Influence of Philology on Creating New Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages. Structural Approaches

It was shown above that changes in foreign language teaching reflected respons­es to a variety of historical events and economic circumstances. It won't be an exag­geration to state that Methodology is a socially— based branch of science.

But all the same, methods of foreign language teaching can be also de­veloped in methodology under the influence of some other factors, philol­ogy including. Notions and ideas of philology and methodology enrich one another to a great degree.

At the second half of the 20-th century philologists were intensively inquir­ing into the structure of the sentence. As if responding to it Methodology cre­ated the Structural Approach to language teaching. Its purpose was to help in learning the language system (structure) as a medium for meaning. The Struc­tural Approach focused attention on the form: structuralists taught the struc­ture of the language and taught how the meaning functioned in the structure.

The Structural Approach gave rise to some methods. All structural meth­ods of teaching languages were centered on teaching grammatical structures — patterns which were arranged in a certain sequence upon the degree of dif­ficulty the structure might arise in learners while assimilating it.

Below the Modelling Method and the Method of Transformations are de­scribed. They worked as follows: A number of "model phrases" (grammatical structures) was selected for teaching. Their grammatical meaning was given to learners, and the following exercises were suggested:

1.          Transform the following sentences according to the model:

The boy playing in the yard is my brother. — The boy who is playing in the yard is my brother.

2.          Fill out the gaps according to the model:

The boy________ in the yard is my brother.

The boy playing in the yard is my brother.

The exercises of these methods can be found nowadays in a lot of text­books, for example, in those by R. Murphy, Drozdova and many others.

The number of repetitions of one transformation in the original textbooks of the Structural Approach was very high. (In modern textbooks it is much less numerous because the Method of Transformations is not the only one used in them.)

The founders of the Structural Approach believed that through such nu­merous repetitive drills the grammatical structure gets internalized and learn­ers start using it in communication without any conscious-raising. However the life proved that it didn't. Using the Structural Approach teachers suc­ceeded in students' learning structures of the language, however failed in teaching them how to use the structures in speech.

Palmer's Method

One of the most prominent representatives who used the Structural Ap­proach in teaching was Harold Palmer [81]. His method was called the New Direct Method. As it can easily be seen from the title, besides structuralistic principles Palmer used those of the Direct Method (immediate connection between auditory images of words and their visual images, ousting the na­tive language out of the process of teaching and activating learner's intuitive sense and natural sensation ). From structuralism Palmer adopted the way of teaching grammar: teaching only those grammatical phenomena which were of high frequency and necessity in the language. Palmer's methods of teach­ing grammar were based on behavioral principles of psychology, according to which speech behavior of a human being is formed as an answer to the stimulus: to produce speech reactions in a foreign language learners are to be given speech stimuli in the foreign language. First they are to be shown how to react, i.e. how to produce a speech action. Palmer considered a stimulus to be a pattern of speech (a grammatical structure), e.g.: Stimuli: I like green houses. I like red houses. Students' reaction (responses): I like green houses. I like red houses.

A stimulus, which is a pattern sentence, is pronounced by a teacher and the students repeat it. More and more sentences are given for repetition. Nei­ther translation nor explanation is given. The students are to use their in­tuitive sense to comprehend the meaning from the visual aids, speech, mime and gestures, movements and facial expression of the teacher. If students can speak the pattern sentence, then they are suggested to substitute an element in the pattern. The element to substitute is given in bold type, e.g.: Stimuli:  I like green houses

I've got a letter today. Responses: I like red houses

I've got a book today.

Any element of the structure could be substituted. At the advanced level 2 elements of the structure could be substituted.

It was a method which implied not only mechanical repetition. To carry out the substitutions learners had to develop their quick-wittedness. The substitutions carried out correctly rose their positive sensations. At the advanced level of teaching learners were suggested to make substitutions on their own. Palmer called this kind of drills Substitutional Tables. There can be found a lot of them in modern text-books, for example, in those by R.Murphy and T. Drozdova.

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