In addition to instilling better pronunciation, the oral-aural method provides better results in teaching the language as a whole, reading as well as speaking. Jack M. Stein, professor of German and director of elementary German courses, points out that students using the direct method did better last year on the language proficiency examination--a test based only on reading knowledge--than did students in a course directed toward reading and translation. The direct method, Stein unequivocally states, is "much better. I won't use any other method."
The oral-aural method started under strange conditions. Just before the outbreak of World War II, the American Council of Learned Societies attempted to find a better way to teach esoteric languages, such as Mongolian or Hindi. With a paucity of teachers understanding these tongues, the Council hit upon the use of tape recorders and a direct approach to the language: Submerge the student in an atmosphere of the language from the very first by use of a recorded master voice and let him absorb the language gradually as does a child. This experiment rapidly expanded, however, with the start of the war. The Armed Services had to teach foreign languages--both well and quickly. Thus, the Army Specialized Training Program was established, by which draftees learned new tongues in a matter of weeks and not of years.
Cornell took heed of the Army's very successful experiments, and launched its own intensive courses in modern languages. Classes met eight hours per week in new atmosphere--English was not spoken in the room. Mechanical devices and "native informants" (graduate students from foreign countries) helped perfect pronunciation. By 1950, the program had proven so successful that Cornell adopted it outright. Columbia soon followed, and rapidly developed a comparable program which gave it, along with Cornell, the finest elementary language courses of colleges in the nation.
Meanwhile, Harvard continued with the time-honored dusty-dry procedure of teaching translation rather than a language. One studied grammar, not conversation. But this grammatical analysis Stein is convinced, "stifled American interest in languages," and certainly many of the complaints registered in the past about Harvard language courses touched precisely on this now-out dated approach. "In the past, students thought German was only English translated, but this is wrong. You cannot learn about a culture simply by translating into English."
The modern method views speech as a means to comprehension. "The student must first acquire a new set of speaking habits," Stein says, "and acquire a sense for the language." In turn, this knowledge leads to an understanding of a new culture--an aim to which the entire Division of Modern Languages directs its efforts. After all, Geary points out, language is but one manifestation of a culture; and language itself cannot be segmented artificially into reading and speaking skills. By emphasizing the basic mechanics of speech, rather than the secondary rules of grammar, students acquire, far more quickly and much more effectively, a knowledge of a language and consequently of an entire culture.
Leadership of the new movement at Harvard has been vested in two outstanding men, Geary and Stein. Geary has paid particular attention to the reconstruction of Boylston Hall, especially the language laboratory. He often wanders through the unfinished building, checking equipment, making sure the lab is operating correctly, and acting as a sort of overseer for the project. The laboratory, his main interest, has received much of his attention.
Stein has been more concerned with a reorganization of elementary German courses. A professor at Columbia until a year ago, Stein headed their exceptionally successful modern language program, so well that Levin deems him "the best man in the country for teaching beginning German." He teaches two sections, one in German B and one in German C, and an upper-level course; he also heads a group of five instructors and fifteen part-time assistants ("all in training to become language teachers") concerned with lower-level German instruction. Stein came to Harvard convinced of the value of the direct method of instruction, and in the last year he has made several significant changes within the department. Most important, of course, is the establishment of the oral-aural system for German sections.
The oral-aural method, however, has not been limited exclusively to a few but has been adopted to a certain extent in most language classes. For example, Stein has completely revamped German B this year. Using a text published only a few months ago, based upon sucessful linguistic studies, members of the course commit a basic reading to memory, learning grammar to a large extent by osmosis. Learning becomes a "dynamic process." Sections in German B are conducted almost entirely in German, although the course is specifically intended to help students gain a greater reading than speaking knowledge; from the very moment they enter the room, the students are surrounded by an atmosphere of German.
At the end of each basic reading appears a series of simple questions which can be answered by reference to the reading itself. During the class period, the section leader will fire these questions at students and hopefully will receive an answer immediately in perfect German. "I definitely do not want my students to translate the question into English, formulate an answer, and then translate this back into German; I want them to think directly in German," Stein states. Although it is yet too early to evaluate the success of this limited oral-aural approach in reading courses, the new method certainly represents an advance over the tedious--and less educational--process of grammatical exposition. With the rapid fire of question and answer, classes become both challenging and interesting.
Repetition enters into the classroom as well as into the language lab. After all, the exponents of the oral-aural method state, a child learns his language habits only through constant exposure to and practice of a single tongue. The child does not think consciously, "Does this preposition take the dative case? Is the definite article placed before or after the past participle? What is the gender of this noun?" Rather, he learns almost instinctively what is correct and what is not. And it is precisely this sort of semi-innate knowledge which the direct method seeks to inculate. Not to think in English: In a nutshell, this epitomizes the aim of modern teachers of the modern languages.
The process of osmotic absorption, however, does not prove as effective for a college freshman as for a stu-