Termiz state university foreign philology faculty the department of methodolgy of teaching english language

CHAPTER TWO. THE ORAL METHOD AND THE PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE STUDY
2.1.The Oral Method of Teaching Language
A significant number, presumably the greater part, of the individuals who have effectively dominated the expressed type of at least one unknown dialects keep up that their prosperity is because of the way that, when they started their examination, they dove straight into the communicated in language without doing any starter book work.[8] They encourage others to do something very similar. They say go among the natives, mix with them, listen to them, accustom yourself to hearing the language as spoken in everyday conversation, force yourself to understand the gist of what people say, imitate them, train yourself to retain by your auditory memory alone what you hear words, word-groups, and sentences, take every opportunity of using such units, make no systematic study of the grammar, make no written notes, perform no conscious analysis; in short, pick up the language as you did your mother tongue. In answer to the obvious objections that we raise, they say In theory it can’t be done, but in practice, it can. I don’t pretend I can describe the process in terms of psychology, I don’t pretend I can explain exactly what the process is or how the mind works in such cases.
All I can tell you is that the method is the right one it always works, provided you observe the rules of the game; it worked in my case, and I have seen it work in dozens of other cases. Every child can do it, and everybody who has learned an unwritten language has had to do it. We comment that we have met with individuals who have received that strategy, yet with deplorable outcomes that we know outsiders who talk monstrous pidgin English, that we realize English individuals talking terrible French, Hindustani, or Chinese, as the consequence of having gotten these dialects conversationally. In answer to this, we are told that those people could not have observed the rules of the game, they were probably people who had not listened in the right way had not trained themselves to observe, they had not formed thee proper imitation habit, they had not trained themselves to use their auditory memory they were probably people who imitated not what they really heard, but what they thought they heard who made up their own sentences by some artificial process instead of using correctly memorized sentences, they were probably people who formed wrote mentally what they heard, and so learned by eye instead of by ear. We then point out that we are not in the happy position of those who can go among the natives and mix with them, we happen to be in our own country, where the language of the natives with whom we mix is English and not the language we are setting out to learn our advisors will meet our objection by saying⁷.
Well then, go to a native teacher or to somebody who speaks the language like a native , tell him you want an oral course, a conversation course, and he will know what to do if he knows his business.[9] If he does not, you will have to teach him. Tell him to talk to you in French and to keep on talking French all the time; tell him to talk to you about everything in the room, tell him to perform a lot of actions and to make you perform a lot of actions, and tell him to talk about what he’s doing.[10] It’s quite simple. The purely oral exercises of question and answer in the foreign language should precede any attempts at written reproduction of what has been learned, partly on the general ground that the fixed associations of the ear should precede the secondary and perhaps variable associations of the written form of the  language, partly because of the facility and quickness with which they can be worked. They have the further advantage of training the pupils both to understand what is said, and reproduce it with accuracy and ease. They are, in fact, the best possible substitute for a phonetic method, although they will be ten times more efficient if preceded by systematic training in phonetics.
They are also in the highest degree stimulating to the pupils, and develop quickness, presence of mind, and the power of observation. Coming to the more recent literature on the subject we read in the teaching of modern foreign languages in school and university. It is justly emphasized to-day that we can not read even prose correctly, and much less verse, if we are substituting a false sound-picture for that in which the author conceived and fashioned his work. Whether the work is read aloud or not is in this respect immaterial.[11]This conception is one of thee supremely important results which have flowed from the insistence in recent years on the truism that language consists of sounds and not of symbols, that the prose work or the poem does not live on the printed page, but has to be, consciously or unconsciously, evoked into existence through our re-translation of the symbols into the sounds for which they stand.
The practical linguist, whose aims are largely utilitarian, is little interested in the ideals of the scholars, but intensely interested in the acquisition of a working knowledge of a language. The education authorities, whose aims are largely humanistic, are not unmindful of the pressing needs of the majority of language-learners, but are more especially solicitous for the advancement of learning in its wider and higher sense. But there need be, nay there should be, no antagonism between the two sets of views and aims, for there, is much ground which is common to the two.
The linguist is aiming at language mastery because a language is useful for all sorts of immediate and ultimate purposes the educationalist is aiming at language mastery because a language is an instrument of culture.⁸ The first stage of their respective programs is correctly designated by the common but ambiguous terms proficiency in, or mastery of, foreign languages. Those whose opinions are set forth in the opening paragraphs of this introduction are speaking of the practical mastery of the spoken form of a given foreign language considered as a means of communication, they are thinking of the needs of those whose calling brings them into contact with people whose language is not the same as theirs, they are thinking of those millions of earth dwellers who are engaged, on grounds of necessity or expediency, in acquiring the speech of foreign peoples.
