This session revisits the Series Method of teaching and learning languages, developed by Francois Gouin (1831 to 1896). Presentation includes the background and principles of the method, followed by examples of updated applications for modern classrooms. Additional discussion explores the benefits of providing students with linked, related sentences and readings. Paper / report (45 min)
L’Art d’Enseigner et d’Etudier les Langues. (The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages.) Francois Gouin. Second Edition. George Philip and Son.
Language teachers strive to create optimal learning conditions, materials, and methodologies to enhance their students' language acquisition. Yet, many reading, listening, and grammar materials include exercises that do not link to each other, or build, but instead present a haphazard set of sentences, or short, unrelated readings.
Sample of Non-Series Language Task: This book is about grammar. It’s a grammar book. My garden has vegetables. It’s a ______________________. The soup has beans. It’s _____________________________. I read a lot of articles in magazines. I read a lot of __________________________. The factory makes toys. It’s a ___________________________. The villages are in the mountains. They are _______________________________.Fundamentals of English Grammar. Betty Azar. Pearson-Longman. 2011. P. 162.
Note that many other of Azar's examples are sequential.
Other examples can include placement tests, pre and post grammar tests, and achievement tests such as TOEFL and TOEIC.
Francois Gouin (1831 to 1896) a French teacher of Latin, was one of the first formal language learners to write about using connected ideas to learn languages.
In an effort to learn German, he moved to Hamburg, holed up in his lodgings, and began studying German by using the same method that he used to teach Latin:
the “classical process” using a grammar book, a dictionary, and practicing translation. (Page 10).
After a few weeks, Gouin felt confident that he had learned the language, and visited a German university to try out his newly acquired knowledge. He reports on the result:
“But alas! In vain did I strain my ears; in vain my eye strove to interpret the slightest movements of the lips of the professor; in vain I passed from the first classroom to a second; not a word, not a single word would penetrate to my understanding. Nay more than this, I did not even distinguish a single one of the grammatical forms so newly studied; I did not recognize even a single one of the irregular verbs just freshly learnt, though they certainly must have fallen in crowds from the lips of the speaker.” (p. 11).
Refusing to give up, Gouin returned to his room, and planned his next study:
“Imagine then, if it be possible, the astonishment at first, then the stupefaction, then the degradation by which I was overtaken after the first quarter of an hour at the lecture I attended, when I had to submit to the evidence, and to confess to myself that I was, so far as regards the spoken language, exactly in the same state as upon the first day; that I did not understand a word, not a syllable, and that all my efforts had been made in pure waste, or at least had produced no appreciable result. This was no longer a mere deception--it was a failure; nay, more than this, it was a defeat…For the first time in my life I dared to question the efficacy of the classical methods of the university. (p. 14 and 16).
“Alas! I can say it now; it all depended upon a very small error. I had simply mistaken the organ. The organ of language--ask the little child--is not the eye; it is the ear. The eye is made for colours, and not for sounds and words. Now all I had hitherto learnt, I had learnt by the eye. The word was in my eye and not in my ear. The fact expressed by it had not penetrated to, was not graven upon, my intellectual substance, had never been received by my faculty of representation. This was why I was deaf though yet I heard, and both deaf and dumb though I was able to speak. Fool that I had been! I had studied by the eye, and I wished to understand by my ears.” (p.33).
Gouin’s epiphany came when returned to France and saw that his 3-year-old nephew had learned French, seemingly effortlessly.
Gouin saw that his nephew was curious about the world, wanted to know the names of everything and asked questions about how things worked. After learning vocabulary and gaining knowledge, the nephew would play, re-enact the learning situation, and discuss the experience.
“This language, so living and so thoroughly real, within the power of such a tiny mortal, handled with so much ease, applied to everything with so much surety, so much precision, so much relevancy--this phenomenon could not but strike me forcibly. It was impossible not to make a comparison at once between the child and myself, his process and my own.”
“What!” I thought, “this child and I have been working for the same time, each at a language. He playing round his mother, running after flowers, butterflies, and birds, without weariness, without apparent effort, without even being conscious of his work, is able to say all he things, express all he sees, understand all he hears…” (p. 34).
“The classical method, with its grammar, its dictionary, and its translations, is a delusion--nothing but a delusion. Nature knows and applies another method. Her method is infallible; this is an undeniable , indisputable fact…” (p. 35).
“To perceive anything, we must first have light upon it. Falsehood cannot be well distinguished but in the light of truth…I required a term of comparison. This term of comparison was a better method--in the present case, the method of Nature…”
One language specialist, Dr. Ataillah Maleki-Assistant Professor of TEFL at University of Medical Sciences at Zanjan-describes the epiphany that Francois Gouin experienced upon seeing his young nephew, only a young child, learning French rapidly and with great success.
"Observing his three-year-old nephew, Gouin came to the conclusion that language learning is a matter of transforming perceptions into conceptions. Later, he devised a teaching method that was premised upon these insights. The Series Method taught learners directly a series of connected sentences which were easy to understand."
Gouin concluded that language is learned in "series" or in themes. Often the themes are observable and involve the five senses.
Chapter XII“Transformation of a perception into a conception.” (Page 39). To see with the “mind’s eye. http://archive.org/stream/artofteachingstu00gouirich#page/38/mode/2up
Chapter XIII Principles of Classification Employed by the Child Order of Succession in TimeRelation of End to Means
The Incubation
Secret of the Child’s Memory
Explanation of My Failures by Francois Gouin
Avoid working at “hazard” learning in the greatest disorder possible. p. 44
The Art of Learning and Studying Foreign Languages. Francois Gouin. 1880. 1894 Published: London by G. Philip and Son.
http://archive.org/stream/artofteachingstu00gouirich#page/n5/mode/2up
The child assimilates the mother-tongue sentence by sentence, and not word by word
Revelation of the high value of the verb, the “soul of the sentence.”
Series of Verbs
The acorn sprouts
The oak plant takes root.
The shoot sprouts out of the earth.
The sap rises.
The sapling throws out leaves.
The stalk buds.
The stalk blossoms.
The flower blooms.
The fruit forms.
The fruit ripens.
The fruit falls.
Success
Gouin was able to access and produce the target language through the series method.
Concession, addressing opposition: