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Cassettes, Films, and the Partner System: Adding a New Dimension to the Conversation Class
Author(s) -
Irving John S.
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1976.tb02650.x
Subject(s) - conversation , fluency , class (philosophy) , variety (cybernetics) , set (abstract data type) , german , dimension (graph theory) , psychology , mathematics education , linguistics , pedagogy , computer science , communication , artificial intelligence , mathematics , philosophy , pure mathematics , programming language
A one‐unit conversational module of an elementary German class was used as a pilot for an innovative method which sought to increase the student's fluency and interest by deemphasizing the role of the teacher as drill‐master and stressing student communication on a one‐to‐one basis. The class was divided into pairs of students who worked together as partners throughout the semester. Each set of partners received an audio cassette containing ‘personalized’ dialogues which focused on each partner's life and interests. The dialogues were learned at home and practiced in class. The roles of the partners in the dialogues were played by native speakers. Each cassette also contained a set of humorous variation drills based on the dialogues. For variety, there was visual reinforcement in the form of super‐8 films, which depicted the situations recorded on cassette.