Tuesday, July 26, 1966 Summer Session Kansan
Page 5
'TV teacher' favors new directions in language
By Annie Reid
The grammar method of teaching languages is a fallacy. Language is conversation, a means to communicate." These were the words of Mrs. Loris. Woolf, a "television teacher" of Spanish in Lafayette School District, California.
Mrs. Woolf is at KU this summer finishing up her work for her M. A. in education, with a specialty in Spanish. She has taught at the Berlitz School of Languages, speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English, and has been to four government-sponsored language institutes. This summer, Mrs. Woolf is finishing her thesis for her M. A., at her own expense, and says it is "quite a job" with one husband, four children, and five cats.
MRS. WOOLF'S thesis is on the subject of guides, or aiding material, for teachers who work in the classroom while classes are taught in foreign language over the television. Many of these teachers, Mrs. Woolf says, do not speak the language as natives and have acquired only enough knowledge of the language to be allowed to teach it.
As it takes eight to ten years of study, and preferably a visit to a place where the target language is spoken, for a teacher to master the language, the students benefit from being taught by a real speaker of the language over TV. It is necessary, however, for teachers in the classroom to work with the children and to prepare them for the TV lessons. In order to keep the children interested and enthusiastic, the teachers must have good guides from which to take material for preparing the children.
MRS. WOOLF, born and reared in a four-lingual home in Brazil, teaches Spanish to schoolchildren in Lafayette over the closed-circuit Instructional Television (ITV). She does a telecast on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Wednesday, "We mop up the blood from the studio floor."
According to Mrs. Woolf, teaching on TV is not as easy as it looks. Every minute must hold the interest of the students and must be carefully planned. For every minute on the air, an hour of preparation time is spent if the work of every person involved in the broadcast—directors, camera men, set men, technicians, etc. is counted.
Mrs. Wooft believes strongly in the audio-lingual approach to teaching a language. On TV, she uses the Audio-Lingual Materials (ALM) method, although she does a lot to supplement it. The ALM method, she says, is especially lacking in cultural lessons and has bad tests.
THE ALM METHOD was chosen because it is very adaptable to TV, and, Mrs. Woolf added, "we have done that very successfully." In the first four dialogues of Level I of the ALM, the students learn the whole phonology of the language: "That's why the ALM dialogues are so fantastic."
In the ALM, as in other audiolingual approaches (as opposed to the traditional grammertranslation approach), the students at first only hear and repeat the language, and get a broad translation. Only after they have mastered the speaking and listening part do the students get to read the language, and not until much later do they write it.
This is "the way the child learns his own native tongue." If the student has learned the pronunciation and sound of the language before he sees it written, the English orthography will not interfere with the reading.
With the ALM and other audiolingual methods, the children build with vocabulary and dialogues. Grammar is taught "inductively": the students do oral "pattern drill" and "item substitution" drills. Repetition is the key here. The child gets to know what "sounds" right. He never really learns the rule; he gathers the rule from usage.
MRS. WOOLF pointed out that the students must never be allowed to become bored or uninterested. This is a danger with these drills and repetitions. The teacher must be imaginative, and the dialogues and lesson material must fit the age level and interests of the students.
Children between 8 and 12 years old are in the "magic age" for learning language, Mrs. Woolf said. Within six months to a year, the children will think and make jokes in the new language. After the age of 12 the children lose this magic ability.
Languages should be begun in the fourth grade, according to Mrs. Woolf. The children are imitative and have a great mimical ability, are less inhibited, less afraid to make mistakes, and accept what they hear. After 12 Mrs. Woolf said, the children, like adults, are analytical. They must know the grammar rules, translations, and "why." This makes it harder for them to learn a language "naturally."
MRS. WOOLF does not advocate starting to teach a foreign language to children before the fourth grade. By the fourth grade, the children are familiar with their own language, and have "learned the process of learning." They are ready to apply this process of learning to a new language, but are not yet self-conscious and inhibited.
After the sixth grade, there is a difference in the rate at which students learn a language. This difference between fast and slow is not evidenced before sixth grade. Language classes in junior high school must have homogenous grouping for this reason.
"Motivation, I think, is the basic problem with seventh and eighth graders...with eightth graders especially...They are bored, they are sophisticated. They want to be entertained..."
There is no such problem with fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, who "lap it up, live it, ham it up."
ALTHOUGH THERE is no such thing as an "instant foreign language," Mrs. Woolf said, she believes in "reinforcing games." These games are played with the children, not all the time, but occasionally, and are "painless."
Paleontology works are published at KU
The University of Kansas Press this week published two more volumes on the "Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology," bringing to 18 the volumes completed of a projected 30.
Raymond C. Moore, emeritus Summerfield professor of geology at KU, is editor of the "Treatise", which will be a 20 to 30-year project involving 200 scientists from at least 17 nations.
Eager to be politician
WHEATLEY, England — (UPI)
— Prime Minister Harold Wilson
got a letter from Jonathan White
last week that asked: "Dear Harold
Wilson, pleas may I join the
government?"
Wilson wrote back that he hoped 6-year-old Jonathan could join the government at a later date, when he's a little older.
The students learn without knowing it.
Mrs. Woolf says it is a fallacy to try to do everything in the foreign language. The rules of games and tests must be explained in English. "They must know what they're doing, what is expected of them." A language teacher is actually "an ambassador of good will," for the nations speaking that language. If a
teacher turns the child against the language, he also will turn the child against the country and its people.
One of the toughest problems Mrs. Woolf ran up against was teaching colors on black and white TV. She finally solved the problem with a diagram of a traffic light. Everyone knows that the lights are red, yellow, and green from the top down.
Mrs. Woolf sees the trend today toward the audio-lingual approach to languages, and thinks that it is dominating over the old translation-grammar methods. It does, however, require a skilled teacher who has a deep knowledge and familiarity with the language and who can speak it like a native. Less skilled teachers have a very difficult time with the method.
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