The Teaching of Modern Languages : A Biblical Perspective

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of either The Christian Institute or the authors employer.

The Teaching of Modern Languages
A Biblical Perspective

© The Christian Institute 2002

Based on a lecture given at St Stephen's Church Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, on 9 May 2002 by Mr Christ Prest

Chris Prest is an experienced teacher and examiner of German and French, and a former Head of Modern Languages. He is currently a researcher with The Christian Institute.Chris Prest is an experienced teacher and examiner of German and French, and a former Head of Modern Languages. He is currently a researcher with The Christian Institute.

Contents

Introduction

What the Bible has to say about language and languages

        Language

        Languages

The Teaching of Languages

        The Biblical Perspective

        The Secular Humanist Perspective

        Humanistic Influences on Modern Language Teaching

Methodology and Examinations

        Methodology

        Examinations

References

Introduction

Our theme this evening is the teaching of modern languages, a biblical perspective. I presume some present will be modern languages teachers. To you I say it is not my aim to give a definitive methodology of the teaching of languages, but rather to encourage Christian teachers to bring a biblical perspective to their work. Perhaps there are some here who are not practitioners but who have nonetheless an interest in education generally. Perhaps you have had an enjoyable experience yourself of learning a foreign language or perhaps it was fraught with great difficulties. I know from experience that to reveal that you are a teacher of modern languages is to invite endless stories and confessions of personal inadequacies. I trust, this evening, that I may also be able to encourage you to reengage in the task of learning a foreign language.

Top

What the Bible has to say about language and languages

Language

If we are to consider a biblical perspective to the teaching of this subject we must by definition start with the Bible, the inspired and inerrant Word of God.

In Psalm 139, in the middle of that most remarkable passage in which he is so taken up with the omnipresence and the omniscience of Almighty God, the Psalmist David declares these words in verses 13-14:

"For you created my inmost being: you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

Indeed we are. We can but marvel at the wonder that is our human body, how it is so wonderfully designed and functions. Despite the Fall we bear the traits of our Creator. We are not here by chance; we are fearfully and wonderfully made. For me the gift of language, the ability to understand and communicate with our fellow man is the most remarkable thing. It sets us apart from the animal kingdom. True, there are various forms of communication among animals, but surely nothing can match the sophistication of human language. Even the most hardened atheist would have to marvel at this remarkable ability. The Christian, on the other hand, reacts with more than wonder. Yes, says David, I am wonderfully made, but I am fearfully made. As I meditate upon the wonder of speech my reaction and I trust yours too is one of awe towards God our Great Creator.

Let's think on this for a few moments.

As I speak now, hopefully you can all understand me. Aber, wenn ich plötzlich auf Deutsch rede, dann können nicht alle mich verstehen. Si je parle en français, quelques-uns entre vous ne peuvent pas me comprendre. That's true isn't it. Some of you were probably unable to understand me because I was uttering sounds which bore no resemblance to anything with which you were familiar. Yet some of you, I presume, did understand me, and hopefully a native speaker would also understand me. If, on the other hand, I had mispronounced one or more words, or if I had selected one or more wrong words, or if I had strung those words together in a different order, then you or that native speaker might not have understood me, either fully or immediately. In GCSE-speak "communication would not have been achieved". This is because language, our own or indeed any language, has order or structure - probably best summarised as phonetic structure, lexical structure, and grammatical structure. That is, there are precise sound patterns, word patterns, and sentence structure patterns. This should come as no surprise because, as the Psalmist reminds us, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are made by a God of great order.

Language is indeed extremely complex. It is much more than a set of individual words. True, we have key words, nouns like book, table, car, but we have adjectives to qualify them: big, blue, black. We have verbs to describe actions: run, go, see. We have adverbs to qualify them: quickly, smoothly, clearly. We have articles like a, the, this, prepositions like in, on, under, conjunctions like when, because, although, and so on. It is only when these words are put together with the right sound patterns and grammatical patterns that any meaning can be achieved. Thus far I have referred only to English. Remember too that each language has its own unique patterns. There are thousands of languages, each with its own complex grammar, word patterns, and range of sounds.

So language is complex. It is also sophisticated. We can talk of present, past and future events - the concept of tense. There are nuances, subtleties, variations in meaning. We can talk in the abstract of things which we cannot touch or see, like happiness, freedom, love. But much more than that, language is the expression of thought. When we think, we think verbally. Our words simply give expression to our thoughts. So it is that we can express our aspirations and fears. We can speak of a situation in which we are not engaged at that moment. We can reason. We can ask why? Remember too that as with structures we can multiply all this sophistication by the thousands of languages which exist.

What amazing scope, complexity, and sophistication there is in language, and remember that whatever we say we can also write down. We can give meaning to marks on paper, those things we call letters. We can also hear what people say, read what people write and so understand their thoughts, and again in a multiplicity of languages, each uniquely complex and sophisticated. We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, and this is without even considering the physiological means that are ours to produce coherent meaningful sounds.

In addition we have a natural desire to communicate, which should come as no surprise to us, because God made us to be in communication with Him and with our fellow men.

God communicated with our first parents. In Genesis 2:15-17 we read:

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.'"

Then in chapter 3, the story of the Fall itself, communication takes place between Adam and Eve and between them and God.

Top

Languages

Now while the Bible can point us to the wonder of language and the start of communication, it also tells us of the origin of languages in the plural.

Let's hear the opening verses of Genesis chapter 11:

"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
They said to each other, 'Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.' They used brick instead of stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, 'Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.'
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, 'If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.'
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel - because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."

God created foreign languages. There was a point in human history when a common speech ended and languages were created. The result was that there was confusion and a lack of understanding (verse 7), a situation which persists to this day. The scattering of the people and the creation of languages were all part of God's judgement on them. Noah and his family had been spared after the flood yet now their descendants showed a bold and sinful defiance of God. Instead of spreading and populating the whole earth as they had been commanded, they settled in the plain of Shinar. Instead of looking to the God who had spared their family in the Flood some years earlier, they looked to a fortified city for their security. They would seek to make a name for themselves by building an enormous tower. But God brought an end to their defiance and empire building in a most remarkable way. Not only did He scatter them but He confused their speech - He created separate languages. Now I think it is important to reiterate what we as Christians believe is the origin of languages. It is bound up with man's sin and God's judgement. From language being a blessing it has now become a curse.

It is interesting to note at this point that the Bible often links the concept of sin with language. We have seen something of the wonder of human speech - the fact that we think in language and that what we say expresses what we think. We are reminded of this so vividly in Matthew 15:18-19:

"But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean'. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander."

James devotes a substantial part of the third chapter of his epistle to the subject of the tongue and concludes in verse 8:

"…no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison."

We have looked at the Tower of Babel and the creation of languages which went hand in hand with the scattering of the peoples. Let us look now at the events of the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1-4:

"When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language."

Now with the coming of the Holy Spirit comes unity - those who were scattered have come together and a supernatural ability has been given to them to speak and understand what are referred to as other tongues, that is foreign languages. Notice, there was no lengthy and difficult learning process -- we read simply they began to speak in other tongues. There was the same suddenness witnessed at Babel but in contrast to the judgement of God seen there, we now see God's blessing. There is a dramatic reversal of the curse of Babel. Commenting on these events, John Stott writes in his book The Message of Acts:

"Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly than this the multi-racial, multi-national, multi-lingual nature of the kingdom of Christ."(1)
These events are a foretaste of what is to come for the Christian. We look to a time when God's redeemed people will be gathered before the throne "from every nation, tribe, people, and language."(2)

Let us remember that, in addition to all that we have seen the Bible says about language and languages, it is true to say that language is central to the Christian faith. Indeed, the Christian faith places great emphasis on language as the means of God's revelation of Himself to us. The Bible after all is the Word of God. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us in chapter 1 verse 1:

"[I[n the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at various times and in various ways".

It is even more significant, because in verse 2 he goes on to say:

"but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…"

And in the first chapter of John's gospel, God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, God's ultimate revelation of Himself to man, is described as the Word.

