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

- 528 as an oral activity and distinguishes it from translation which is a written activity reguiring totally different skills and training. Ihis interpretation exercise is, of course, not part of either the direct or indirect method. The direct method includes translation exercises, not interpretaion work where both the teacher's stimulus and ttie pupil's responses are oral. The direct method rejects interpretation exercises because they involve ttie use of ttie mother tongue (Dodson 1967: 83). In a bilingual method interpretation exercise ttie mother tongue is used only as a cue for concept causation. When the teacher gives a mother tongue stimulus, a concept is conjured up in the learner's mind. It is this concept, not the mother tongue words, which ttie pupils express in foreign language terms (Dodson 1967: 91). According to Dodson, at a beginner level such concepts should be taugtit where there is a one-one relationship. He is convinced that to differenciate ttie concepts of ttie mother tongue from those of ttie foreign language (0^:0^) is only possible by thinking in the mother tongue, otherwise ttie pupil doesn't become aware of any differences between Cj and C^. It is, in fact, ttiis awareness of the deviations from C^ which constitutes C^ - As a result the pupil will get a C^ (C-^-Cj+C^) which is valid for both languages. He will then tiave reached the type of thinking which occurs in a bilingual-mettiod interpretation exercise and it is only now that he can call himself a bilingual speaker (Dodson 1967: 93). 1 hough the use of the mother tongue in the first ptiase of elaboration can be approved of as it may save time and makes semanticizing clearer and more unambiguous, to use it so ofteo in the second ptiase can be harmful because it can be an obstacle to thinking in ttie foreign language. The third phase is the ptiase of Substitution and Extension. It should enable the pupils to reach ttie level of semi-creative speaking by the modification and transformation of ttie first imitated FL responses. The end result of this phase is ttiat the learner now begins to get an insight into the simple fact that language mainly consists of ttie stringing together of clauses, in ttie same manner as he was made to realize in a substitution exercise that sentences are made up of various elements which are interchangeable. Without such an insight pupils find it difficult to overcome a great fear of venturing into unknown language