THE USE OF PREDICTION IN TEACHING THE GERMAN VERB

Among the recent techniques evolved from an attempt to exploit the findings of linguistic science for the teaching of languages, the use of the concept of determination and prediction must be considered one of the most fruitful. It has received notice in papers on pedagogy as well as in articles on linguistics.’ The present paper is an attempt to explore the possibilities of this concept, and techniques of teaching based on it, for the solution of that most difficult of pedagogical problems, the teaching of the German verb system. Recently, there have been two attempts at using techniques of prediction in teaching the German verb, one by a descriptive linguist, one by a language teacher.’ We may be able to get a better idea of the values of a method based on the concept if we briefly review these two articles. Halle shows that a better description of the German verb can be effected if one takes the s tem of the preteri te a s a base rather than the traditional infinitive stem. It is far simpler for both the student and the linguist to operate with Halle’s rather restricted number of rules than with the large number necessa ry for prediction of the preterite form from the infinitive. That is, given the verb /‘vardan/ weiden ‘to graze,’ one does not know whether to form the preteri te as */‘vi:t/ twiedby analogy with /‘.3aIdan/ scheiden ‘separate’: /‘ai:t/ schied, o r as */‘vit/ * witt by analogy with /‘haidan/ schneiden ‘cut’: