The Principles of Language-Study

by Harold E. Palmer

The ‘direct methodists’ of the more extreme type interpret concreteness in a curious way, and identify it with the non-translation principle and with the principle of the exclusion of the mother-tongue as a vehicular language. They tend to think that by keeping English out of the French lesson, the teacher causes French to be acquired concretely. In certain cases this is true, but there are probably far more contrary cases.

In the example relating to the expression of anterior duration the concreteness consists very largely in pointing out the difference of usage in the two languages. In order to make the construction Would you mind perfectly concrete to a Frenchman, we must insist on its semantic equivalence to his Est-ce que ça ne vous ferait rien de. One of the things we must do to concretize the difference between I did so, So I did, and So did I, is to furnish the student with his respective native equivalents.

There are four ways and four ways only of furnishing a student with the meaning of given foreign units:

(1) By immediate association, as when we point to the object or a picture of the object designated by a noun or pronoun, when we perform the action designated by a verb, when we point to a real example of the quality designated by an adjective, or when we demonstrate in similar ways that which is designated by a preposition of place or certain categories of adverbs.

(2) By translation, as when we give the nearest native equivalent or equivalents of the foreign unit.

(3) By definition, as when we give a synonym or paraphrase of the word or word-group or a description of that which is designated by it.

(4) By context, as when we embody the unit in sentences which will make its meaning clear (e.g. January is the first month of the year; London is the capital of England).

These four methods or modes of ‘semanticizing’ a unit are here given in order of what are generally their relative degrees of concreteness. There may, however, be some cases in which translation will be more concrete than immediate association. Translation is not in itself necessarily ‘indirect’ (or ‘inconcrete,’ as we should prefer to express it); it may be relatively indirect when compared with good examples of immediate association, but it is undoubtedly more ‘direct’ than a cumbrous or vague definition, or an obscure context.

The following precepts may serve as concrete examples of the way we can carry the principles of concreteness into practice: