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LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE IN SOVIET TEN YEAR SCHOOLS
Author(s) -
Dewey Horace W.
Publication year - 1959
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.1467-1770.1959.tb01130.x
Subject(s) - foreign language , citation , linguistics , english as a foreign language , psychology , classics , mathematics education , sociology , history , library science , philosophy , computer science
At the present time almost four million Soviet children take English as their foreign language in the ten-year school system (desiatiletka), which corresponds to our twelve-year pre-university program in the United States. Thousands s tar t learning English at the age of eight, in the "second class" of elementary school. Since 1956 the Novosibirsk school system has been teaching German on an experimental basis to kindergarten youngsters, and similar experiments have been reported for English. Most Soviet pupils studying English, however, begin it in the "fifth c lass ," which is roughly comparable to the sixth grade in American schools, and they continue with their English for a full six years. Few language teachers in our country wi l l fail to be impressed by the sheer magnitude of the Soviet program? But what do we know of the aims and theories underlying this program, and what a r e the methods used to put them into effect? It was my good fortune to visit some secondary-school English classes in Moscow and Leningrad in September, 1958. I was told by the school principals that language teachers are given considerable latitude in their choice of classroom methods. Nevertheless, there appears to be a degree of uniformity in Soviet language instruction which is unmatched in this country. The Minister of Education of any Soviet republic can supposedly tell, on a given day, just what lesson of which book is being