Top

The Teaching of Languages

The Biblical Perspective

I want to suggest then that the Christian modern languages teacher will bring to his or her teaching just such a biblical perspective. We will have some understanding of what the Bible has to say about language. We will be struck by its complexity and sophistication. We will be struck by the fact that despite man's sin, in language there is something of clear order and structure, phonetic order, lexical order, grammatical order, and that each of the thousands of languages has its own unique structures. This is a reflection of God's order seen throughout His creation. We will be very aware from God's Word and our own experience that language and thought are inseparable, and that as a result what we say reflects our heart, our inmost being. We will be aware of the biblical account of the origin of languages as part of the judgement of God. We will therefore be under no illusion that, as it was God's intention to confuse human speech, our task in teaching a foreign language and our pupils' task in learning will not be easy. We will also have before us the future prospect of an eternity of one tongue shared by people of every nation, tribe and tongue. The future dimension, of which the Bible speaks, centres on the promise of eternal life, an eternal kingdom of peace, righteousness, and justice, indeed a whole new eternal world order after Christ's return. This will be the true multi-national, multi-racial society redeemed by Christ and united together in Him, amongst whom language will no longer be a barrier. We will also be aware of the centrality of language to the Christian faith, God's revelation of Himself to man through scripture and ultimately through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Top

The Secular Humanist Perspective

Let us contrast that with what the secular humanist thinks. He may be amazed by the sophistication and scope of human speech but he is totally frustrated by the barrier that is foreign languages. In his desire for unity between nations and peace between men, centred on man and not God, indeed in its ultimate form, the creation of a one-world or one-Europe order, he sees the existence of languages as a stumbling block - exactly what God intended.

The extreme solution to this was the creation of artificial languages and in particular Esperanto. This was developed between 1877 and 1883 by a Pole named Ludwig Zamenhof because he was convinced that a common language would be necessary to resolve many of the problems that lead to strife and conflict in the world. He rejected the major languages, English, French, German, and Russian for two reasons. Firstly, he thought they were too difficult, and secondly, selecting one would put its native speakers at an advantage against those for whom it was not their native tongue. He also rejected the two dead languages, Latin and Greek, because they were, he contended, more complicated and more unwieldy than currently spoken languages. I know no Esperanto but I understand that its structures have been made as uncomplicated as possible.

Many shared the sentiment of the role of such an artificial language in facilitating world-wide harmony and peace. Many have learned the language. Today an estimated 2 million can speak it throughout the world and some 30,000 books have been published in the language. Despite all this Esperanto has not brought that great end to world conflict for which its creator and subsequent adherents had hoped. Indeed the word Esperanto means in the language itself "a person who is hoping". Those who know French will recognise the verb espérer, to hope and the noun espoir, hope. But it is a vain hope in our present sinful world that lasting peace and harmony between men will come through men. Man is fallen. The Christian's hope, in the words of that great hymn, "is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness". Our hope is not something that might be. In 1 Peter 1: 3-4 the apostle Peter speaks more of a certainty, of "a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead."

Top

Humanistic Influences on Modern Language Teaching

Esperanto then is man-centred. It purports to bring a humanistic solution to an eternal problem. Now I believe that it is this same humanistic approach with its emphasis upon the advantages to man in foreign language study in terms of furthering the goal of improving political, economic and cultural relationships, and beyond that to the greater goal seen by advocates of Esperanto, namely the brotherhood of man, the one-world or one-Europe order, which underpins the aims set out in the GCSE foreign language syllabuses.

Aim 6 is to "encourage positive attitudes to foreign language learning and to speakers of foreign languages and a positive approach to other cultures and civilisations."

Aim 1 is to "develop the ability to understand and use French (etc.) effectively for purposes of practical communication".

The emphasis has then moved from a study of a foreign language in and of itself to the use to which knowledge of a foreign language can be put. In this there are clear parallels with other areas of the curriculum, notably Mathematics and Technology where the application rather than the theory are emphasised. Thus in GCSE foreign languages specific areas of experience are outlined such as school, home life, media, health and fitness, food, holidays, social activities, shopping, travel and tourism and of course the world of work.

