Word: pasts
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
Meanwhile, Harvard continued with the time-honored dusty-dry procedure of teaching 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...
...After all, the exponents of the oral-aural method state, a child learns his language habits only through constant exposure to and practice of a single tongue. The child does not think consciously, "Does this preposition take the dative case? Is the definite article placed before or after the past participle? What is the gender of this noun?" Rather, he learns almost instinctively what is correct and what is not. And it is precisely this sort of semi-innate knowledge which the direct method seeks to inculate. Not to think in English: In a nutshell, this epitomizes...
...past two summers, the lazy countryside around the minuscule village of Sart in Turkey has been the scene of frenetic excavations. Under the field directorship of George M. A. Hanfmann, professor of Fine Arts and Curator of Classival Antiquities at the Fogg Museum, archaeological experts from Harvard and Cornell have led Turkish workmen in an attempt to unearth the remains of the famed ancient metropolis of Sardis...
Apathy, the Council's "poor reputation from previous years," and "fear of too much work" were cited by Council officials as possible reasons for the small number of petitions turned in. Although the Council's past election records are nuclear, one member admitted that this may be "one of our worst showing in recent years...