How to teach a foreign language

by Otto Jespersen

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.