(teach) Bedtime stories for teachers: The Adventures of Francois Gouin

The Adventures of Francois Gouin

As told by H.D.Brown [1]

In his The Art of Learning and Studying Foreign Languages (1880), Francois
Gouin described a painful set of experiences that finally led to his
insights about language teaching. Having decided in his midlife to learn
German, he took up residency in Hamburg for one year. But rather than
attempting to converse with the natives he engaged in a rather bizarre
sequence of attempts to "master" the language. Upon arrival in Hamburg he
felt he should memorize a German grammar book and a table of the 248
irregular German verbs! He did this in a matter of only 10 days and then
hurried to "the academy" (the university) to test his new knowledge.

Upon arrival in Hamburg he felt he should memorize a German grammar book and
a table of the 248 irregular German verbs! He did this in a matter of only
10 days and then hurried to "the academy" (the university) to test his new
knowledge.

"But alas!" he wrote, "I could not understand a single word, not a single
word!" Gouin was undaunted. He returned to the isolation of his room, this
time to memorize the German roots and to rememorize the grammar book and the
irregular verbs. Again he emerged with expectations of success. "But alas!"
- the result was the same as before. In the course of the year in Germany
Gouin memorized books, translated Goethe and Schiller, and even memorized
30,000 words in a German dictionary - all in the isolation of his room, only
to be crushed by his failure to understand German afterwards. Only once did
he try to "make conversation" as a method, but this caused people to laugh
at him and he was too embarrassed to continue that method. At the end of the
year, Gouin, having reduced the classical method to absurdity, was forced to
return home, a failure.

But there is a happy ending. Upon returning home Gouin discovered that his
3-year-old nephew had, during that year, gone through that wonderful stage
of child language acquisition in which he went from saying virtually nothing
at all to become a veritable chatterbox of French. How was it that this
little child succeeded so easily in a task, mastering a first language, that
Gouin, in a second language, had found impossible? The child must hold the
secret to learning a language!

So Gouin spent a great deal of time observing his nephew and other children
and came to the following conclusions: Language learning is primarily a
matter of transforming perceptions into conceptions. Children use language
to represent their conceptions. Language is a means of thinking, of
representing the world to oneself. (These insights, remember, are being
formed by a language teacher over a century ago!)

Dave Kees

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INSIGHTS INTO TEFL
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[1] Highly suggested reading: H.D.Brown, Principles of Language Learning and
Teaching, Pearson Hall Regents, 1994, reprinted by Foreign Language Teaching
and Research Press 2002, ISBN 7-5600-2539-0, Rmb 32.90