 Today,
popular language study programs like Rosetta Stone and Lingua Latina are
advertising a method of language learning called the "natural" or
"immersion" method. It is argued that the best way to learn a
foreign language is to imitate the process by which we learned our
native language. As toddlers, we wandered around with Mom and Dad
pointing at this, guessing at that. The wrong words were corrected
and the right words taught. By the time we were five years
old...voila!...we were speaking. This is said to be the "natural"
way of learning languages.However,
we're really not thinking clearly if we find this sales pitch
attractive.
First, we did learn our native language
by mere immersion, but it took us many years and most of us wouldn't be
considered masters of it. Everyday we find
people--adults!--struggling to find the right words, writing with
improper grammar, using words incorrectly, etc.. We see ability at all
different levels--some can speak quite well others speak quite poorly.
We see dialects varying from place to place and different groups often
struggling to understand one another. For many, their language
mastery is entirely dependent upon the family they were born into.
Few can compose a poem, understand Shakespeare or follow any discourse
outside of their comfort zone.
Second, while it may be "natural" for a
toddler to learn language by pointing and naming objects, it is
no more natural for an older student to learn in the same way as it is
for a frog to move like a tadpole. When we were toddlers we lacked
reason and did many things in a simple way, but when we grow older we
develop faculties we didn't have available to us as little children.
To suggest that the older child/adult should learn as the younger child
did is absurd. When a man is injured does he learn to walk again
by crawling on the floor, the way he first learned to walk? When a
man visits a new city, does he learn his way around the way he learned
his way around his own home and lawn as a child? When an adult
finds something laying on the floor does he test it by sticking it in
his mouth like a toddler?
Of course he doesn't! He is no
longer a child. He is a man, and men don't do things the way
children do. St. Paul was able to take it as granted that the ways
children understand and think would be known to inferior to those of an
older man. He said:
"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I
understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I
became a man, I put away the things of a child."
In context, he's comparing our knowledge
of God during our lives to the knowledge we will have when we are with
God in heaven. That's not exactly an endorsement for the popular
"natural" learning methods, which show us images of children and
encourage us to learn as they do. While it may be natural for a
child to learn language as a blind man being led about by the hand, it
is entirely UN-natural for a person beyond the age of reason to do so.
Reason allows us to learn more efficiently and to master subjects
systematically--which a child cannot do. What the "natural" method
ultimately boils down to is an easy sell to people who aren't inclined
to act like reasoning adults, learning by rule-oriented "translation and
memorization drills". They want to act like toddlers and wander
around, depending on others to name every object and supply every
phrase. No student following such a method will achieve any
language mastery that will give him confidence in using a language.
Rather than memorizing rules and systems that he can then use as tools
to express or translate any idea, he will simply have memorized a number
of individual words and phrases. His communication skills will,
not surprisingly, resemble those of a child and no eloquent adult.
Isn't it strange that those who criticize traditional memory work
(rules, general principles) rely on a worse form of memory work (words,
phrases) than that which they criticize?
CLASSICAL LANGUAGE
INSTRUCTION
The goal of classical education is
mastery of human language for the sake of expressing the fullest range
of human ideas possible--and that to any and every audience. We
don't want our language limited to a few thoughts and we don't want our
conversations limited to a few people. We desire, like Socrates to
be a "citizen of the world".
When our goals for language learning are
high and suited to our nature, immersion language programs don't do the
job. A child begins as one lost in a world he does not understand.
He learns individual objects as disconnected parts in a chaotic world.
Reason allows man to discern the order in nature and through philosophy,
he is able to order the world from the top down. He can divide all
things into living and non-living. He can divide living things
into plants, animals and spirits, and so on from the broadest categories
at the top down to individual species. Reason allows man to know
the world as God knows it and this is the goal of learning.
In classical language studies we start,
as reason should, from the top and work down. Rather than studying
1,001 random words, we learn that there are only eight parts of
speech--eight categories into which every word can be placed.
Suddenly the world is no longer full of verbal chaos but is immediately
orderly. We don't study individual words, but each individual
category: Nouns, Verbs, Participles, Pronouns, Prepositions,
Conjunctions, Adverbs and Interjections. If we know what a Noun
is, then we know something about every noun. We make sure we have
the genera correct and, if we err, we err in the species. A
childish mind does the opposite: he may know something of a
species, but he is ignorant of the genus.
This leads to a fundamental principle in
classical language study, which is expressed by the terms "Analysis
and Genesis". After a student has mastered the
grammatical forms of the language in Classical Grammar I and II, we
start with the rhetorical order of a master's Latin, break it down into
the grammatical order basic to the language, then turn it directly into
English. Finally the entire sentence is parsed word-by-word.
Once we have taken the original Latin apart, we put it all back together
again in reverse order as if to follow the master from the original
ideas to the final delivery.
Because the students have studied all of
the grammatical forms and rules of syntax in a systematic way, they have
the general understanding necessary to translate real Latin. An
immersion student will not be able to do this, which is why few Latin
programs ever get beyond short and artificial sentence reading.
SUMMARY
The popular fad called "natural language
learning" falsely suggests that languages are best learned by imitating
children. There is no area of life where such an approach is taken
by adults and the success of these advertisements is largely due to the
distaste modern students have for rigorous systematic studies.
Rather than following the fads of modern experiments in education, we
would be wiser to follow the advice of the schoolmasters who taught the
classical languages in days when they were in active use throughout
society. They speak with one voice in recommending the exact
method employed by the CLAA.