It is interesting to note that in the recent debate surrounding the proposal to remove the study of a foreign language from the common core of the National Curriculum, much has been made of the economic and employment arguments. For example in an opinion column of the Times Educational Supplement the writer, bemoaning the state of affairs in this country and praising what he claimed was going on in other parts of Europe, maintained that as they were learning other languages, pupils were "equipping themselves much more purposefully for international business"(3)

As a correspondent on the same day said:

"In spite of the claims of English as a world language, we still need linguists. Applicants with a language continue to have an edge in some jobs."(4)

This reminds me of the situation pre 1992, when study of a modern foreign language at Key Stage 4 was not compulsory. Then, in order to recruit children into our GCSE French and German classes at the time of options, and remember we were competing against a whole range of subjects often with the attractive suffix "studies", we were called upon to emphasise just such advantages in the job market. Continue your study of a language, and if not the world, then at least Europe would be your oyster, as far as jobs were concerned, or at the very least you would be equipped to carry out rudimentary transactions on your foreign holiday, everything from buying a cup of coffee to dealing with a car breakdown.

Top

Methodology and Examinations

Methodology

Now in order to achieve these utilitarian aims the whole methodology of language teaching has had to change. Modern foreign languages were taught up to the 1960s very much on the lines of Latin - what was known as the grammar translation approach. Oral work was often not encouraged. Grammar ruled. Phraseology and vocabulary would be selected to illustrate and develop points of grammar.

Here are some sentences gleaned from the early chapters, as they were then known, rather than units, of course books from that era and now long out of print:

"Hans Weber ist ein Junge. Sein Bruder heißt Karl, und seine Schwester heißt Maria. Ihr Vater ist ein Mann, und ihre Mutter ist eine Frau. Der Vater arbeitet, und die Mutter bleibt zu Hause."

For those with no German: "Hans Weber is a boy. His brother is called Karl, and his sister is called Maria. Their father is a man, and their mother is a woman. The father works, and the mother stays at home." We may well smile at this wonderful piece of political incorrectness or delight in the reinforcement of family roles, but the purpose was to teach about gender and the various forms of the articles and possessive adjectives in the early days of learning the language. This was seen as an essential foundation before any further progress could be made. One wonders how many today would have such knowledge even at a much later stage.

Here is another:

"Menschen wohnen in Häusern. Pferde wohnen in Ställen. Vögel wohnen in Nestern"

For those with no German: "People live in houses. Horses live in stables. Birds live in nests." Now these are not the most interesting or useful sentences, but they served with others to teach within the first month or so of German the rules for the formulation of noun plurals, including the important addition of the letter 'n' with dative plurals, something alien to many at GCSE and even at 'A' Level today.

Language was seen as an end in itself or as a preparation for 'A' Level which was predominantly literature-based. The study of a foreign language was in no way utilitarian. Rather, language was studied for itself. Now there is something here which might commend itself to the Christian language teacher wishing to bring a biblical perspective to his or her work. There is an appreciation of language, there is a rigour in learning, and there is nothing of the utilitarian humanistic world-view which would see foreign language learning as a step towards some kind of utopia. I would like to return to this issue in a few moments.

But methodology changed. The 1960s saw the direct method, the audio-lingual method with the use of language laboratories, and the audio-visual method. Some here may recall the then revolutionary Longmans Audio-Visual French Course. The 1980s brought us the mould-breaking communicative approach on which our present GCSE is based. Why mould-breaking? Because the emphasis was on communication, only those items of grammar were to be taught which were necessary to enable the learner to carry out a particular piece of communication, rather than a systematic building-block approach. This meant that often quite complex patterns were to be encountered, patterns which would formerly have been learnt at a much later stage. Let me illustrate this with some examples from about the same stage in language learning as those we have just encountered:

"Entschuldigung, wie komme ich am besten zum Bahnhof, bitte?
"Wie komme ich am besten zur Post, bitte?"
"Gehen Sie hier geradeaus!"
"Nehmen Sie die erste Straße links!"

For those with no German: "Excuse me, can you tell me the way to the station, please? Can you tell me the way to the post office, please? Go straight on. Take the first street on the left."

This is complex German involving different verb forms, inverted order, one form of the imperative, the use of dative case and the contracted forms "zum" and "zur", short for "zu dem" and "zu der". Previously these points would have been taught at a later stage and in a far fuller way. Now the minimum that is required to communicate your needs and to understand the response could suffice. The underlying grammar need not be taught.

