Audio-Visual Language Journal Spring 1979 [antikvár]

Editorial In this issue we publish a Communiqué from the Fédération Internationale des Professeurs de Fran^ais. This document contains a summary of comments received from sixty respondents throughout the world on current methods of teaching French. The trends reported correspond closely to developments in language teaching in Britain. The emphasis here during the past two or three years has been on the need for relevance and realism and it is clear from the replies of the Fédération members that these qualities are seen as vitai throughout the world. We in Britain would agree with our colleagues abroad that our teaching must be flexible and adapted to the needs of the learner. This implies not only differing styles of teaching but differing linguistic emphases and differing rhythms of teaching. A great deal of interest has been shown in the grading of language teaching objectives in the secondary school (1). In the same context of flexibility, there have been in Britain experiments with the timing and duration of language courses in the secondary school. A recent publication by the Centre for Information on Language Teaching (2) describes somé of these. The experiments rangé from short intensive courses of less than twenty-four hours to intensive courses which replace completely the traditional five-year marathon on which many of our pupils embark (though all concerned know that most will never finish). The most radical ventures are those in which the curriculum of the school concerned has been re-structured, as in the Archbishop Michael Ramsey School, London. Here the normál pyramid of participation in language courses, with its broad popular base and apex of survivors, has been inverted by the application of the principle of "opting in" to language study at the top end of the school, rather than dropping out. Other radical approaches described involve the establishment of "sections bilingues" and the attempt to use authentic language material in the learning process. This CILT publication makes encouraging reading. Read in conjunction with the Communiqué we publish, it shows that language teaching in Britain is keeping pace with trends in other countries of the world. (1)cf. New Objectives in Modern Language Teaching. Oxford Modern Languages Advisory Committee. Price 95p. Published by Hodder and Stoughton and reviewed in this Journal Vol. 16 No. 2. (2)Intensive Language Teaching in Schools. 133 pp. Price L2-50 post free in U.K. From the Centre for Information on Language Teaching, 20 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y5AP.