Word: grammar
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...solve, at least to understand problems. Present-day Oxford philosophers have little patience with the philosophers of the past who wrestled mightily with ethics, metaphysics and transcendental abstractions. As one thinker explained to Ved Mehta: "Why bother listening to men whose problems arose from bad grammar?" Ved Mehta sums up: Once philosophers asked "What is truth?" Now they say, "Look at all the different ways the word true is used in ordinary speech." All these ways summed up is all that can be known of truth...
...Committee recommends that extensive use of lectures be added to first-year courses, particularly in the opening weeks. "The subject matter of the lectures would be the meaning and grammar of a set of patterns basic to the language." This would free section meetings for more personal approach, but the report emphasizes that sections should not be used for pronunciation practice and grammatical pattern drill, "which can best be done alone in language laboratory...
German A was criticized, for example, because it does not give a "coherent presentation of grammar." The report says that "the aural-oral method should be used side-by-side" with a more suitable and rigorous text than the current grammar employed by the course...
Robert H. Spaethling, Assistant Professor of German and head of German A, disagreed with the recommendations of the report. He said that grammar cannot be taught abstractly "without knowing anything of the language beforehand." Although Spaethling did not object in principle to occasional lectures, he said that they would be "premature" if used to begin instruction...
Slavic A, the beginning course in Russian, is heavily criticized by the committee for its lack of conversational practice. The report also suggests that lectures would make the presentation of grammar more uniform, saving much of the time "wasted in sections by students not understanding the grammar...