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THE IMPORTANCE OF BILINGUAL DESCRIPTION TO FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Author(s) -
PIROCH GOLDIE
Publication year - 1955
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1955.tb00831.x
Subject(s) - citation , linguistics , foreign language , psychology , computer science , library science , philosophy
In the last fifteen years a sincere effort has been made to harness the resul ts of structural linguistics to help the foreign language teacher. The resul ts of this effort are frequently called the "new approach. t ' According to Fries, "The fundamental feature of this new approach consists in a scientific descriptive analysis as the basis upon which to build the teaching materials. 1 Linguists were becoming increasingly interested in the spoken language, and so were the language teachers. Phonemics could help in the teaching of pronunciation. The phonemes of the native language were compared with those of the foreign language, with an eye out for potential trouble spots. But the possession of two inventories of phonemes was not the cureall of all pronunciation problems.2 The realization of this state of affairs is leading to increasing attempts to discuss the difficulties of the language learner when he meets a familiar sound in an unfamiliar environment o r when the familiar sound enters into clusters in an unfamiliar way. Fries suggested in 1945: