INITIAL PREPARATION
In the first chapter we have seen that each of us, child or adult,
possesses in either an active or a latent state certain capacities for
the spontaneous assimilation of the spoken and colloquial form of any
given language, native or foreign. In the case of the young child,
these capacities are in an active state and at his immediate service,
he does not require to be trained in their use; in the case of the
average adult, these capacities are in a latent state, they have fallen
into disuse, they are not at his immediate service, he must train
himself to use them, he must learn how to learn.
In the first place, he must realize that language-learning (within
the scope of our definition) is an _art_ and not a _science_;
to become proficient in an _art_ is to acquire the capacity for
_doing_ something; to become proficient in a _science_ is to acquire
_knowledge_ concerning something. So long as the student treats
language-study as a science he will make little or no progress in the
art of using language.
Now, there are two possible ways of acquiring proficiency in an art;
the one consists in applying theory, the other consists in persistent
efforts to imitate the successful performances of others. Let us
say that the student wishes to use the French equivalent of ‘she
went.’ By the method of theory he will remember that past actions are
generally expressed by the French _passé indéfini_ (or _perfect_); he
will then remember that this tense is formed by means of one of the
two auxiliaries plus the past participle. His knowledge of theory will
tell him to derive from the infinitive _aller_ the past participle
_allé_; theory will also tell him that this particular verb requires
the auxiliary _être_ and not _avoir_, and that the present tense third
person singular of _être_ is _est_. If he is writing the sentence, he
must remember that the participle must in this case agree with the
subject and be spelt _allée_.
By the method of practice he will merely reproduce by imitation the
sentence _elle est allée_, which sentence he will have had occasions
of learning or of reading. In both cases there is the possibility of
error; the theory may be imperfectly known and one or more links in the
chain of reasoning may be weak, or the sentence may have been badly
memorized.
First attempts at imitation are sometimes inaccurate; our initial
attempts at reproducing are occasionally unsuccessful; we wish to
produce a foreign sound we have just heard, but utter a native sound
instead; we wish to produce a foreign sentence, but construct it
wrongly; we wish to express a certain thought, and fail to hit upon
the right word. For this reason the method of practice is often
termed _the method of trial and error_. We are told that some of our
efforts will be successful and others unsuccessful, and that in the
course of practice we shall gradually eliminate the unsuccessful ones.
We are even told that it is only by making mistakes that we learn
not to make them. Although we may admit a modicum of truth in this
somewhat hyperbolical dictum, we would suggest that it is liable to
misinterpretation. Nor is the term _trial and error_ an ideal one from
the language-teacher’s point of view.
In both cases there is an implication that all successful attempts
must necessarily be preceded by unsuccessful ones, which is not only
untrue but unsound pedagogy. The literal interpretation of the term and
doctrine may induce a sort of fatalistic attitude, and the principle of
_accuracy_ (which we shall deal with later) will suffer in consequence.
It may provide teacher and student with an easy pretext to condone
careless work. The student may say, “Since it appears that error must
precede perfection, I will not unduly strive towards accuracy.” The
teacher may say, “Since psychologists tell us that error is inevitable,
I will allow my pupil to do inaccurate work.”
It may be true that some forms of inaccuracy in certain conditions
tend to eliminate themselves in the course of time and practice,
but it is certainly true that errors also tend to become habitual,
and no psychologist has ever maintained that the forming of _bad_
habits is a necessary step towards the acquisition of good ones. We
would lay stress on this point, for there seems to be a real danger
in the misapplication of such terms as ‘trial and error,’ ‘the
selection of the successful and the rejection of the unsuccessful
efforts,’ ‘practice makes perfect,’ etc. Misunderstanding on this
point has caused many teachers to encourage, and many students to
acquire, pidgin-speech, and to consider it as the inevitable or even
indispensable prelude to normal speech.
In the present chapter we are inquiring what are the processes of
nature and how we may train the student to observe them. We have just
seen that there is a method of theory and a method of practice; it
is fairly evident that the latter is a natural process and that the
former is not. We will now proceed to set forth another pair of rival
processes and determine which is the one followed by the natural
language-teaching forces.
When we are young we form new habits with facility; a new sort of work
has to be performed, and we proceed to acquire the new habit which
will enable us to perform it. When we are older we form new habits
with greater difficulty and certainly with greater reluctance. We make
all sorts of efforts (generally unconsciously) to avoid forming a new
habit, for in some respects the adult seems to dread novelty.
A new sort of work has to be performed, and instead of acquiring the
new habit or habits which will perform it we select habits already
formed and strive to make them do the new work. Let us take a few
examples in order to realize what this means. Suppose we wish to
make Chinese characters with a native writing-brush. This is a new
sort of work; in order to do it successfully we must hold the brush
vertically in a way we have never held a brush before; we must form a
new brush-holding and brush-using habit. But the average European adult
will strive to use the brush and to trace the characters by holding the
brush as he holds a pen; he will be using the known pen-holding habit
instead of acquiring the unknown habit of holding a writing-brush.
Or we wish to learn to pronounce the vowel generally represented in
French by _é_. This will require a muscular habit unknown to the
average Englishman. What does he do? He seeks immediately to replace
the required new effort by a known effort--and replaces the French _é_
by the English _ay_. If this is too unsatisfactory he will strive to
modify his _ay_ until it seems to resemble sufficiently the required
sound. Similarly, he will substitute for French _au_, _u_, or _on_,
English _o_ (as in ‘boat’), _ew_ (as in ‘new’), and _ong_.
Or the English adult student may wish to learn to use French
word-groups or sentences, in which case we shall almost invariably
find that he only learns to use those which correspond most nearly to
English constructions; he prefers to adapt his known syntax-habits
rather than form new ones.
Now children have not this same reluctance to form new habits, either
because their minds are more plastic, _i.e._ they are so used to
forming new habits that a few more do not incommode them, or because
they are not clever or intelligent enough to make the necessary
selection from their stock of acquired habits.
Language-learning is essentially a habit-forming process, a process
during which we must acquire _new_ habits. It is, then, one of the
cases where we cannot always proceed from the known to the unknown in
the more obvious sense of the term; we must often consent to plunge (or
be plunged) straight into the unknown.
The most important thing we have to do, then, is to train the student
to form new habits and to cause him to refrain from adapting his old
ones in cases where we know that such adaptation will be fruitless.
We make this last qualification advisedly, because there are certain
cases where successful adaptation is possible. A foreign language is
not wholly different from our own tongue, and where identity exists
obviously no new habit is required. (We must, however, see that the
student selects the _right_ previously acquired habit, that is to say,
the _nearest_ native equivalent.)
The capacity of forming new habits of observation, articulation,
inflexion, compounding, or expression for every new language is one of
our spontaneous capacities, and the student must when necessary be
taught to form such new habits.
Another very characteristic feature of the natural process is
_unconscious assimilation_; we learn without knowing that we are
learning. What we therefore have to do is to train ourselves (or our
students) _consciously_ to learn _unconsciously_; we must set out
deliberately to inhibit our capacities for focusing or concentrating
our attention on the language-material itself. Attention must be given
to what we want to say and not to the way we say it.
How shall we do it?
In the first place we must set out to sharpen our powers of receiving
and retaining knowledge communicated to us orally. This may be
difficult; we have become so accustomed to acquiring information from
the written word _via_ the eyes that we feel very bewildered and
incapable when deprived of this medium. We hear a foreign word or
sentence, and this auditory impression is such a rapid and transitory
one that we feel that we cannot possibly retain it in our memory;
we feel that we require at least one good look at the word so that
we may hereafter reproduce in our imagination the written form. But
we must resist this tendency; we must discipline ourselves to forgo
this artificial aid to memory, for ear-memory cannot be cultivated
while we are visualizing. If we truly desire to tap the natural
language-learning energies we must obey nature; we must train and drill
our ears to do the work for which they were intended. If we make up
our minds to train our ears to be efficient instruments we can do so:
a little patience, a little practice, and we shall surely regain the
power that we had allowed to lapse.
The exercises we use in order to sharpen our ear-perceptions and to
make them serve us may be termed ‘ear-training exercises.’ This term
may not satisfy those who delight in hair-splitting definitions; they
may say, “We cannot train our ears, but we can train our capacities for
using them”; but the term is sufficiently accurate to designate what we
mean it to designate.
How are ear-training exercises performed? There are several varieties.
