On the Use of English in Teaching Foreign Languages

Nothing is more suggestive of the present contusion of ideas concerning the means and ends of language study than a comparison of two articles in a recent number of Education. Here we have a distinguished teacher of modern languages claiming, substantially, that French and German may, upon occasion, take the place of Latin and Greek in the college curriculum, provided they are taught by the same methods and with all the thoroughness and accuracy characteristic of the teaching of the classic tongues by the best teachers. On the other hand, we have an experienced instructor in Latin and Greek, advocating that the instruction in the classics can be improved by the introduction of certain methods, which, although the writer seems reluctant to admit it, are more commonly employed by teachers of modem languages than by those of the classic tongues. The impartial observer would naturally be led to think that either class of teachers can learn from the other and that, consequently, the necessity for reform is not all on our side, as some of us have modestly believed.