Gouin Series Method

Jonathan Arries, a colleague in Modern Languages, came to speak to my students

and me recently about second language teaching methods that might be effective
with children. We had a long discussion about methods for teaching different aged
kids, and when to introduce a second alphabet.
One method he recommended for little kids was a Gouin Series. Franois Gouin was
a French Latin teacher who wrote about his difficulties in learning German based on
grammars and dictionaries. The approach he advocated was to have "themes" such
as The Plant and to have students memorize sentences in sequence relating to the
theme:
The
The
The
The
etc.

acorn sprouts.
oak plant takes root.
shoot sprouts out of the earth.
stalk buds.

The key points are that it's more important to learn sentences to speak than words,
that verbs are the key elements in sentences, and that sentences are more easily
learned when they form a narrative. Gouin succeeded in learning German when he
banished the grammar and dictionary in favor of what we would now call discovery
learning: he asked his consultants (German-speaking children) to teach him the
series associated with different themes (The Plant, The Bird, etc.), and he dutifully
wrote these down and memorized them.
Gouin's frustration with traditional grammars and dictionaries is similar to the
frustration found in endangered language communities when they see the work that
linguists have done. Linguists who document a language usually produce a
reference grammar (a description of how sentences and words are formed), a
dictionary (a list of all the words), and a text collection (stories, conversations, and
other samples of language). These are of little use for people who want to learn how
to ask their grandmother to tell a story or to lead a ceremony.
Gouin's method is attractive for its emphasis on actions. Verbs are particularly
important in the native languages of the south: verbs are often the only words used
in sentences, and the verb encodes everything from the person and number of the
participants in a sentence, to tense, location, and direction.
The Gouin Series Method could also be useful in connecting themes kids are
learning elsewhere in school with a language class. If kids are learning about frogs
and amphibians in science, they could learn related series in their language class

(The eggs hatch. / The tadpole swims. / The tadpole forms legs. / The tadpole
becomes a frog.) Themes can be based on time (In the morning, In the spring, etc.),
and some will lead to actions that kids can act out in a group, possibly in first
person:
When it's time for PE,
I run outside
I play ball with my friends
I slide down the slide
etc.

Gouin's approach by itself might get boring quickly, but it's one useful method a
teacher might use. Gouin's book was translated into English in 1892 and is available
here.

DIRECT METHOD

1. INTRODUCTION
Since the main methodological assumptions of the direct method are over 100
years old, we are currently using yet another embodiment of this method in the
teaching of foreign languages, which has evolved along with developing the
methodology in conjunction with students needs and expectations. The direct
method is fast and efficient, allowing everyone to achieve noticeable results.

It can be said that the main objective of the direct method is to teach the skill of
communication in a foreign language through minimizing the use of the mother
tongue during the lesson, as well as through training linguistic reflexes. This leads to
thinking in the target language, and hence, the ease of using the target language in
practice is gained.
2. LISTENING and SPEAKING
The direct method puts strong emphasis on practice and oral training listening and
speaking. About 80% of lesson time is oral practice with the teacher consisting of a
controlled dialogue in which the teacher asks questions based on previously
introduced vocabulary and grammar. In this way, the new material is learned both in
practice and in proper context.
The best way of learning a language is simply through speaking it. Students take
part in the lesson actively, answering their teachers questions in a full form, so as
to extend the speaking time and practise as many words and grammar structures
as possible.
To sum up, vocabulary is of more importance than grammar, and the most
important is speaking.
3. LESSONS IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Language lessons by means of the direct method are conducted almost exclusively
in a foreign language.
Instructions are given by the teacher in a foreign language. The teacher also avoids
translation into the students language. In further parts of the lesson, the new
questions include currently introduced vocabulary or grammar, whereas the rest of
the material is already familiar to the student from previous lessons.
We learn a foreign language in a similar way to a child learning his or her first
language. Students first hear words, then they repeat them imitating the teachers
pronunciation, and only afterwards do they learn how to spell them by reading and
writing.
4. LINGUISTIC REFLEXES
In order to develop proper linguistic reflexes, one should speak fast and without
thinking. Thus, the habit of thinking in ones own language and translating into a
foreign language which significantly hinders listening comprehension and
speaking in a natural way is eradicated.
Almost the whole lesson is devoted to oral practice with the teacher consisting of
teaching new vocabulary and grammar items and then asking questions in which

