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

- 142 The most important role is played by pictures and picture strips in the method. It is pictures which should convey the meaning, the context to the pupils and help them to memorize all these. Inn g'^nt an importance is, however, attributed to pictures. Guberina is convinced that the problem of semanticizing can be solved completely by pictures or picture strips combined with the tape-recorder. The problem of understanding is very important, because it is one of the stimuli for a cjjick brain reaction and memorization. This problem is solved by means of pictures. Each phonetic or sense-group has a corresponding picture, which is accompanied by the text on a tape of on a record (Guberina 1964: 4). It is certain that there are cases when the ireanirig can be easily conveyed by the combination of pictures and sound, but I wonder whether it is a succesful way of semantisizing in the case of concepts. Besides these there are cases where the association between picture and sound gives way to several interpretations. By the exclusion of translation the audio-visual method surely aims at developing thinking in the foreign language but it is questionable whether thinking in the mother tongue can be avoided by picture stories when semantisizing. As the ambiguity of some pictures can give way to different interpretations beginners will discuss them in the mother tongue in lack of sufficient vocabulary. Besides this there is another point that should not be left out of consideration that is by merely visual semanticizing only the denotative meaning and not the connotative meanings can be presented. The new material is presented like this as the audio-visual method does: First a dialogue is presented as a kind of warming- up. I lien comes the presentation of the new context by 15-30 pictures accompanied by the text on ttie tape. It has the following steps: 1. 'Look' The pupil looks at the pictures without listening to the tape. 2. 'Look and listen' He looks at the pictures while listening to the tape. 3. 'Understand' If a projector is used to present the pictures, certain details in