The vast majority of language-learners, they say, are concerned primarily and mainly with language as a vehicle for everyday intercourse. Should an over-zealous educational idealist be ill advised enough to retort with a sneering reference to hotel-French and to waiter-linguists, he may receive a merited rebuke. The ideal of the linguist, as contrasted with that of the scholar is to be able to use the foreign language in such a way that the natives consider him not as a foreigner but as one of themselves. If he can speak their language fluently and idiomatically, he will be able to converse with them and exchange amenities in a manner likely to awaken their sympathy and confidence. Without discoursing on the philosophy, the literature, the history or the culture of the people of whom he is the guest, the linguist is able to arrive at a cordial intimacy unknown to those who may surpass him in erudition. The civil or military administrator who can talk on terms of linguistic equality with those who are subject to his rule is one who can contribute to the world’s ideals.The missionary does not learn Pekingese or Tamil in order to have access to the best thoughts contained in the literature of North China or South India, he wants to talk to the people of these countries in their own languages in order that they may have access to the best thoughts and institutions of Western civilization. If we have discussed at some length the respective ideals of the scholar and the linguist, it is because a proper understanding of the differences between them is essential to those who are engaged in the study or the teaching of languages. Some pages back we asked our selves the question. Is the oral or conversational method identical with that direct or reform the method which is used in schools at the present day? We answered that on the whole, the two systems were by no means identical, but that they differed both in their aims and in their procedure. In order better to understand the differences of procedure it is necessary to understand the different, in their aims hence this somewhat long digression. The two systems certainly have this in common, that they are modern reactions against antiquated methods. The protagonists of the one method a rein agreement with the adherents of the other in excluding the more or less archaic language of literature, deductive grammar, and the use of the mother tongue.
⁹2.2.The Principles of language Study
PLS expanded the endeavor started in SSTL to introduce a precise outline of thoughts pertinent to language educating, supplementing SSTL's generally language-arranged and practice guessed' sort of approach with extra bits of knowledge identifying with the brain science of language learning. By and large, PLS can be viewed as a more thoroughly examined, and legitimate outline of standards of phonetic teaching method than SSTL.[14] Apart from this assessment, differences between the two works have not been remarked upon by previous researchers but there are some very notable shifts of emphasis between SSTL and PLS with regard to statements about the kind of theory which should inform practice, and the proposed relationship between them. Firstly, the role of language learning theory is now in PLS viewed as fundamental to the selection of methods. Whereas discussion of the nature of language‘ had been in primary position in SSTL, this receives surprisingly little attention in PLS. The first third of PLS instead constitutes an innovative discussion of the nature of language learning, with language teaching hardly being mentioned. Absent also are the practical examples of course design and pedagogy which had characterized SSTL. Overall, it seems possible to read the first five chapters of PLS quite literally as a treatise on how readers might themselves consider learning a foreign language.
This previously neglected but nevertheless very striking change in emphasis between SSLT and PLS can largely be explained with reference to a shift in Palmer‘s own professional focus between their respective dates of composition. At the time of writing SSLT, Palmer was himself a French teacher, and seems to have been hoping to encourage other teachers of modern languages towards reform in British secondary schools . However, this avenue of influence did not turn out to be open to him. Increasingly, by force of demand, his lectures shifted in focus towards the needs of missionaries and others who were preparing for overseas service and who needed to learn so-called remote‘ languages. Thus, changes in the titles and stated contents of Palmer‘s lecture courses at UCL in the period 1917-21 reveal a shift in focus away from teaching and towards language learning or study‘, to the extent that one of his two courses of lectures in 1921-22 was advertised explicitly as a course of lectures on how to study a foreign language without a teacher. Indeed, starting in the 1918-19 academic session. [15]Theory of language study replaced methods of language teaching‘ as the umbrella title for Palmer‘s lecture courses .From 1918 onwards, Palmer additionally seems to have cut out a specialty for himself and at the as of late settled school of oriental studies in showing a type of general linguistics.