the new vocabulary and grammar structures are incorporated, so that all of the new
material is learned in practice and in context.
We teach everyday-use vocabulary from the beginning of the course with
particular reference to the most commonly used words in the spoken language.
5. QUESTIONS and ANSWERS
Asking questions and answering them in small groups of students is probably the
most commonly known way of learning for centuries. An intensive exchange of
questions and answers between the teacher and the student serves the objective of
mastering linguistic habits. The student gains automaticity of answers thanks to the
imitation of full phrases and sentences.
Questions and answers in the first stages of learning are pre-defined and neither the
teacher, nor the student should diverge from the pattern. The student practises the
exact words and grammar structures which are incorporated into the questions and
answers. In further stages of learning, elements of independent creation by the
student are introduced, and the student can create more and more independent
answers.
In all our coursebooks we use a large number of interesting questions using natural,
contemporary language. Hence, the students can better remember new vocabulary
and use it in more numerous contexts (various applications, grammar structures,
collocations). As a result, they can use a foreign language in a more creative way
rather than just mechanically memorizing single sentences.

6. ACCURACY
The teacher puts strong emphasis on the accuracy of the answers in terms of
pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, which fosters proper linguistic habits, and
also motivates students to pay attention to producing flawless sentences.
It is of crucial importance to speak independently from the very beginning, even if it
involves making mistakes. Obviously, mistakes should be immediately corrected by
the teacher in a friendly way, so that the student can learn through repeating the
correct form.
The knowledge of grammar rules comes with time: we learn the necessary grammar
items during the lesson, practising them in sentences, whereas, from time to time
there are grammar lessons fully devoted to the consolidation and explanation of
grammar.
7. REVISION OF MATERIAL

Language learning is faster and much more efficient thanks to regular revision. In
the direct method, a significant amount of lesson time is devoted to a strictly
organized revision of material; hence, students remember numerous vocabulary
and grammar items fast and for longer.
The pre-defined system of revision involves students multiple contact with each
part of the material starting from revision at the beginning of each lesson, through
readings and grammar lessons, to revisions of greater parts of material before
exams.
Extensive revision is the secret of success in learning a foreign language. Language
learning mainly consists of training fast reflexes similar to those used in typing or
playing the piano and such reflexes can only be trained through frequent revision.

REFORM MOVEMENT
In FINNISH LESSONS: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland?
I conclude that rather than introducing sequential educational revolutions, Finnish
education policy has been built upon periodic change and systemic leadership led
by commonly accepted values and shared social vision that resonate closely with
contemporary ideas of sustainable educational change. Importantly, the main
features for developing a equitable, high-performing education system are similar to
those underlying the social and economic transformation of Finland into a welfare
state and a competitive knowledge society. It is, therefore, difficult to identify
particular reforms or innovations per se that served as driving forces in raising the
level and quality of Finnish education.
It is necessary to identify broader policies and especially how different public
sector policies are interconnected with the education system. It is also essential to
emphasize that although Finland has been called a model pupil in listening to the
policy advice from the international organizations, especially the OECD and the
European Union, the Finnish education system has remained quite uninfected to
viruses of what is often called the global education reform movement or GERM.
And the reason for that is clear: professional strength and moral health of Finnish
schools.

GERM has emerged since the 1980s and has increasingly become adopted as a
educational reform orthodoxy within many education systems throughout the world,
including in the U.S., England, Australia and some transition countries. Tellingly,
GERM is often promoted through the interests of international development
agencies and private enterprises through their interventions in national education
reforms and policy formulation.
Since the 1980s, at least five globally common features of education policies and
reform principles have been employed to try to improve the quality of education
and fix the apparent problems in public education systems.
First is standardization of education. Outcomes-based education reform became
popular in the 1980s, followed by standards-based education policies in the 1990s,
initially within Anglo-Saxon countries. These reforms, quite correctly, shifted the
focus of attention to educational outcomes, i.e. student learning and school
performance. Consequently, a widely accepted and generally unquestioned
belief among policy-makers and education reformers is that setting clear and
sufficiently high performance standards for schools, teachers, and students will
necessarily improve the quality of expected outcomes. Enforcement of external
testing and evaluation systems to assess how well these standards have been
attained emerged originally from standards-oriented education policies. Since the
late 1980s centrally prescribed curricula, with detailed and often ambitious
performance targets, frequent testing of students and teachers, and test-based
accountability have characterized a homogenization of education policies
worldwide, promising standardized solutions at increasingly lower cost for those
desiring to improve school quality and effectiveness.
A second common feature of GERM is focus on core subjects in school, in other
words, on literacy and numeracy, and in same case science. Basic student
knowledge and skills in reading, writing and mathematics are elevated as prime
targets and indices of education reforms. As a consequence of accepting
international student assessment surveys, such as PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS, as
criteria of good educational performance, reading, mathematical and scientific
literacy have now become the main determinants of perceived success or failure of
pupils, teachers, schools, and entire education systems. This is happening on the
expense of social studies, arts, music and physical education that re diminishing in
many school curricula.
The third characteristic that is easily identifiable in global education reforms
is the search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals. This minimizes
experimentation, reduces use of alternative pedagogical approaches, and limits
risk-taking in schools and classrooms. Research on education systems that have
adopted policies emphasizing achievement of predetermined standards and
prioritized core subjects, suggests that teaching and learning are narrower and
teachers focus on guaranteed content to best prepare their students for tests. The

higher the test-result stakes, the lower the degree of freedom in experimentation
and risk-taking in classroom learning.
The fourth globally observable trend in educational reform is use of corporate
management models as a main driver of improvement. This process where
educational policies and ideas are lent and borrowed from business world is often
motivated by national hegemony and economic profit, rather than by moral goals of
human development. Faith in educational change through innovations brought and
sold from outside the system undermines two important elements of successful
educational change: First, it often limits the role of national policy development and
enhancement of an education systems own capabilities to maintain renewal, and
perhaps more important. Second, it paralyzes teachers and schools attempts to
learn from the past and also to learn from each other.
The fifth global trend is adoption of test-based accountability policies for schools.
In doing so school performance especially raising student achievement is closely
tied to processes of accrediting, promoting, inspecting, and, ultimately, rewarding or
punishing schools and teachers. Success or failure of schools and teachers is often
determined by standardized tests and external teacher evaluations that devote
attention to limited aspects of schooling, such as student achievement in
mathematical and reading literacy, exit examination results, or intended teacher
classroom behavior.
None of these elements of GERM have been adopted in Finland in the ways that
they have within education policies of many other nations, for instance, in the
United States and England. This, of course, does not imply that education
standards, focus on basic knowledge and skills, or accountability should be avoided
in seeking better educational performance. Nor does it suggest that these ideas
were completely absent in education development in Finland. But, perhaps, it does
imply that a good education system can be created using alternative approaches
and policies orthogonal to those commonly found and promoted in global education
policy markets. This is why I wrote Finnish Lessons.
By contrast, typical features of teaching and learning in Finland are:
high confidence in teachers and principals as high professionals;
encouraging teachers and students to try new ideas and approaches, in other
words, to put curiosity, imagination and creativity at the heart of learning; and
purpose of teaching and learning is to pursue happiness of learning and cultivating
development of whole child.
The best way avoid infections of GERM is to prepare teachers and leaders well. In
Finland all teachers must have masters degree in education or in the field of their
subject. This ensures that they are good in what they do in classrooms and also

understand how teaching and learning in their schools can be improved. School
principals are also experts of educational change and can therefore protect their
schools and school system from harmful germs.