Now whatever the variations and titles, direct method, audio-visual, or now communicative methodology, the theory behind much of this methodology was a very simplistic one, namely that if children were exposed to sufficient of the foreign language they would soon assimilate it. After all we all acquired our mother tongue that way. But surely we all know or should know that the conditions of mother tongue acquisition and foreign language acquisition in the classroom situation are vastly different. The former accompanies the acquisition of concepts, skills and a growing awareness of the world around. It is an all-day activity. The latter on the other hand comes at a time when such concepts, skills and awareness are already established and far from being an all-day activity is at best an hour a day for five days per week. It is an activity which Professor Eric Hawkins, under whom I studied for my PGCE at the University of York many years ago, so memorably described as "gardening in a gale". When the child comes out of his foreign language classroom his linguistic stimuli are naturally English for the rest of the day, resulting in the blowing away rather than the establishing and reinforcing of what has been learnt. In the past this artificial environment for foreign language learning was recognised and was addressed by the short-cuts of learning about the underlying grammatical structure, lexical structure and phonetic structure, thereby giving the student the means of generating new language by the application of certain rules. But that is no longer the accepted norm.

There are two issues here which should concern us. The first is the philosophy which says "communication rules", that no matter what mistakes I make, as long as I have been more or less understood by a sympathetic native speaker and I have more or less understood him, then communication has been achieved. I have had a go. I may even have done something which will contribute in some way to improving understanding between nations and overcoming prejudices - the humanistic, man-centred argument. The second issue is the loss of seeing language for what it is, its order, its beauty, its complexity, its sophistication, issues we looked at earlier. It is a concern, to use that current phrase, of "dumbing down". Perhaps "dumbing down" is a rather simplistic way of looking at it, because under communicative language teaching methodology it is true to say that great strides have been made.

Top

Examinations

Changes in methodology have been accompanied by changes in examinations. It is true to say that a far wider range of children are now able to perform with excellent fluency and accent within a prescribed range of situations. Again, albeit within the confines of prescribed vocabulary, they can hear utterances by native speakers in the foreign language at full speed and can elicit meaning, even coping with the unpredictable at GCSE Higher Level. Language is being understood and communication is being achieved, and I can testify as an examiner to some really high quality performances. However this is at the expense of accuracy, but then the creation of grammatically accurate sentences is not what is called for at GCSE. This is not 'O' Level. There the ability to translate into and out of very complex language was being tested. There was not only no access to dictionaries but the student was required to learn a very broad range of vocabulary as there was no prescribed list. Students also had to have a thorough knowledge of the grammar of the language including, for example in the case of German, complexities such as passive and subjunctive. To make yourself understood, so the communicative argument runs, you do not need 100% accuracy in terms, for example, of gender, case, or adjective ending. After all, essential information about my family is conveyed if I say "Ich habe ein Bruder" or even "Ich habe eine Bruder" rather than use the correct accusative masculine form "einen". However there are situations where an incorrect ending would lead to misunderstanding. Germanists among you know, for example, of the possibility of inverted word order. So the phrase "Der Hund beißt den Mann" (The dog bites the man) could equally be "Den Mann beißt der Hund." This over simplified example shows that an understanding of the subject and direct object of a sentence, and subsequently the correct use of nominative and accusative cases, are absolutely essential to avoid the ridiculous situation of a very hungry or perhaps very angry man.

In her book All Must Have Prizes Melanie Phillips quotes a German Tutor at Surrey University, Derek McCulloch, as saying:

"Now, anything that passes for communication is considered good. There's a 'good enough' philosophy in schools. My students can't understand German word order. They don't understand who is doing what to whom in a sentence….They can't see the grammatical difference between 'He has a bad teacher' and 'He is a bad teacher'. In 1993, 31 out of 36 first year students couldn't write the latter sentence in German."(5)

Melanie Phillips identifies what she says is a crisis in modern languages and lays this squarely at the door of the communicative methods which I have outlined and the retreat from grammar. I would tend to agree with her. Received wisdom over the last two decades has been that the formal teaching of grammar is bad and that simply by hearing so much of the foreign tongue within their allotted lesson of 40 minutes to an hour, children will as if by magic learn the necessary codes not only to enable comprehension but to generate new utterances.

Now what has been the result of all this? At the extreme we have university students who do not have a grasp of simple grammatical concepts which would have been known in years past within the first year of language learning at school. However the thing that really concerns me is that in adopting such an approach we are doing a disservice to both the less able and the more able alike. This is something which should concern us greatly as Christians. The less able, those who are already disadvantaged, need more structure not less. The more able may well gain their As and A*s at GCSE, but if they have been fed a pure communicative approach they have to contend with gaining a grasp of structure for real progress to be made. I speak from much experience of privately coaching sixth formers in that precise situation. At the time when they would have begun to enjoy their developing knowledge and skills they have instead the disheartening task of grappling with formal grammar.

