How to teach a foreign language

by Otto Jespersen

h. The English men-of-war could do very much against the enemy, because they were well constructed, and not too large.

i. The English vessels were not large, but well constructed.

k. The advantage of the English men-of-war did not consist in size, but in construction.

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.

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.