Gouin Series Method - Approach To Language Acquisition

THE SERIES METHOD BY FRANCOIS GOUIN

Historical Background
Toward the mid-nineteenth century, several factors contributed to a questioning and rejection of the Grammar-Translation Method. Increased opportunities for communication among Europeans created a demand for oral proficiency in foreign languages. Initially this created a market for conversation books and phrase books intended forprivate study, but language teaching specialists also turned their attention to the way modern languages were being taught in secondary schools. In German, England, France, and other parts of Europe, new approaches to language teaching were developed by individual language teaching specialists, each with a specific method for reforming the teaching of modern languages. One of these specialists wasFrancoise Gouin, whose approach did not manage to achieve any lasting impact, though his ideas are of historical interest.
Francois Gouin was a teacher of Latin who wrote about his difficulties in learning German based on grammars and dictionaries. Having decided in midlife to learn German, he took up residency in Hamburg for one year. But rather than attempting to converse with the natives, heengaged 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 ten 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 wasundaunted. He returned to the isolation of his room, this time to memorize the German roots and to memorize the grammar book and 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 theisolation of his room, only to be crushed by failure to understand German afterward. Only once did he try to “make conversation” as a method, but because this caused people to laugh at him, he was too embarrassed to continue. At the end of the year, having reduced the Classical Method to absurdity, Gouin was forced to return home, a failure.

Gouin’s Approach
Gouin developed an approach to teachinga foreign language based on his observations of children’s use of language (more precisely, the acquisition of mother tongue around the age of three). He believed that language learning was facilitated through using language to accomplish events consisting of a sequence of related actions. His method used situations and themes as means of organizing and presenting oral language.
Upon returninghome Gouin discovered that his three-year-old nephew had, during that year, gone through that wonderful stage of child language acquisition in which he went from saying virtually nothing to becoming a veritable chaterbok of French. How was it that this child succeeded so easily in a task, mastering a language, that Gouin, in a second language, had found impossible? The child must hold the secretto learning a language! So Gouin spent a great deal of time observing his nephew and other children and came to the following conclusions: Learning a language is primarily a matter of transforming perceptions into conceptions (language is a means of thinking, of representing the world to oneself).
So Gouin set about devising a teaching method that would follow from these insights. And thus theSeries Method was created, a method that taught learners directly (without translation) and conceptually (without grammatical rules nor explinations) a “series” of connected sentences that are easy to perceive. The first lesson of a foreign language would thus teach the following series of fifteen sentences
* I walk toward the door.
* I draw near the door.
* I draw nearer the door....