Teaching languages to young learners: patterns of history

  • Period: Jan 1, 1400 to Dec 31, 1499

    XV Century

    In the middle ages there had been clear practical of uses for Latin skills most obviously in church but also secular activities such as Administration and law, vernacular languages began to take over functions.
  • Period: Jan 1, 1450 to Dec 31, 1499

    Mid XVI Century

    Education should grow out of the child's experience mother tongue and foreign languages. it had to grow and relegated to a subsidiary role.
  • Period: Jan 1, 1491 to Dec 31, 1547

    European Education

    Under Henry VIII reign a new energy was emerging in European Education. which was inspired by humanists and cultural achievements, the Standard Grammar.
  • Period: Jan 1, 1500 to

    XVI / XVII Century

    The Renaissance was a time of learning, but it wasn't a time of schools as we know them today. Public schools for everyone were still a long way off. In Renaissance Europe, schooling was for those who could afford it and prove they were literate. Some people were well educated, while others never attended school.
  • Period: Jan 1, 1582 to

    1582

    Richard Mulcaster “First part of the elementarie” he spoke for the use of English. English was the language of our liberty and freedom. His book sets a programme of the codification of the English language. he contributes to the standardisation of the English spelling system.
  • Period: to

    1620

    Wolfgang Ratke opened the first German mother tongue school, eventually failed.
  • Period: to

    1626

    Ratke’s basic principle “Methodus” In everything we should follow the order of nature.
  • Period: to

    1630

    “Great Didactic” the great Comenious underlined the central role of the mother tongue in the child’s exploration of meaning.
  • Period: to

    1646

    Teaching grammar: young children would learn Latin grammar better and more quickly if they learnt English grammar first.
  • Period: to

    Late XVII Century

    ‘English’ did not appear on any school curriculum until that period of time and the grammar schools rejected it until reform in the mid 19.
  • Period: to

    1693

    John Locke “Some thoughts concerning education” contained a sensible advice on a modern system of education to replace the horrors of the grammar schools.
  • Period: to

    Native Speaking Tutors

    Living languages were typically taught by resident native-speaking tutors following “natural” conversation methods.
  • Period: to

    1696

    Joseph Aickin stressed the importance of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction throughout the education system.
  • Period: to

    XVIII Century

    Until the eighteenth century formal education in Europe consisted almost exclusively of the teaching foreign languages. (Latin, Greek and Hebrew) to young boys between 8 and 14.
  • Period: to

    XVIII Century

    Vernacular movement gradually gathered support, but progress was slow and it was always seen as “second best” to the traditional if increasingly moribund Latin grammar school tradition.
  • Period: to

    1731

    Daniel Duncan “the learning of dead languages is a yoke that neither were nor our fore-fathers could ever bear when we were children. And I fancy the loathsomeness of that dry study comes for want of reasoning previously with them enough about the nature of words and their dependency on one another in their own mother tongue.”
  • Period: to

    1761

    A small experiment to teach French to primary school children was carried by a native-speaking teacher.
  • Period: to

    1761

    Joseph Priestley: “the propriety of introducing the English grammar into English schools cannot be disputed.”
    Robert Lowth: “to enter at once upon science of grammar and the study of a foreign language is to encounter two difficulties together, each of which would be much lessened by being taken separately in its proper order.”
  • Period: to

    1762

    Was published Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar that the twenty century loves to hate. (the same year) In the other hand, one curious coincidence was Rousseau's Emile, or education the equally influential quasi-novel about teaching.
  • Period: to

    Schooling in Europe

    Privilege was the hallmark of schooling throughout Europe for centuries and when basic education for all finally arrived in the late 19th century.
    did not include foreign language which were restricted to selective secondary schools.
  • Period: to

    Early XIX Century

    Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi develops the “object lesson”, in which the starting point is a simple object that the children can explore by describing its various characteristics.
  • Period: to

    1840

    Pestalozzi’s disciple, Friedrich Froebel, creates an educational institution for very young children known as the “kindergarten”.
  • Period: to

    XIX Century

    Was stated that foreign languages “were unsuited to the needs of elementary schoolers”. According to that time’s experts, the introduction of foreign languages should take place in secondary level of schooling.
  • Period: to

    Mid 1860s

    Gottlieb Heness is inspired by the “object lesson” to teach German as a foreign language to the children of the staff at Yale University. After the success of that experiment, he and Lambert Sauveur open a school of languages in Boston, founding the known “Natural Method” of language teaching.
  • Period: to

    1878

    Nearby Rhode Island, the first school of Berlitz is opened, which used the “Direct Method”
  • Period: to

    XX Century

    The language was designated as a mere medium of communication and children learned by the ability of flexibility and adaptation. The way children acquired a second language depended on how adults used to talk to children to make the understand.
    The education of the second language regarded as inferior to education in the mother tongue.
    Foreign languages were essentially perimentheral skills which can be acquired as and when they are needed.
  • Period: to

    1916

    It was discussed that “was not desirable to introduce modern languages into elementary schools”
  • Period: to

    1950

    Large-scale shifts of population have resulted in substantial linguistic minorities in countries where they did not exist before.
  • Period: to

    1953

    William Penfield supported the view that pre-adolescent children were particularly well-suited to the acquisition of foreign languages.
  • Period: to

    1960s

    The absence of foreign languages from most of the state education sector was seriously questioned.
  • Period: to

    1961

    A small experiment to teach French to primary school children was carried by a native-speaking teacher.
  • Period: to

    Mid 60s

    The FLES (Foreign Languages in the Elementary School) programme continued until mid 60s with some success but new ideas failed to materialize.
  • Period: to

    Before 70s

    In Britain before the 70s Foreign languages were reserved for bright adolescents, the top 20% who had passed the entrance test to the grammar schools.
  • Period: to

    1970

    10 years later and three NFER reports later, the project came to and end. (Teaching of French) (It was during the 1970s so place it in that year if you are using it)