Word: frohock
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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French 20 will in effect be divided into two courses when changes outlined yesterday by Wilbur M. Frohock, professor of Romance Languages, take place in the fall. Now given only in sections, the course will be offered simultaneously in either three all-French sections a week, or one English section and two French lectures a week...
Harvard, while recognizing the merits of this system, is not willing to go this far. "We are planning more and more emphasis on speaking," Frohock says, "but the fact remains that while my barber may speak French better than I do, he hasn't got a single intelligent thing to say in it. For myself, speaking is only important, because it helps you to learn to write the language." The Romance Language Department's plans for the next few years then definitely do include a new emphasis on oral teaching, but not to the exclusion of the cultural and intellectual...
...Frohock points out that the department initiated last year modern methods in the elementary French courses: French R and French A. Geary is using the "direct method" of language teaching, i.e. from the moment the student steps into the classroom, he hears nothing but French. This system is designed to surround the student with an environment, so dominated by the language, that he absorbs it by osmosis, in the same fashion that he learned his own language. "It is still too early to tell how it is working out," Geary comments, "but it has worked at Cornell and there...
Another facet of the new methods now being employed here is the use of the "machine system" (tape recorders). "We are starting this in one of our elementary French courses," Frohock notes, "but we are far behind such colleges as Wesleyan and Columbia. They have many of these essential practice laboratories, we have only one which has just been started this year." Professors Henry Hatfield and Harry Levin are not quite so enthusiastic on the subject of tape recorders, the former remarking that "we haven't gone overboard on machines, but we are waiting to see how they work...
...Frohock agrees that the departments need more than 3 hours a week. "This is one of the reasons we are behind the other colleges," he adds. "Columbia has 5 hours a week, Wesleyan has six, and Princeton has six." In the accelerated Cornell system, the elementary language student spends eight hours a week studying languages, three in a "drill section," three in the lab, and two in lecture. These courses, however, count for double credit...