The simplest of all is this: the teacher articulates various sounds,
either singly or in combination with others; we listen to these
sounds and make unconscious efforts to reproduce them by saying them
to ourselves. This is the most passive and most natural form of
ear-training; we did it years ago when lying in our cradles listening
to the sounds made by the people around us. If the teacher systematizes
his work, so much the easier will it be for us who are training our
ears.
We must then seek to recognize or identify certain sounds and to
distinguish them from others. The teacher may write (in conventional
phonetic symbols) a series of sounds on the blackboard and append to
each a conventional number. He will articulate a sound and ask us to
give him the number pertaining to it, or we may go up to the blackboard
and point to the sound we think we have heard, or he may give us
‘phonetic dictation,’ in which case he will articulate sounds which we
must write down by means of these conventional phonetic symbols. This
latter process has the advantage that it can subsequently be extended
to the dictation of syllables or words.[1]
[1] It will be preferable for these to be ‘nonsense words,’ that is
to say, artificial words with no meaning, for if real known words are
articulated to us we may possibly write down not the sounds that we
really hear but some sort of ingenious phonetic transliteration of the
orthographic form of the word.
Other forms of ear-training exercises may be devised by those who are
engaged in carrying out such work, care being taken that such exercises
do really train the _ears_ and not our capacities for successful
guessing.
If you wish to know to what extent such exercises do have the desired
effect, go through a short course of ear-training on these lines and
you will yourself be a witness to their efficacy.
Ear-training is not confined to isolated sounds and simple combinations
of sounds; it also includes the exercise of our capacities for
perceiving or retaining long strings of syllables such as sentences. We
are able to do this in the case of our mother-tongue, and there is no
reason why we should not soon become fairly proficient in doing it in
the case of a foreign language.
The next thing in importance is to learn how to articulate foreign
sounds, singly, in simple combinations, or in long strings of
syllables. We must train our mouth and our vocal organs generally; in
some cases we must develop certain muscles in order that they may do
easily and rapidly what is required of them. We have learnt to do this
in the case of our mother-tongue, and we can learn to do the same for
sounds which are so far unknown to us. It is never too late in life
to develop a muscle in order that it may perform the small amount of
work which will be required of it. We must go through a course of
mouth-gymnastics; if we are disinclined to do so it means that we are
disinclined to take the trouble to tap our natural language-learning
resources.
What are articulation exercises? Like ear-training exercises, they
exist in many varieties. We begin by practising on known sounds. We
take simple sounds and learn to prolong them for a few seconds or
to utter them rapidly, and we practise them in new and unfamiliar
combinations. We are shown how to convert voiced into voiceless sounds
and _vice versa_; we are taught how to produce sounds which are
intermediate between two known sounds; we are shown how to convert
known sounds into their nasal, lip-rounded, or palatalized forms,
etc. We are trained to imitate strange noises of all sorts, and the
phonetician is ready to show us how to make them. Our ear-training
exercises will be of assistance to us, for it is easier to articulate
sounds that we recognize than sounds which have so far been unfamiliar
to our ears.
At a more advanced stage, articulation exercises gradually become
merged into ‘fluency exercises.’ When we are asked to articulate a
given string of syllables so many times in so many seconds we are
learning to become fluent, to connect sound with sound and syllable
with syllable without ugly gaps and awkward hesitations.
While ear-training and articulation exercises are being carried on
the student should be encouraged to develop his powers of mimicry;
after having heard on many different occasions words or strings of
words uttered by the teacher he should strive to become at least as
proficient as parrots and phonograph records in reproducing them
spontaneously. The term _imitation_ is not adequate to express the
process by which he should work; what we require is absolute _mimicry_.
Sounds, with all that appertains to them--pitch, timbre, length,
abruptness, drawl, distinctness, and any other qualities and attributes
possessed by them--should be mimicked faithfully and accurately;
little or no distinction should be made by the learner between the
characteristic pronunciation of the language he is learning and the
personal pronunciation of his teacher. The teacher, indeed, should say
to the student, “Don’t be content with a mere reproduction of what you
imagine to be my standard of pronunciation; go further and mimic _me_.”
Ear-training, articulation, and mimicry exercises will carry us a long
way towards our aim; when fairly proficient in these, we shall find
little difficulty in _reproducing at first hearing a sentence which has
been articulated to us_. This is one of our most important aims; once
able to do this, we are able to avail ourselves immediately of one of
the most valuable channels for acquiring the foreign language; we are
able to assimilate foreign sentences by ear; every sentence repeated in
our hearing will have its due effect in furthering our knowledge of the
language and our capacity for using it.