The Audiolingual Method

A. Important Concepts
1. Selection of materials -- contrastive analysis
a. Major advocates and researchers in contrastive analysis: C.C. Fries and
Robert Lado
b. Major claims:
The transfer claim: "Individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings, and
the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture
to the foreign languague and culture-- both productively when attempting to
speak the language and to act in the culture, and receptively when
attempting to grasp and understand the language and the culture as
practiced by natives." (Lado, 1957, p.2)
The difficulty claim: "We assume that the student who comes in contact with
a foreign language will find some features of it quite easy and others
extremely difficult. Those elements that are similar to his native language
will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult."
(Lado, 1957, p. 2).
c. Method for doing contrastive analysis (steps involved in doing CA: a
summary (from Ellis, 1994))
--description (a formal description of the two languages involved)
--selection (certain areas or items of the two languages were chosen)

--comparison (the identification of areas of difference and similarity)

--prediction (determining which areas where likely to cause errors)
2. Teaching Process: Presentation - Practice - Application (Production)
Presentation-- oral, dialogue, little explanation, L1 discouraged, errors
corrected, accuracy emphasized, accurate repetition and memorization of
the dialogue as goal of this stage;
Practice--pattern drills, mastery of the structure, fluency emphasized;
Application--use of the structure in different contexts;
3. Categorization of Drills: Mechanical, Meaningful, and Communicative
drills (from Richards, Platt, and Weber, 1985)
A mechanical drill is one where there is complete control over the student's
response, and where comprehension is not required in order to produce a
correct response.
Example: book --> this is a book. pen --> this is a pen.
A meaningful drill is one in which there is still control over the response, but
understanding is required in order for the student to produce a correct
response.
Example:
Teacher reads a sentence

I'm hot.
I'm cold.
I'm thirsty.
I'm hungry.

Student choose a response

I'll get you something to
eat.
I'll turn on the air
conditioning.
I'll get you something to
drink.
I'll turn on the heater.

A communicative drill is one in which the type of response is controlled but

the student provides his or her own content or information.
Teacher
What time did you get up on

Student completes cues

I got up _____ .

Sunday?
I had _____ .
What did you have for breakfast?

B. Hands-on Activity
Dialogues are the basic form of instructional materials in the Audiolingual
method. The dialogue serves three functions: a) illustrates the target
structure; b) illustrates the situation the structure may be used; and c)
provides cultural information for language use wherever possible.
Write a dialogue of ten to fifteen exchanges that meets the following criteria:
1. It has a clear focus on an English sentence pattern you are trying to teach
and the same sentence pattern is repeated several times in the dialogue.
2. It uses everyday vocabulary that is appropriate for beginning to
intermediate level students.
3. There is no other sentence pattern or grammatical phenomenon that is
new to students or more complicated than the sentence pattern you are
trying to teach.
Then design three drills, one for each type discussed above, based on this
dialogue for practicing the structure.
The following is an example:
---------------

Hello Joy.
Hello Daddy.
How was your school today?
It was all right.
Do you have any homework today?
Yes, the teacher asked us to copy some new words.
Did she ask you to do any reading?
No, she didn't ask us to do any reading. But she told us to write a story.
Did she ask you to turn in the story tomorrow?
No, she wanted us to turn in the story on Friday.
What else did she want you to do?
Nothing else. She wanted us to have fun.
Do you want me to close the door.
Yes, please.

A Mechanical drill
1. Substitution/Replacement
He
They
She
We
I

me
wanted him
asked
them
told
us
her

to open the window.

to write a letter.
to go home.
to shut the door.
to return the book.

2. Transformation
He wanted me to open the window. Did he want me to open the
-->
window?
He asked me to return the book.
He didn't want me to open the
They wanted me to write a story.
window.
We told him to buy a watch.
I asked her to visit me.
B. Meaningful Drill
Cues

Student

After I finished writing the I asked my mom to mail it.

letter,
my dad asked me to have
When I got home,
a snack.
C. Communicative drill
Students answer the following questions based on real situations:
-- What did your math teacher ask you to do this morning?
-- What did I tell you to do before we began the new lesson?
-- What do your parents often ask you to do on weekends?

