Word: germane
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...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...
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...
...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...
...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...