Without a doubt, it isn't freakish to recommend that in the UK setting Palmer was the primary scholastic to perceive the significance of Ferdinand de Saussure's work the first likewise to perceive the requirement for another order which would encourage the synchronic examination of language in its syntactic, not simply its phonological and phonetic angles for instance, by means of the emphasis on ergonics in SSLT, and surely the first to really convey a college course expressly on the subject of linguistics. In this way, the scholarly year 1918-1919 saw the association of a special course of Lectures in Linguistics, with a view to the specific requirements of ministers considering oriental languages at the school.[16] By 1920-21 Linguistics had gotten the third best-went course after Phonetics and Arabic. Firth was the first to build up the subject completely in the UK, as Professor of General Linguistics from 1944 until 1956, Palmer was, it appears, a fourth of a century comparatively radicalinestablishing phonetics at SOS just as showing it during the time frame 1918-22.¹⁰
Already by 1918, then, Palmer had transformed his original course on methods of language teaching into sessions on methods of language study or linguistics, for a new student body of missionaries and others learning remote languages rather than school teachers. It should be emphasized indeed that linguistics, in Palmer‘s course descriptions, was always allied to practical language learning needs, being more akin in this respect to Sweet‘s practical study of languages than to what we now conceive of as general linguistics. It can safely be assumed that the clear shift in emphasis towards language learning between SSTL and PLS was related to the shift in target audience and focus for Palmer‘s lectures which I have outlined above, while given the relative lack of emphasis on language in PLS one might speculate that at least some of the contents of his lectures on linguistics found a home not in PLS but in his Saussurean Memorandum on problems of english teaching in the light of a new theory, to be considered further below. Palmer did also give one term-long course of lectures on how to teach English to foreigners, the first such course at a British university. His work in London specifically on the teaching of English as a foreign language was largely confined after then to self-developmental efforts in connection with his own teaching of Spoken English, and associated materials writing.
This second, TEFL-focused strand of Palmer‘s work at the time was not in evidence in PLS but was given quite a full expression in the teaching of oral English. The latter book presents a wide range of teaching techniques and procedures which are consistent with the learning theories expounded in PLS, although the link is not made explicit in either work. It was only with Palmer‘s hitherto neglected Memorandum that the two strands were to be joined together, with principles of language learning and language teaching practices consistent with them being related for the first time in a systematic fashion. Aside from the change in focus from language to language learning, a further shift in emphasis between SSTL and PLS is towards a more explicit recognition of the attractions of principled eclecticism, or, as Palmer terms it, multiple lines of approach¹¹.
It is well-known that the founders of the Direct Method, in especial Vietor, have advocated the necessity of stressing the thought-content of whatever is presented to the pupil to learn. Indeed, this together with the practical use of phonetics for the acquisition of correct sounds constituted the basis of the reform inaugurated in 1882. Thus the meaningless Ollendorff sentence is long out of date-fortunately. This point of view Palmer makes his own by dwelling on the concept as the unit of expression, whence he first divides the lexicography of speech into monologs polylogs and alogisms, and then he classifies the material thus gained under the headings of form of morphology, meaning or semantics, and function or ergonics. In as much as Palmer rightly considers the intelligent memorizing of phrases and sentences as the sine qua non of a successful language-method, his scheme seems to me not only stimulating from the point of view of interest but also organically sound. For valuable suggestions as to how to teach Vocabulary the book is bound to render excellent service.[18] On the other hand, most teachers will find Palmer's classifications needlessly involved, and the ergonic chart on quite beyond the scope of their pupils comprehension. Passing over Palmer's discussion of the Factors of Linguistic Pedagogy as containing little that is new, we come to the best part of the book; namely, the Principles. Here the author points out that. In all but special cases the ultimate aim of the student is presumed to be fourfold-namely.
The understanding of the language as spoken by natives. The understanding of the language as written by natives. The speaking of the language as spoken by natives. The writing of the language as written by natives. Since it is obvious that any good method must be segregative, as Palmer says, in the beginning; that is, it must present one unit of fact at a time, in order to become aggregative at the end-it is equally clear that the pupil should not be encouraged to reproduce the given unit until he has had many opportunities of cognizing it passively.
Thus it happens when we learn our maternal tongue, and so it should be if we really wish to learn a foreign one. In other words, in the beginning, it will be a principle to have the pupil train his ear and subconscious feeling for the language by listening to and observing the teacher rather than by trying crudely to imitate him-for faultlessness must be the ideal of all foreign language instruction, and as Palmer. Reiterates throughout his book it is the hardest thing in the world to unlearn an error of speech since this means changing a bad habit with all its associations. And yet he observes correctly if this principle is valid, then most of the teaching of the present day violates a natural law.
