Gives a history of traditional and audiolingual methods of language teaching. Reports on one Swedish and two U.S. long-term experiments. The two methods are found to be of about equal value. The most recent publications reveal a tendency to synthesize the two. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Critical of the language instruction which students receive in elementary and secondary schools, the author examines the teaching potential of televised instruction. Foreign language instruction in the elementary school is noted to be particularly weak. Discussion of an experiment involving some 800 children in 4th and 5th grades suggests that…

This report contains experiment results obtained from a comparative study of two groups of seventh grade students learning German in Sweden. The main objectives of the investigation, which lasted one school year, are: (1) to investigate possible achievement differences in German between similar groups of students when one group is instructed…

This study evaluates the counseling-learning approach to foreign language instruction as compared with traditional methods in terms of language achievement and change in personal orientation and in attitude toward learning. Twelve students volunteered to learn Spanish or German under simultaneous exposure to both languages using the…

This evaluation of two programs of materials used in introductory French classes tests two basic hypotheses: (1) pretests are good predictors of subsequent French achievement at the junior high school level, and (2) students in different programs will achieve to the same degree on a final French test. Results of the groups using the "audiolingual"…

The experiments outlined in this paper assess the relative effectiveness of two approaches to teaching foreign language grammar to adults. One approach, called the "Implicit Method," is based on the audiolingual habit theory of language learning. Grammar is taught inductively through the reading of dialogues and practice with carefully…

This is a preliminary report on a series of small-scale language teaching experiments, aimed primarily at demonstrating that valid research into language teaching methods is possible. Small-scale refers not to the number of subjects involved, but to the scope of the experiment. Instead of looking at a method as a whole (as happens in large-scale…

Beginning with a brief review of the growth of the audiolingual method of foreign language instruction in the United States of America, this paper examines implications and lessons drawn from an educational experiment in language instruction known as the Pennsylvania Report. The text of a memorandum to school administrators in Pennsylvania by the…

This text describes a Swedish research program (GUME Project--the Swedish equivalent of the Gothenburg/Teaching/Methods/English Project) carried out during 1968-71 within the field of second-language instruction and learning. A number of comparative experiments were performed in order to assess the relative merits of two different approaches to…

Research described in this report compares the relative achievement of three groups of secondary school students beginning language instruction in German, French, and Spanish using the electronic classroom, the record-playback laboratory, and the broadcast language laboratory with that of a control group. The second major area of research…

The problems investigated in the present study are the identification of the most effective type of presentation of dialogues in language instruction--auditory, orthographic, or some combination of the two--and the measurement of the accuracy of pronunciation and the amount of dialogue retained by the student. The controlled experiment, performed…

This study reviews current research seeking to determine the relative importance of methodology upon success in language learning programs. Six language classes, instructed for a full academic year according to either the principles of the audiolingual or cognitive code language learning theory, were the focus of an experiment to statistically…