Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)

Kovács, Éva: The History of Teaching Vocabulary

- 122 The intralinquistic difficulties arise from the interferences in the target language itself, such as logic, definiteness, simplicity, phonetic difficulties and general difficulties. Sweet realized that the difficulties are the result of false analogy in the case of learning any foreign languages and the grade of difficulties is about the same in any language

. What kind of a stand does Sweet take in mastering vocabulary? It was Sweet who introduced and worked out the principle of grading in the arrangement of the lexical material too. In teaching lexis Sweet puts a special emphasis on global reading and clear, direct and concrete associations. He completely rejects mono-linqual semanticizing as crossassociations are unavoidable by this way of conveying (leaning and it can be only time consuming and confusing. He thinks that it is a fallacy that if we were only to get rid of translation in teaching a foreign language, substituting pictures or gestures, we should get rid of the crossassociations of our own language. But these cross-associations are independent of translation. They arise simply from the fact that each idea that comes into our minds instantly suggests the native expression of it, whether the words are uttered or not: and however strongly we may stamp the foreign expression on our memories, the native one will always be stronger. (Sweet 1899: 197). Sweet's main argument against explaining in the foreign language is that as long as we are learning the foreign language it is our first business to have it explained to us as clearly and unambiguously as possible. Therefore all explanations ought to be in the language we know - that is our own - not in the one we do not know. (Sweet 1899: 199). Thus Sweet gives priority to translation in conveying the meaning of lexical units. It is this very principle C-. J. Dodson took over from Sweet when he worked out his bilingual method later. Sweet rejects the picture method as well which is undoubtedly very effective and useful at a beginner level. He is against pictures as a means of semanticizing as they do not lead to generalization. This point-of-view appears later in Baljaev's conscious-practical method. Although semanticizing by pictures can be useful and successful when teaching beginners, but its effectiveness may be doubtful when our aim is to teach not only the denotative meaning but also the connotative