Festina lente might therefore well be the maxim of all teachers of the elements of modern languages. Not only that, but train the ear and subconsciousness of your pupils in every conceivable way before setting them actively to work. In the second place, of the various ways of conveying to the pupil the meaning of a given unit, which is the best? Certainly Palmer is right again in saying that. In many cases, the direct method, as used by the average teacher, resolves itself into the negative precept. There must be no translation. Obviously, translation is in many cases the only direct way of conveying a meaning, for instance, the direct way of defining heureux is by giving the translation happy, just as the polylogilya is best defined by there is, and so on. The conclusion is that there are four ways of conveying meanings, placed in their pedagogical importance as follows:
By material association. Voila le livre.
By translation: Je suis heuraux = I am happy
By definition: Savoir signifie ne pas ignorer
By context: Regarder: Si je regarde par la fenetre je vois des maisons
The others indirect. If Palmer's book served no other purpose, it should at least cure fanatics of the belief that translation serves no valuable purpose. A third principle enunciated by Palmer is the value of learning by heart or catenizing. It is true, many teachers will say, let us memorize words and let us reason out sentences. But Palmer justly observes in both cases the study of the language is ultimately based on memorizing, for the difference between memorizing words and memorizing sentences is one not of kind, but of degree. Besides modern psychology has shown that a given chain is more quickly memorized in its entirety than when we memorize its links one by one. Consequently our speech-material falls again into two groups, that which is primary and should be memorized and that which is secondary or can be derived from the integrally assimilated units. The value of this distinction is obvious, for instance, it is on this principle that it is pedagogically sound to learn the article with each French noun, for as Palmer. No one who has treated integrally the polylogs la dent and le tonnerre can possibly say or write le dent or la tonnerre.
And, finally, as gradation is necessary so that the student may reproduce his units rapidly and faultlessly, the vocabulary must be selected with the greatest care and perspicacity by the teacher. The categories according to which this may be done are treated by Palmer under the heads of frequency, ergonic combination, concreteness, proportion and general expediency. In all this, there is much to be grateful for and little to criticize.¹² Clearly, in matters of detail, many teachers will differ with Palmer’s views as to when he occasionally overstresses the importance of this principle or that. I for one do not entirely agree that: As an ultimate result of pure subconscious comprehension of la porte the sight of the door will evoke the reaction [laport], whereas the conscious comprehension will probably produce as an immediate reaction either. But such differences are few or unimportant. Palmer's ideal standard program is then the working-out of these principles in a form most suitable for school children.
The period of study is divided into three stages under the familiar names of elementary, intermediate and advanced the whole covering from say five to seven years as the case may be. The general procedure differs little from that of the direct or reform method as used in continental european schools. Specifically, however, these points are noteworthy, the elementary stage stresses subconscious comprehension, much time is devoted to clear and definite explanations in the mother-tongue, the script used is exclusively phonetic-indeed Palmer advocates two years as the minimum before making the transition to the ordinary spelling, during the first three months the pupil's active work consists in articulation exercises .
The Intermediate stage, lasting from one to three years, develops memorizing devices, the secondary matter is worked up by means of ergonic charts -some of which are very useful, and the transition is made to the ordinary or traditional spelling. And, lastly, the advanced stage, also from one to three years, develops rapid reading, free compositlon and translation, some conversation, and above all stresses the principle of combining or aggregating the various units.
All this is copiously illustrated with exercises, remarks on procedure, questionnaires, etc. As for the special programs, these are devised for such students as have a special aim, such as reading, speaking, and so on, in view. Some interesting remarks are made on corrective exercises, which, however, might be further developed. Under the heading of the functions of the teacher, one point made by Palmer seems to me of capital importance; the ideal teacher must have a thorough knowledge of both the foreign language and the student's native tongue.I need hardly elaborate how essential this is in our American schools and colleges today-particularly in view of the woeful neglect by our English teachers of such subjects as phonetics and grammar.
Besides, how can we teach the correct attitude toward the use of the generic and partitive constructions in French, the position of the adjective, such polylogs as depuis quand andje ai vu hier unless we not only know but understand their English equivalents? But I must conclude. As I hope to have shown, Palmer's book is tremenduously stimulating. It touches vitally upon almost all the points that should interest the modern language teacher. It is suggestive, rich in detail, thorough and enlightening.[21] It is unfortunate that Palmer's principle to consider a language as philology has prevented him from dealing at all with the teaching of literature or at least from pointing out when and how the transition should be made-for as the reformers, particularly others, have shown the study of literature versus literary history has also been furthered by the reform. Here again Palmer's neglect of bibliographical material is seriously to blame. It might be said too that since the language treated is French, Palmer's model exercises are often sadly lacking in the great French qualities of lightness and esprit, the fact is they are very often dull and matter of fact.