Anyone who is unable to repeat with tolerable accuracy any sentence
he has just heard is certainly unable to assimilate the foreign
language by spontaneous methods. He may seek to compensate this
inability by methods involving the imagery of the written word, but
these methods will be unnatural ones and will inhibit the development
of the spontaneous powers. Anyone who experiences a difficulty in
repeating a foreign sentence which he has just heard will be severely
handicapped in his subsequent work, for he will be paying attention to
his hearing and articulation when he should be devoting his attention
to other things. Indeed, we would go so far as to say that the power of
correctly reproducing a string of syllables just heard is one of the
essential things we must possess in order to make any real progress in
the acquisition of the spoken language.
It is this power which enables us to memorize on a wide scale sentences
and similar strings of words. Whether we like it or not, whether the
prospect is encouraging or not, it is quite certain that an easy
command of the spoken (and even of the written) language can only be
gained by acquiring the absolute mastery of thousands of combinations,
regular and irregular. We shall see later that certain forms of
synthetic work exist which will enable us to form correctly an almost
unlimited number of foreign sentences; we shall see that the utilizing
of these studial forms of work will carry us very far on our way to
acquire the language; but, ingenious and sound though they may be, they
will not replace the cruder and more primitive process of memorizing
integrally a vast number of word-groups.
Now this task cannot be accomplished by means of intensive and
laborious repetition work; it cannot be accomplished by the traditional
methods of memorizing; book-work and perseverance will never lead us
to the goal of our memorizing ambitions. As we shall see later, in the
early stages a certain amount of deliberate and conscious memorizing
must be done; we shall insist on the daily repetition of a certain
number of useful compounds, but sooner or later we shall come to a
stage in which memory-work must be carried out on a far larger scale
and in a far more spontaneous manner. We must train ourselves to become
spontaneous memorizers, and this can only be done in one way: we must
acquire the capacity for retaining a chance phrase or compound which
has fallen upon our ears in the course of a conversation or speech. It
is in this way that we have acquired those thousands of phrases and
combinations which make up the bulk of our daily speech in our own
language. We have acquired the capacity of noting and retaining any new
combinations of English words which we may chance to hear; we do this
unconsciously, and are not aware of doing so; we rarely or never invent
new types of compounds, but simply reproduce at appropriate moments
those types of compounds which we have happened to hear used by those
speaking in our presence. This is one of the habits we acquired in our
infancy; this is one of the habits we must revive now and use for the
foreign language we are studying. So long as we have not acquired this
habit our progress will be slow--too slow for the purpose we have in
view.
At a later stage of our study, it is true, we may make such
acquisitions by _reading_ instead of _listening_, but this will only
be after we have become proficient in reproducing what we _hear_. We
may be inclined to think that we assimilate new linguistic material
by the eye alone, but this is not the case; the eye alone cannot
assimilate. It may be taken as proved to-day that all normal people
‘inner-articulate’ all that they read, that we are indeed incapable of
understanding what we read unless a process of ‘inner-articulating’
is going on at the same time. We need not stop at present to inquire
exactly what is the psychological definition and explanation of this
inner-articulating; we may content ourselves for the moment by defining
this process as a sort of ‘mental repetition.’[2] It is well known that
deaf-mute children who have been taught to read and to write never
acquire the power of writing their ‘native language’ as normally used;
they produce an artificial variety which reads as if it were written
by a foreigner. Nor is this to be wondered at; it is perfectly in
accordance with what might be expected; deaf-mutes cannot articulate,
either aloud or mentally; they are therefore compelled to learn by
studial methods, and they acquire language as slowly and as painfully
as anyone acquires a foreign language by mere studial methods.
[2] Victor Egger, _La Parole intérieure_: “Souvent ce que nous
appelons _entendre_ comprend un commencement d’articulation
silencieuse, des mouvements faibles, ébauchés, dans l’appareil vocal”
(Ribot).
To learn to repeat mentally exactly what we hear, neither more nor
less, without the intervention of any other elements than those of
hearing and articulating, is, then, one of the things we must do if we
wish to avail ourselves of the help which nature is ready to afford us.
