>Richard,

I agree with what Eduard implies in his message of the 18th.  One cannot
compare modern methods of teaching foreign languages with the teaching of
Standard English to native speakers with a strong local vernacular.  The
aims are quite different:  modern foreign-language teaching today
concentrates on acquiring spoken fluency in everyday interaction and is very
successful in producing this result:  however, it does not aim at producing
the ability to write language at a high level of education.  In England no
one today would expect a pupil who has passed French at 'A' grade in the
GCSE examination (16 years) to be able to start to read Balzac or even to
write a literary essay on him, yet that is what was taken for granted 40
years ago when the grammar-based approach was dominant.  Fluency was picked
up on exchange visits to France.

To abandon grammar in the teaching of English, adopt the modern
foreign-language methods, and still produce a high level of educated
English, one would have to transport pupils into a milieu in which they were
surrounded all day long by people speaking nothing but Standard English!

Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

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Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33
Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256




 Over the years I've studied a number of living and dead languages
> (Latin, French, German, Old and Middle English, Japanese, and Italian)
> under many teaching methods. I'm now trying to pick up some Spanish
> using the Pimsleur CDs. Of all the pedagogies I've encountered, this is
> for me by far the most effective in imparting fluency and command of
> phonology, and it is also the most enjoyable. I understand the Rosetta
> Stone series is similar. The method employs almost no direct instruction
> in grammar.
> 
>  
> 
> Dick Veit
> 
>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
>  
> 
> Richard Veit
> 
> Department of English
> 
> University of North Carolina Wilmington
> 
> 
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