Word: methods
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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These words, coming through the earphones in the rejuvenated basement of Boylston Hall, represent dual revolutions in Harvard's teaching of modern languages which will reach their culmination this year. A new method and a not-so-new building combine to give the College's undergraduates a far better chance to learn to speak foreign languages well than at any time in the past, and represent an unmourned break with previous tradition...
...first part of the equation is Boylston Hall. This building, resembling the Charlestown jail more than a modern center for instruction in languages, has been completely reconstructed to give the modern language departments an opportunity to utilize the "oral-aural," "direct," method of teaching. Once a drafty museum of natural history, once the finest chemical laboratory in the United States, and once the headquarters of the Yen-Ching Institute Boylston has undergone another complete transmutation...
Repetition forms the key to the oral-aural method, the new and better way to teach foreign languages which Harvard has finally adopted. Instead of studying grammar per se, students pick up grammar implicitly; instead of learning rules for pronunciation, they first learn to say many words and later discover the rules...
...advanced from passive listening to active mimicry by having students repeat what they hear from the master voice," Edward Geary, assistant professor of Romance Languages, comments. He points out the "autocritical" function: If a person makes an egregious mispronunciation, he then hears it when he replays the tape. This method, carried on in the privacy of individual booths, also avoids embarrassment for students about their blunders," Geary states, in addition to hammering in corrent pronunciations...
Students in French A, French C, and German A attend class four times per week, the additional hour being devoted to practice in pronunciation in the language lab. The homework load is cut proportionally. At other colleges using the direct method, elementary languages are often run eight hours per week, in order to teach a new tongue more effectively and speedily...