THE CLASSROOM DOOR

The classroom door is an important line of demarkation in the profession of a modern language teacher. H i s duties vary in relation to the specific side of the door. That is, what he does a s a teacher before and after he enters thedoor can be extremely different. It is not the purpose of this ar t ic le to exhaust the imperatives required of a modern language teacher. Rather it is to raise a few fundamental questions for the self-examination of such teachers. There a r e two questions the modern language teacher must without choice ask himself before he enters the classroom. The first one is, "Have I done a comparative linguistic analysis between the students' native language and the foreign language they a r e going to learn?" If the answer is "No, I ' it i s obvious that he has not given himself up-to-date preparation. If his answer i s "Yes, I t he must go on and ask himself a consequential question: "Is my comparative analysis an item-for-item one or i s it a related one?" An item-foritem comparimn is certainly better than no comparison. But it is not as satisfactory as a related one. Examples a r e given below to show the difference. In the matter of the comparison of sounds to be found in English and in Mandarin Chinese, one will notice that in both languages there is the sound [ f 1. But to know that the sound [ f ] is found in both languages is not enough. Further analysis will show that in English, [ f ] can occur in utterance'initial and utterance final as in f ine and knife. In Chinese, [ f ] occurs in utterance initial a s in "f&n"(cooked rice) but not in utterance final. Besides, in Enblish, there are also the following initial consonant clusters with [ f 1: frfreedom f lflee f Y fuel sf sphere 1 and the following final consonant clusters: