A Modern Approach to Teaching English [antikvár]

1 THE PROBLEM The modern world is plagued by considerable uncertainty. Contemporary society must somehow achieve a satisfactory synthesis of old and new; it must establish appropriate values and goals to accommodate each changing situation; and above all, it must consider implications for the future. As members of the world community, we share the general confusion. And as teachers of the English language in particular, we share the additional problem of how to go about directing others with diverse backgrounds and aims. Necessarily, we must first secure an understanding of our subject matter and then develop a rational, practical means of communicating that knowledge. The task is not easy, since at present there exist three distinct approaches to the study of English grammar: (1) traditional—deductive, functional, emphasizing definition and rule; (2) structural—linguistic, inductive, concerned with word form and function; and (3) transformational—linguistic, deductive, mathematical and theoretical, emphasizing sentence formula. It is essential to somehow assimilate the three, arriving at an approach to the study of our language that will work in the classroom and be usable outside the classroom. This book attempts to do just that, presenting the structural linguistic approach as the most desirable for reasons of practicality and logic. BEGINNINGS OF THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF LANGUAGE The most significant development in the teaching of English has been the scientific study of language. This study began in the last century with Erasmus Rask, Jacob Grimm and Carl Verner and was continued in the twentieth century with the linguistic achievements of Edward Sapir, Leonard Bloomfield, Kenneth Lee Pike, Charles C. Fries, George Trager, Henry Lee Smith, Jr., Noam Chomsky and others. These men have recorded a body of knowledge and developed new techniques of study that should revolutionize our English curriculum within this generation. One consequence of the scientific investigation of language has been an intensive comparison between the traditional approach and the modern. This comparison has great significance for the teacher of English. 1