Language teaching traditions: 1884 revisited A. P. R.

Howatt

During the nineteenth century, great progress was made in the scientific study of language and the first steps were taken towards establishing an independent science ofexperimental psychology separate from philosophy and metaphysics. The most significant developments from the language teaching point of view were the British advances in the study of scientific phonetics led by men like A. J. Ellis and Alexander Melville Bell (the father of the inventor of the telephone), the German research into the perception and physiology of speech, and the work of European anglicists like Johan Storm in Norway. In 1877 Henry Sweet drew together these strands of development in his Handbook of Phonetics, a major milestone in the history of the subject which, following the centuries-old tradition of practical phonetics in England, also contained a proposal for spelling reform. Seven years later, in May 1884, Sweet took his interest in the application of phonetics one step further by presenting a report to the prestigious Philological Society on what he called The practical study of language. This paper, which I believe should be recognized as the founding document of an applied linguistic approach to language teaching, had been drafted eight years previously after a lengthy period of incessant thought and work, but Sweet held it back until his related textbook (Das Elementarbuch des gesprochenen English/Primer of Spoken English) was ready for publication, on the grounds that example is better than precept.1 Fifteen years later in 1899 the paper reappeared in a greatly expanded form as his classic work The Practical Study of Languages: A Guide for Teachers and Learners. Sweets principal aim in the paper was to press for the reform of language teaching and learning through the application of the methods and results of modern scientific linguistics (or philology as it was still called). He set out a vigorously argued programme for improved classroom methods based on the spoken not the written language, a new approach to teaching materials which would replace the isolated grammar-translation sentences (put together like pieces of mozaic work)2 with phonetically transcribed connected texts on a variety of interesting topics, and, above all, a phoneticsbased system of teacher training in which the universities would be expected to play a major role. Sweets educational concerns and the polemical style of the 1884 paper are muted in the better-known 1899 book, partly because the book served a rather different purpose, but partly also perhaps because Sweet himself failed to carry the profession with him in the intervening years. He was not an easy man to get on with, and a year after the paper he was rejected for a professorship at Oxford which he (and the rest of Europe) had expected him to win. None of the institutional reforms he was advocating came about in Britain till much later, but his linguistic and pedagogical ideas survived to form the intellectual basis for the rise of English as a foreign language as an autonomous profession in the twentieth
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century. Some of the problems surrounding the relationship between language pedagogy and education that Stern (1983) discusses may, it seems to me, have their roots in this early history. Let us move on, however, to the content of the 1884 paper. He began from the general axiom -equally important for the practical and the scientific study of language -that the living spoken form of every language should be made the foundation of its study.3 In practice, this meant a major commitment to the teaching of pronunciation, which was grossly neglected at the time, and the use of a graded series of simple connected texts written within a controlled vocabulary and presented in phonetic transcription. Unlike Wilhelm Vitor, Sweet had no experience of school teaching and he has little to say about the details of how such texts should be handled in class, but his favourable comments on Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren! suggest that he would have approved of Vitors oral classwork techniques as outlined in that pamphlet.4 On the transcription question, the reformers took differing views: some, like Sweet, were fanatically devoted to it while others, Jespersen, for instance, were much more pragmatic and relaxed. With hindsight, it was perhaps a red herring which tended to distract attention from more important features of the new methods such as, for instance, the radical changes proposed for the teaching of grammar and the rejection of translation as the primary method for practising the foreign language. For Sweet as an applied linguist (if I may use the term) the grammar issue was particularly significant. Grammar, he said, which is merely a commentary on the facts of language, must follow, not precede, the facts themselves as presented in sentences and connected texts.5 This inductive approach, as it was usually called, required the teacher to select certain grammatical features of the text for more systematic study and it was the responsibility of textbook writers to ensure that the materials contained appropriate examples. What they should not do (a point that Sweet made very clear in the 1899 book) was to falsify the linguistic authenticity of the text by cramming it with grammar points. Sweet, and most of the other reformers, would have been horrified by some of the structurally graded texts of the mid-twentieth century. The principal purpose of grammar teaching was to help learners to see how the foreign language worked, so that they could handle progressively more difficult texts. The modern argument that grammatical knowledge merely provides a monitor on the correct production of sentences would probably have struck Sweet as curiously narrow, since such knowledge is so obviously an aid in their interpretation and comprehension as well. The final point, the dont translate issue, was perhaps the most controversial and far-reaching of all the ideas that emerged from the various proposals for language teaching reform in the late nineteenth century. Sweet supported it in principle, but for a more detailed study we have to turn to the second of the two seminal works whose centenary falls this year, Felix Frankes pamphlet on the practical acquisition of language (Die praktische Spracherlernung). Some of the modern connotations of acquisition find an echo in Franke, who begins his argument by contrasting natural language acquisition (natiirliche Spracherlernung) with more formal language learning in an educational context (Sprachbildung). He then sketches a psychological model of acquisition which is derived from the theory of associationism which was dominant at the time. If learners were to form 280 A. P. R. Howatt

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correct associations between new words in the foreign language and the concepts they represente, it was better that these associations should be formed directly in the new language and not indirectly via translation. Furthermore, the associations required for fluent proficiency in the foreign language would build up much more rapidly if the learner were not distracted by constantly having to switch back and forth between the mother tongue and the new language. The practical outcome of Frankes study was the unequivocal rejection of translation into the foreign language (such translations were out of the question -ausgeschlossen6 -in his view), but at the same time he accepted the use of translation into the mother tongue as an aid to comprehension. This is very different from the more extreme dont translate techniques associated with Frankes contemporary Maximilian Berlitz, whose opinions on this issue eventually became synonymous in the public mind with the Direct Method. We have to remember, however, that Berlitz was an entrepreneur whose main concern was to ensure that all his employees, native speakers and for the most part novice teachers, used the same methods in his schools, and he therefore simplified his methods into a few easily assimilable precepts. These were derived in turn from the work of a Frenchman called Lambert Sauveur who, like Berlitz himself, was a new immigrant in the United States in the 1870s. Sauveurs Natural Method, as he called it, was based entirely on conversation and did not use textbooks at all in the early stages. The similarity to Krashen and Terrells Natural Approach goes beyond the almost identical labels. Compare, for instance, Sauveurs illustration of a beginners lesson (the original was in French) with Krashen and Terrells: Let us count the fingers: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. ten. We have ten fingers. I have ten fingers; you have ten fingers, mademoiselle. How many fingers have you, madame? (I have ten fingers) And you, monsieur? (And I also). And George? (And George also). Do you see the ten fingers? (Yes). Let us count the fingers together. (Sauveur 1874:ll). Let us count the number of students with blue eyes. One, two, three, four ...Are there any others? (Jim). Oh, of course, we cant forget Jim. Yes, he has blue eyes. Now, who has brown eyes? Does Martha have brown eyes? (Yes). And what colour is her hair? (Brown). Is it light brown or dark brown? (Light). Is she wearing a dress today? (No). A skirt? (Yes). What colour is the skirt? (Blue). Yes, its a blue skirt with white stripes. (Krashen and Terrell 1983:81). Appeals to 'nature are very attractive, but the answers received tend to vary a bit. Sauveur did not permit any use of the mother tongue and Berlitz followed suit, as we know. Krashen and Terrell, on the other hand, allow learners to respond in the mother tongue if they wish to. Franke permitted translation in one direction but not in the other. One is tempted to agree with Sweet when he says with his customary rigour: The learning of a foreign language is as unnatural a process as can be conceived.7 But I suspect one would be wrong to do so. Franke died of tuberculosis only two years after his pamphlet was published, and he therefore had no opportunity of developing his ideas further. His early death (he was only twenty-six) was a serious blow, since no one else came forward to fill the gap and explore the psychological foundations of language learning in greater detail. Perhaps his departure
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had a more lasting effect on the history of language teaching in the present century. It may, for instance, help to account for the fact that of the three great principles enunciated by Sweet and Franke in 1884 -the primacy of spoken language, the subordination of grammar to text, and the rejection of translation -only the last has remained in any sense divisive or controversial. Be that as it may, Frankes influence in his own time was profound, and not least on Jespersen, who had formed a friendship by correspondence with him in 1884-6 and who paid him a remarkable tribute in his Farewell Lecture in Copenhagen in 1925: I was spiritually more akin to him than to anyone else.8 In spite of Jespersens interest, little is generally known about Franke and Die praktische Spracherlernung has never to my knowledge been translated into English. It is not an easy text and in some respects merited Sweets comment that it was a brief sketch in which too much space is taken up by abstract generalizations.9 Nevertheless, its historical importance is undeniable, and Franke himself would be an excellent subject for the kind of detailed research study that Stern calls for in Part 2 of his book (1983). Even a brief look at Reform Movement writers like Sweet, Franke, and Vitor shows, I think, the strength of the applied linguistic tradition10 in language teaching which has continued uninterruptedly for a century alongside the more intuitive initiatives of gifted practitioners such as Sauveur and his successors in the field. They are distinct, but related, traditions, and both have enriched language teaching in different ways. Received April 1984

Notes

1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10

Sweet 1884:578. Ibid.:577. Ibid.:579. Howatt (1984) contains a translation of this work under the title Language teaching must start afresh!, derived from Sweets paper under discussion here. Also, Howatt (1982) includes an extract dealing with the classroom techniques of the Reform Movement. Sweet 1884:584. Franke 1884:17. Sweet 1884:596. Haislund 1942:275. Sweet 1884:581. To avoid any misunderstanding on the use of this term, it should be mentioned that applied linguistics as an academic discipline under that name originated in the work of C. C. Fries at Michigan in the 1940s. My use of its derivatives (applied linguistic, applied linguist) in this article is, therefore, a deliberate extension to cover the whole period during which academic linguistic studies have had a serious impact on language teaching. I believe this is a legitimate distinction, though I am aware that others may disagree.

References

Franke,
282

F. 1884. Die praktische

Spracherlernung,

auf

Grund der Psychologie und der Physiologie der Sprache dargestellt. Heilbronn: Henninger. Haislund, N. 1942. Otto Jespersen. Englische Studien 75:273-83. teaching must Howatt, A. P. R. 1982. Language start afresh! -a centenary tribute to Wilhelm Vitor. ELT Journal 36/4:263-8. Howatt, A. P. R. 1984. A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Krashen, S. D. and T. D. Terrell. 1983. The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom. Oxford: Pergamon Press, and San Francisco: Alemany Press. Sauveur, L. 1874. Introduction to the Teaching of Living Languages Without Grammar or Dictionary. Boston: Schoenhof and Moeller. Stern, H. H. 1983. Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sweet, H. 1977. A Handbook of Phonetics, including a popular exposition of the principles of spelling reform. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweet, H. 1884. On the practical study of language. Transactions of the Philological Society, 1882-4; 577-99. Sweet, H. 1885. Elementarbuch des gesprochenen Englisch. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sweet, H. 1899. The Practical Study of Languages. A Guide for Teachers and Learners. London: Dent. Republished by Oxford University Press, edited by R. Mackin, 1964.

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