Popular modern programs like Rosetta
Stone and the many similar Latin reading programs (Lingua Latina, Ecce
Romania, Oxford Latin, Cambridge Latin, etc..) may entertain new
students for a while, but eventually will leave them short of the true
goals of classical language learning, which are aimed at philosophical,
theological and literary studies, not merely business and vacation
communications. The faculty of reason allows us to master
languages efficiently, though the work is indeed rigorous. The
only natural learning method for students over the age of seven is
the classical method of "Analysis and Genesis". We're happy to
provide that here in the CLAA.
EXAMPLE OF THE CLASSICAL METHOD
EMPLOYED BY THE CLASSICAL LIBERAL ARTS ACADEMY
I. FORMAL GRAMMAR STUDIES (CLAA
Grammar I, II)
- Accidents (Parts of Speech & Forms)
- Syntax (Rules of Construction)
- Grammatical Translation Work
II. RHETORICAL ORDER
(CICERONIAN)
Students begin with the actual Latin of
the masters--not artificial textbook sentence which mask a program's
failures and give a false sense of progress. Here is a well-known
example from Cicero's moral essay De Senectute (On Old Age)
Aptíssima omníno sunt, Scípio et
Laeli, arma senectútis artes exercitationésque virtútum, quae in
omni aetáte cultae, cum diu múltumque víxeris, miríficos ecférunt
fructus, non solum quia numquam desérunt, ne extrémo quidem tempore
aetatis (quamquam id quidem maximum est), verum etiam quia
conscientia bene actae vitae multorumque bene factorum recordatio
iucundissima est.
II. GRAMMATICAL ORDER
Using the rules of construction learned
in Grammar II, students turn the master's sentences into their basic
grammatical order. This highlights the decisions the masters made
in their own language based on the principles of Rhetoric and allows for
simpler translation into English. Here is a grammatical ordering
of the passage above:
Scipio et Laeli, artes
exercitationesque virtutum sunt omnino arma aptissima senectutis:
quae cultae ecferunt fructus mirificos in aetate omni, cum vixeris
multum diuque: non solum quia deserunt numquam, ne quidem in
tempore extremo aetatis, quamquam id est maximum: verum etiam quia
conscientia vitae actae bene, recordatioque befactorum multorum est
iucundissima.
III. GRAMMATICAL TRANSLATION
Once the grammatical order is
established, translation into English very simple. Students simply
move word-by-word through the text. Here is the English
translation of the passage above:
O Scipio and Laeli, arts and
exercises of virtues are altogether the fittest weapons of old age:
which being exercised in every age do bring marvelous fruits, when
you have lived much and long: not only because they forsake
never, no truly in the extreme time of age, although that is the
greatest; but also because the conscience of a life well done [or
well passed over] and the remembrance of many good deeds, is
most pleasant.
IV. PARSING
After translating, students parse the
entire passage, word-by-word, demonstrating their understanding of every
detail of the sentence. Students analyze the forms used and the
reasons for their use, resorting to their MEMORIZED rules of
construction. Here is an example of the parsing of the first words
of the passage above:
Scipio is the Vocative
case, known by speaking to, & the Interjection O understood;
governed by the Interjection O, by the rule O Exclamantis,
Nominativo, Accusatio & Vocative iungitur.
Et is a Copulative
Conjunction, serving to couple words or sentences; here coupling
Scipio and Laeli together.
Laeli the next word,
the Vocative case known also by speaking to, and put in the same
case with Scipio, by reason of the Conjunction et. By
the rule, Copulative Conjunctions and Distinctives couple like
cases, etc...
Artes is next, in
construing according to my rule of construing. The Nominative
case, coming before the principal Verb sunt, by the rule of
the first Concord.
Qua next, a Copulative
Conjunction, coupling artes and exercitationes
together.
Exercitationes is next,
the Nominative case coupled with artes, by the Enclytical
Conjunction quae, which is set after exercitationes in
the book; by the rule of the Subjunctive Conjunctions, or which are
put after.
Virtutem follows next,
the Genitive case, governed by the Substantive exercitationes:
and is the latter of two Substantives; by the rule, "When two
Substantives come together...
Sunt is next, agreeing
with the Nominative case artes exercitationesque; by
Verbum personale cohaeret cum Nominativo etc.. It is
expressed to the one Nominative case, and understood to the other by
the figure Zeugma.
Omnino, the next word,
is an Adverb joined to the Verb to declare the signification.
Arma, the Nominative
following the Verb sunt, sum, forem, fio, etc..
Aptissima the
Nominative case of the Noun Adjective, agreeing in all things with
arma, by the rule of the second Concord. The Adjective,
whether it be a Noun, etc., it agrees with arma because it
expresses the quality of arma, etc.
Senectutits next, the
Genitive case governed of arma, because it expresses arma,
the weapon of old age, the latter of two Substantives.
...and so on.
V. Reproduce Grammatical
translation from English translation, parsing.
After demonstrating the complete
understanding of every word in the passage, students reproduce the Latin
translation, using grammatical order. This is very easy.
VI. Reproduce Rhetorical
translation from Grammatical translation.
Once the grammatical Latin sentence is
reproduced, students then try to reproduce the rhetorical ordering of
the sentence by the master. When finished they check their work
with the original text and study the differences and the reasons for
them. This gives them not only a basic grammatical knowledge of
the language, but when coupled with the study of Rhetoric in the CLAA,
allows them to see the rules of the art in action.
For more information about classical
language studies in the CLAA,
contact William
Michael. |
