Earl W. Stevick

“ The most important fact about this kind of question is not whether the answer is yes or no, but rather who is qualified to answer it. We sometimes forget that a worthwhile answer can only come from a classroom teacher who understands its implications, and that even he or she can answer it for only one class at a time. ”

“ ADAPTING A PATTERN-PRACTICE COURSE (ENGLISH)
One of the most pregnant sentences in history of language teaching was Fries' dictum that 'a person has "learned" a foreign language when he has...mastered the sound system...and...made the structural devices...matters of automatic habit.' (1947, p. 3) . Even though the person who has done these things may not be a fluent speaker, 'he can have laid a good accurate foundation upon which to build' through the acquisition of 'content vocabulary' (ibid.) ”

“ This is one reason why published textbooks are so often rejected by prospective users. It is also one reason why we must give to adaptation much more thought, time, and prestige than we have been accustomed to doing.
The final proof of the lessons, as we have said, is in what the students can now do that they recognize as immediately useful or enjoyable in its own right, or potentially so in the immediate future. Greetings and introductions, marked (1) in the matrix on p.87, are certainly socio-topical 'behavioral objectives' in this sense, and these were in the lesson from the beginning. ”

“ Referring once more to Fries' famous definition, we may question whether, in fact 'to have learned a foreign language' is it itself a serious goal for any adults except a few professional linguists and other language nuts. ”

“ The priority, both logical and chronological, of the basic structural habits goes unchallenged in many circles, and we sometimes act as though we think the best way to 'internalize' the 'structures' is to concentrate on them to the virtual exclusion of everything else. ”

“ The nearest reference to meaning is a statement (p. viii) that the vocabulary has been drawn from 'basic semantic fields.' Echoing Fries, the authors state that their goal is to teach 'with a limited vocabulary of high-frequency words, those features of English phonology and syntax which students should be able to comprehend and manipulate before proceeding beyond the intermediate level' (p. vii) .
Teachers who are philosophically in communion with the authors will welcome their work and will probably adopt it. Those who reject the philosophy will also reject the book. ”

“ Having (as we hope) livened the lesson up topically by bringing in new words and color slides to illustrate we would liketo do the same in the social dimension. The simplest way to do so is to convert at least three of the substitution frames (p.85) to Cummings devices. (Chapter 3, p.59 and Chapter 6) We can do so by teaching the questions 'What is this? Where are (we) ? What are (you) ?' Where formerly we had only repetition and substitution drills, we now have some two-line embryonic conversations. ”

“ Certainly in addition to extrinsic motivations like fulfilling a requirement or preparing for residence abroad, one needs the intrinsic rewards of esthetically agreeable activities with freguent rewards of various kinds. ”

“ Does it suggest (4) ways in which the students can put their new, linguistic skills to work for non-linguistic purposes that they can accept as their own?
The lesson under consideration does contain two short samples of genuine use, in the form of the dialogs. The lists of words in the drills provide for lexical exploration, and the grammar drills themselves lead the student to explore a bit of English structure. The fourth component is not overtly represented in the lesson itself, and is only hinted at in the introduction. ”