Let me now try to draw all this together and suggest how as Christians we might adopt a more biblical approach to modern foreign language teaching. For me there are two key issues:

Firstly there is the language itself. Of course we see language as a means of communication. It really would be useful to be able to book a hotel room or a train ticket. But we see language as something far more than the immediately functional. We see language as something God-given, something which reflects its creator in its order, beauty, complexity and sophistication. We must want to convey that to our pupils, get them to appreciate that, and share our wonder.

Secondly, the biblical approach to the teaching of this subject like any other subject will be one of consistently high standards and high expectations of our pupils. Our approach to our work has to be at the very least as good as, but, rather, I believe it has to be better than that of our non-Christian colleagues, because we are doing it as unto the Lord. It is our Christian service every bit as much as our witnessing to our faith or our involvement in the work of the gospel in our local church, our youth work or our Sunday school class. Paul writing to the Colossians in chapter 3 verse 17 said:

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through him."

In practical terms this is obviously about preparation and marking but can I suggest it is also about our use of time within the classroom. We need to ask ourselves some very important questions. Just what are we doing with those precious few minutes we have to teach our subject? Is that particular activity really the best use of my time? Am I really furthering my pupils' knowledge of the language? These are questions I think it would be fair to ask ourselves. Also we must not give the impression that there is some quick fix to language learning. The confusion of speech spoken of at the time of the Tower of Babel reminds us that foreign language learning is not easy and our pupils should be under no illusion.

Now I am not saying that the biblical approach to modern language teaching lies in a return to the old grammar translation approach. We still want to emphasise communication, of course, but true communication. We desire to see our pupils not just uttering standard responses to standard questions but rather being in a position to create their own utterances in a variety of situations with confidence, fluency, and a good accent. We want to see the highest standards of accuracy as the hallmark of their written work. We want to see them being understood by the native speaker and not just the sympathetic one. So yes, the teaching of grammatical structure should not be neglected. Indeed it should be taught with great thoroughness and not just as a means of communication. But let us not forget that there are other structures apart from grammar. There is lexical structure, words, word fields, word groups; and phonetic structure - the sound structure that is unique to each language. All three structures are about order, the order of language reflecting the God of order. Each needs to be thoroughly taught. In real terms this will mean regular systematic learning and practising in context of grammatical points, of vocabulary and phraseology, and of the sound patterns of the language. We should be concerned about the development of a good accent. Perhaps we should return to that most useful exercise, dictation. And of course we will not neglect oral work, real communication. Ultimately, effective communication and effective comprehension will only be achieved with a better grasp of these essential structures. Without them we are disadvantaging children, selling them short, and that is not a biblical approach.

As I draw to a close I feel I have to address a question that may be on some minds, of whether in the light of the Tower of Babel foreign languages should be taught at all. I see no biblical warrant for not doing so. I hope I have already stated the case for the study of a foreign language in and of itself. In addition the Great Commission of Matthew 28: 18-20 to go and make disciples of all nations would suggest to me clear biblical warrant for foreign language teaching. Thousands of people over the generations have had to learn another language in order to carry out the Great Commission to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. If we take an organisation like Wycliffe Bible Translators whose missionaries painstakingly listen, observe, analyse and then work out formal structures before then speaking, writing and ultimately translating the Scriptures, we can see that it is Christians who are at the forefront of linguistics. Over the past two thousand years the Bible has been translated into countless tongues as a result of which millions have heard the gospel and have come to faith in Christ. This must be in accord with God's will. We can think too of the effect that the translation of the Bible has had on the reshaping of a language.

I trust you will agree that foreign languages should still be taught and that we can and should approach the teaching of them biblically.

Top

References

1 The Message of Acts, John R. W. Stott, Inter-Varsity Press, 1990, Page 68
2 Revelation 7: 9
3 Times Educational Supplement, 1 March 2002
4 Ibid
5 All Must Have Prizes, Melanie Phillips, Little, Brown and Company, 1996, pages 9-10

Top