The art of teaching and studying languages

1894·18.6 MB·Language and languages -- Study and teaching

by  Gouin, François, d. 1896

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THE AET
OP
TEACHING AND STUDYING
LANGUAGES.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/artofteachingstuOOgouirich
:
THE ART
OP
TEACHING AND STUDYING
LANGUAGES.
BX
FEANgOIS GOUIN,
PfiOFESSEUK D'ALLEMAND A L'lICOLE SUPERIEURE ARAGO, PARI3.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY
W W
H ARD S AN
AND
VICTOR BETIS,
JlEilBRK DE L'ENSEIQNEMENT PUBLIC EN FRANCE.
SECOND EDITION.
LOITDON:
GEORGE PHILIP & SON, 32 FLEET STREET;
NEW YOKK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 743 & 745 BROADWAY.
%/
FirstEdition^ May 1892, SecondEdition^July 1892.
PKEFACE
Mankind has long passed from the stage in which speech is
used for the mere expression of physical facts and desires, to
that in which language is employed as the highest tool within
the grasp to paint the pictures of poetic imagination, and
sway a world-wide audience to noble thoughts and deeds.
Not onlyto satisfythe necessities of travellers in far countries
has the studyof language been ever desirable, buttopenetrate
the spirit and genius ofHomer, Yirgil, Shakespeare, Goethe,
Hugo, Dante, it has become, to the cultured of every country,
a necessity for the full gift of a liberal education. Since
language became literature, the necessity for the masteryover
other tongues than his own has forcedtheattentionofstudent
and of professor to the problemofthestudyoflanguages; and
the great intellectual value of a complete and logical system
for the mastery of tongues, if such could be found, is so
apparent, that the greatest honour has always been awarded
to discoverers in this region, which is still felt, however, to be
to a large extent unexplored, or at least unconquered..
Theworld hasthisyearseenamagnificentcelebrationof the
grand servicestothecause of education rendered byComenius.
In spite of this we are still far from having definitely adopted
in our school and college practice the now acknowledged
—
principles perceived by Comenius that education must be
organic and not mechanical, that language teaching, modern
and classic, should proceed by dealing with things and not
with words and grammatical abstractions, and that before all
else education should have direct bearing upon actual life.
The late Mr. W. H. Widgery, M.A., has a veiy pregnant
sentence in almost thefirst paragraph of hisadmirable booklet
—
;
vi PREFACE.
on "The Teaching of Languages inSchools" (D. Nutt), where
he says
"Ourgreatmodernreformers, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel,
have been the sources of mighty inspirations; they have
pointed out in the rough the paths along which we must
travel. They failed in system. We now need rather some
powerful organiser, well trained in philosophy, in logic, in
psychology, one whowilldoactual school-workforsome years,
and then clear for us the jungle of educational literature."
Mr. Widgery evidently looked for his language-organiser
to come after manyyears and afterwearylabour. Thislabour
is, happily, as will be seen, already in great part accomplished
andthework organised; and perhaps no sentence could better
express what it is that the work of M. Frangois Gouin, here
presented, attempts to perform.
This work might not inaptly be entitled "The Gift of Lan-
guages, and How to Acquire it; being an Investigation into
Linguistic Psychology." It will be found to appeal, not only
to the teacher and the specialist in pedagogic science, but to
the student and the general reader, for in its train it draws
interesting and far-reaching developments.
It is primarily an investigation into the psychological laws
underlying the universal act of learning the mother-tongue
by the little child, and, springing therefrom, the ex—position of
an artificial system of teaching foreign languages a system
which produces peculiarly successful results and endows the
learner with the gift for languages: and these results ^-e
curiously easy of explanation, being based on the laws of
gradual development of the human mind itself.
It may be well to point out at once that the work of M.
Gouin is essentially a —new departure; it is based upon a close
observation of nature that of the little child at its games
weaving its own individuality and learning its native tongue
its mental operations are analysed with extreme care and
described with a clearness and simplicity to which one is
not always accustomed in subjects so apparently abstruse as
that of psychology.
The system set forth is not a variation of the ordinary col-