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COMMON MISTAKES IN OUR FRENCH TEXT‐BOOKS II. FRENCH CLASS‐ROOM EXPRESSIONS AND THE TEACHING OF FRENCH GRAMMAR IN FRENCH
Author(s) -
Kueny F. J.
Publication year - 1922
Publication title -
the modern language journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.486
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1540-4781
pISSN - 0026-7902
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4781.1922.tb03651.x
Subject(s) - grammar , class (philosophy) , citation , linguistics , ap french language , computer science , french , library science , artificial intelligence , philosophy
using a word that is perfectly clear to the American students but unknown in French schools and colleges. Another book that went through a second (revised) edition in 1919 and enjoyed a very friendly review in the MODERN LANGUAGE JOURNAL calls the class-room "la chambre de classe" (p. 61). Class-room expressions have led to more errors than the regular direct-method exercises, and the reason for it is quite apparent. The latter concern themselves mostly with turning over the words of a given text; they arbitrarily limit their scope to the artificial handling of a set of words, without regard for any real experience; they translate words in terms of words; they are always guided by the text and with ordinary care should be fairly correct. But the class-room expression has no such guide; it should not translate words, but objects, and notions, and ideas; it represents the really direct method, the natural method. Unfortunately it does translate something into French, and something which, curiously enough, is often not very different from French. The adult mind is not a tabula rasa. The student "hands in" so many "papers" a day or a week, and whenever he does that there is no French model before his eyes or in his mind, but long and continued practice has anchored in his mind the group "I hand in my paper." He should say: "Je remets mon devoir"; and remettre is so different from "to hand in" that he will soon learn it and use it properly; but "paper" and "papier" coincide in so many cases that he will instinctively make them coincide in this case, too. If this natural tendency has been developed through the use of a much advertised text-book and strengthened by the authority of an instructor who daily says to his pupils: "Passez les papiers droite," or"Remettez vos papiers," a strong habit has been formed which is apt to give much trouble to the next instructor. The cognate or doublet expressions "lesson-leqon" and "object-objet" cause similar troubles. Indeed, the frequency of errors of this kind makes it useless to quote many books in the present article. For the mistaken uses