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

- 132 Londging is quite cheap hut hoar

d is expensive for nearly all the food has to be brought in by wagon. (Fries 1945: 55) Thus the meaning should be inferred from the context. To be able to do so the pupils should have a wide range of vocabulary, that is why it seemes to me that this way of semanticizing can really only be used at an advanced level. Robert Lado used Fries's comparative structural analysis for his pattern drill, the detailed description of which can be found in his Language Teaching - A Scientific Approach. Lado's starting point is that patterns become habits by practice i. e. by analogy, variation and transformation. On the basis of contrastive analysis we should practise first of all the patterns which are different in the foreign language and the mother tongue, i. e. problem patterns. A grammatical pattern is an arrangement of parts having linguistic significance beyond the sum of its parts (Lado 1964: 90). Teaching a problem pattern begins with teaching the specific structure points where a formal change in the pattern is crucial and where the student is not able to manipulate the required change (Lado 1964: 95). Lado's pattern drill reminds us formally of Palmer's substitution tables, but it is still different. Palmer meant to teach sentence formation by the principle of ergonic combination, while Lado wants a certain grammatical structure to be practised in such a way that the pupils should be able to use it automatically. The steps of taching problem patterns are: 1. attention pointer, usually a single sentence calling the^..students

' attention to the point at issue; 2. examples, usually minimally contrastive examples showing a pair of sentences that differ only on the point or points being made; 3. repetition by class and presentation of additional examples of the same contrast; 4. comments or generalization elicited inductively from the students and confirmed by the teacher; 5. practice with attention on the problem being taught. Ibis is what