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
- 123 meanings of a lexical item, which is essential fnr the learner to l)o able to think in the foreign language. The third most important linguist of the direct method is Otto Jaspersen whose main methodological contribution is How to leach a Foreign Language published in English in 1904. Jaspersen shares Sweet's opinion in a lot of methodological questions, e. g. as far as the selection and grading of the material are concerned. Besides emphasizing the communicative practical aims of language teaching Jaspersen totally rejects teaching translation as a skill. On the other hanti ho accepts translation if it is used to semantisize a concept, an abstract thing. It must be admitted that there are many words where an English translation gives the information required more quickly and more clearly that it could be given in a long explanation in the foreign language. (Jaspersen 1909: 70/71). Jaspersen warns the teachers, however, not to use this undoubtedly comfortable way of conveying meaning too often. Jaspersen suggests the same ways of semanticizing is Vietor does, i. e. the use of pictures, objects and actions and lie introduced other ways, too like - analogy - context - definition At a beginner's level, however, these latter ways of semanticizing can only be used to a limited extent because of the trick of sufficient vocabulary and the result is rattier confusion than clarity. Now let's sum up which principles of the direct method could be put into practice and would be effective in teaching foreign languages in the primary school: 1. A proper place should be given to teaching phonetics. 2. A very important requirement should be t,o develop the oral skills. 3. Grammar should be taught inductively. 4. We should use the principle of global reading. 5. We can just about agree with the rejection of teaching translation as a skill.
