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On the Use of English in Teaching Foreign Languages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2021

Hans C. G. von Jagemann
Hans C. G. von Jagemann*
Affiliation:
Professor of the Germanic Languages and Philology in Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.
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Extract

Nothing is more suggestive of the present contusion of ideas concerning the means and ends of language study than a comparison of two articles in a recent number of Education. Here we have a distinguished teacher of modern languages claiming, substantially, that French and German may, upon occasion, take the place of Latin and Greek in the college curriculum, provided they are taught by the same methods and with all the thoroughness and accuracy characteristic of the teaching of the classic tongues by the best teachers. On the other hand, we have an experienced instructor in Latin and Greek, advocating that the instruction in the classics can be improved by the introduction of certain methods, which, although the writer seems reluctant to admit it, are more commonly employed by teachers of modem languages than by those of the classic tongues. The impartial observer would naturally be led to think that either class of teachers can learn from the other and that, consequently, the necessity for reform is not all on our side, as some of us have modestly believed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Modern Language Association of America , Volume 1: Transactions 1884-1885 , 1885 , pp. 216 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1885

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References

Note 1 page 216 Vol. VI, No. VI, “The Preparatory Schools and the Modern Language Equivalent for the Greek,” by Charles E. Fay, A. M., Tufts College, and “Methods of Classical Instruction” by A. C. Richardson, A. M.

Note 4 page 47 Note also a similar use of the pronoun in “A Legend of the Navy”:

“He that only rules by terror, Doeth grievous wrong.”

Note 3 page 220 This view is gaining ground in Germany. Comp. H. Breymann und H. Moeller, Zur Reform des neusprachlichen Unterrichts. Munich, 1884. The authors are, on principle, opposed to translations into the new language, although for practical reasons, probably because they do not expect their views at once to be accepted by a large number of teachers, the usual number of exercises have been added to the Uebungsbuch.