Another of the spontaneous capacities with which we are endowed is that
of understanding the gist of what we hear without any intervention of
analysis or synthesis. Some people seem never to have lost this power.
It suffices that they should have a certain number of opportunities
of listening to the language being used for them to be able to gather
the general sense of what they hear. Others do not appear to possess
this ‘gift’; they cannot understand anything they have not analysed
and reduced to its component units. In reality, if they would refrain
from so analysing what they hear (or even read) they would soon find
themselves able to do as well in this respect as the ‘gifted.’ We
therefore suggest that a programme of this sort should include a
certain number of exercises designed expressly to develop this power of
direct understanding.
What sort of exercises should these be? They are many and varied. The
essential feature should be the rigid exclusion of all opportunities
for reasoning, calculation, analysis, or synthesis. The pupil must
not be allowed to focus his consciousness on the structure of the
language; he must keep his attention on the subject-matter. The natural
law in this respect would seem to be that we shall come to understand
what we hear provided that we fix our minds not on the actual words
used but on the circumstances which result in the words in question.
Interest must be present. If you are not interested directly or
indirectly in what you hear, you may listen and listen for months or
even years without understanding what you hear. If, on the other hand,
things are said in your presence concerning matters which affect even
distantly your welfare or which are connected with your interests or
surroundings, you will have a tendency to grasp the meaning of what is
said. We must endeavour to devise a series of exercises which fulfil
these conditions; we must design forms of work in which the student’s
attention shall be directed towards the subject-matter and away from
the form in which it is expressed. Gradation, however, must be observed
if we wish to obtain fairly rapid results, we must first work with a
comparatively limited vocabulary, we must use an abundance of gesture,
we must avail ourselves of everything likely to further our aim. In so
doing, however, we must avoid the other extreme; if we are too careful
in our choice of words, if we speak too slowly and over-emphasize our
speech, the process of understanding will be too conscious; we shall be
fostering habits of conscious study and of focused attention, things
which are very good in their way, but which are not calculated to
further the particular end we have at present in view.
The most natural form of work, indeed the first form of work which
suggests itself to us, consists in talking to our pupils, talking to
them naturally and fluently, talking to them about anything which may
conceivably be of interest to them. We may show them the different
parts of the room in which the lessons are given, the furniture,
objects on the table or in our pockets, and while showing them we name
them and speak about them. We may perform all sorts of actions and say
what we are doing; we may describe the position of the various objects,
their qualities and attributes; we may show pictures and describe
them. These elementary talks will gradually develop; we may pass by
easier stages from the concrete to the abstract; in the end we shall
be relating (and even reading) simple stories, and our listeners will
come to follow our thoughts and understand what we are saying, even as
we understood the simple stories for which we clamoured in our nursery
days.
Another form of work, called ‘imperative drill,’ consists in giving
orders in the foreign language to the pupils to perform certain
actions (stand up, sit down, take your book, open it, shut it, etc.).
In the initial stage such orders will be accompanied by the necessary
gestures; the students will not be slow to grasp what is required of
them, and in a very short time they will respond automatically to the
stimulus provided by the foreign imperative sentence.
Another form of exercise designed to cultivate the capacity of
immediate comprehension is that in which we require our pupils to
answer yes or no (_oui_ or _non_, _ja_ or _nein_, etc.) to hundreds of
questions which we ask them, (Is this your book? Is the sky blue? Am I
speaking to you? Are we in France? etc., etc.)
Certain other simple forms of systematic _questionnaire_ exercises will
further develop the natural powers of comprehension, of associating the
word with the thought. A type of exercise called ‘action-drill’ will
have the same effect if carried out as a means to the particular end we
have in view.
These then are the chief things to be done once we have decided
to enlist on our behalf the universal and natural powers of
language-using, and these are some of the various ways in which we
may achieve our aim. All of them are possible and all of them can be
carried out in actual practice by any teacher who has a sufficient
command of the foreign language (and if he has not, we can hardly call
him a competent teacher). Nothing has been suggested here which has
not already been successfully carried out by those whose business it is
to ascertain experimentally how languages are actually learned.
The initial stages of the language-course will be very largely
characterized by these forms of work, in order that the student may be
thoroughly prepared and mentally equipped for the later stages.