Here is a list of structures you may use:

1. passive voice: The dog bit the child. The child was bitten by the dog.
2. relative clause: The man who is talking with my dad is my uncle.
3. present continuous tense: I am cleaning the window.

4. simple future tense: I will visit New York next summer.

5. be going to: I am going to play ping-pong tonight.
6. plural form: There are two books on the table.
7. third person singular: My dad goes to school everyday.
8. present participle phrase modifying a noun: Do you like the
picture hanging on the wall?
9. simple past tense: I watched the game on Saturday.
10. Adjective phrase used as adverbial of place: I play volleyball near
CDV every Friday.

The Input Hypothesis

Stephen Krashen is a linguist and educator who proposed the Monitor Model, a
theory of second language acquisition, in Principles and practice in second
language acquisition as published in 1982. According to the Monitor Model, five
hypotheses account for the acquisition of a second language:
Acquisition-learning hypothesis

Natural order hypothesis

Monitor hypothesis
Input hypothesis
Affective filter hypothesis
However, despite the popularity and influence of the Monitor Model, the five
hypotheses are not without criticism. The following sections offer a description of
the fourth hypothesis of the theory, the input hypothesis, as well as the major
criticism by other linguistics and educators surrounding the hypothesis.
Definition of the Input Hypothesis
The fourth hypothesis, the input hypothesis, which applies only to language
acquisition and not to language learning, posits the process that allows second
language learners to move through the predictable sequence of the acquisition of
grammatical structures predicted by the natural order hypothesis. According to the
input hypothesis, second language learners require comprehensible input,
represented by i+1, to move from the current level of acquisition, represented by i,
to the next level of acquisition. Comprehensible input is input that contains a
structure that is a little beyond the current understandingwith understanding
defined as understanding of meaning rather than understanding of formof the
language learner.
Second language acquisition, therefore, occurs through exposure to comprehensible
input, a hypothesis which further negates the need for explicit instruction learning.
The input hypothesis also presupposes an innate language acquisition device, the
part of the brain responsible for language acquisition, that allows for the exposure
to comprehensible input to result in language acquisition, the same language
acquisition device posited by the acquisition-learning hypothesis. However, as
Krashen cautions, like the time, focus, and knowledge required by the Monitor,
comprehensible input is necessary but not sufficient for second language
acquisition.

Criticism of the Input Hypothesis

Like for the acquisition-learning hypothesis, the first critique of the input hypothesis
surrounds the lack of a clear definition of comprehensible input; Krashen never
sufficiently explains the values of i or i+1. As Gass et al. argue, the vagueness of
the term means thati+1 could equal one token, two tokens, 777 tokens; in other
words, sufficient comprehensible input could embody any quantity.

More importantly, the input hypothesis focuses solely on comprehensible input as

necessary, although not sufficient, for second language acquisition to the neglect of
any possible importance of output. The output hypothesis as proposed by Merrill
Swain seeks to rectify the assumed inadequacies of the input hypothesis by positing
that language acquisition and learning may also occur through the production of
language. According to Swain who attempts to hypothesize a loop between input
and output, output allows second language learners to identify gaps in their
linguistic knowledge and subsequently attend to relevant input. Therefore, without
minimizing the importance of input, the output hypothesis complements and
addresses the insufficiencies of the input hypothesis by addressing the importance
of the production of language for second language acquisition.
Thus, despite the influence of the Monitor Model in the field of second language
learning and acquisition, the input hypothesis, the fourth hypothesis of the theory,
has not been without criticism as evidenced by the critiques offered by other
linguists and educators in the field.

project
in
listening
speaking

skills
(Thursday: 9:00am - 12:00pm)

SUBMITTED BY:

NONELON RANZELL B. CASTILLO

SUBMITTED TO:

Dr. GINA ALVARADO