. 110 "conciously" changed to "consciously"
p. 111 "now now" changed to "now"
p. 144 "thingis" changed to "thing is"
p. 147 "mouth" changed to "mouth."
p. 158 "ɔ̃]" changed to "[ɔ̃]"
p. 158 "questions" changed to "questions)"
p. 160 "suggestions o" changed to "suggestions of"
p. 167 "with with" changed to "with"
p. 170 "(3)." changed to "(3)"
p. 171 "_le_ _de_" changed to "_le_, _de_"
p. 174 "thep upils" changed to "the pupils"
p. 194 "Sprachfertigkeit" changed to "Sprachfertigkeit."
p. 194 "Sprog" changed to "Sprog."
Spelling and punctuation have otherwise been kept as printed.
The following are used inconsistently in the text:
classmates and class-mates
everyday and every-day
mother tongue and mother-tongue
notebook and note-book
retell and re-tell
schoolbooks and school-books
schooldays and school-days
schoolroom and school-room
End of Project Gutenberg's How to Teach a Foreign Language, by Otto Jespersen