Teach yourself Chinese--how? The history of Chinese self-instruction manuals for English speakers, 1900-2010

This paper examines the history of self-instructional manuals of (Mandarin) Chinese published in Britain between 1900 and 2010, one of the main ways of learning Chinese for most of the 20th century in Britain, when Chinese instruction was virtually non-existent in schools and barely available in adult education classes. It thus contributes to the history of the prolific but under-researched genre of teach-yourself language manuals. More importantly, it aims to promote critical reflection on the aims and means of teaching Chinese to Eng-lish-speaking learners today, by examining how the authors of such manuals tackled the task in the past. After an overview of the history of Chinese language learning in the UK, the article examines the differing approaches to teaching Chinese in these texts (particularly varied in the first half of the 20th century), with particular focus on pedagogical approaches to the spoken and written language, to the grammar of Mandarin Chinese (including claims made about Chinese grammar, terminology and concepts used, and the presentation of measure words), and to representing Chinese culture. The paper concludes with some thoughts on how knowledge of the past can inform critical reflection on current materials and practice in Chinese as a Foreign Language

German as a foreign language in Britain: the history of German as a 'useful' language since 1600

A quarter of a century ago, two essays examined the early history of German as a Foreign Language (GFL) in Britain.2 The present paper revisits the history of GFL at a time of perceived crisis in modern language education, to provide some historical answers to the question “Why learn German?” that may offer a useful context for debates about the status of German in schools and universities and in wider society today.3 Using as primary sources the materials available to learners since 1600, most of which have previously received very little attention from this perspective, I examine the interplay and the tensions between the various motivations for learning German that have been asserted, and give some illustrations of how the various answers to “Why German?” were reflected in the contents of textbooks and examinations for learners.4 Discussions of the value of German can be found in other kinds of primary sources, too, especially in the later period, including the popular and scholarly press, school prospectuses, policy documents, published and unpublished syllabi and curricula, but this study concentrates largely on the case made for German to its learners in the materials that were available to them. For the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, when modern languages became institutionalized and then established in mass education, I have also made selective reference to policy documents, and to the popular and scholarly press, as these too became fora in which the value of German was discussed. We shall see that the question of why to learn German is closely related to expectations about who should learn German, and that those expectations, too, have changed; but I shall argue that cultural rather than purely instrumental reasons have remained crucial

French and German in British schools (1850-1945)

This article outlines the status of French and German in British education from the 1850s, when they were introduced as subjects in public examinations, to the 1930s, with a few remarks on the period thereafter, with reference to contemporary reports as well as to textbooks used in the period. It touches on differences in the status of French and German in the education of boys and girls in the 19th century, and on the question of who taught French and German in these early decades. Throughout the period, French was the first foreign language, with German a clear second, and German came under particular pressure in the early decades of the 20th century as even proponents of Modern Languages argued that most pupils needed only to learn one language; World War I also had a negative impact. Concerted efforts were made from about 1912 onwards to stress that French should not always be the first language taught, and these began to have some effect in the second half of the 20th century, but German always remained a clear second (and has now been overtaken by Spanish as second foreign language in the 21st century)

German global soft power, 1700-1920

This article provides the first overview of the reach and 'soft power' of German language and culture in Europe and beyond, from 1700 to 1920, shortly after the end of the First World War. Besides the role of the state (weak, until deliberate policies began to be formulated from the late nineteenth century), the article shows the role of language societies, religious, educational and scientific institutions, and other sociocultural and political factors, including migration and colonization, in promoting German 'soft power' in other parts of Europe, in the Americas, Africa and China. The changing status of German language and culture in these parts of the world and the extent of local and 'home' support, through explicit policy or otherwise, for German as a first, foreign or additional language abroad is also considered

Mining foreign language teaching manuals for the history of pragmatics

Foreign language learning manuals can be valuable sources for the history of pragmatics and historical pragmatics. They may contain explicit guidance on pragmatics not found in native-speaker grammars: for example, accounts of German forms of address in seventeenth and eighteenth-century English-German manuals provide evidence of changing views on the appropriateness of ihr and Sie earlier than does the “native” grammatical tradition. The bilingual model dialogues typical of such manuals may also implicitly model appropriate linguistic behaviour, demonstrated here by examining the communicative genre of bargaining in a series of three related English-Dutch language manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, the dialogues may provide metalinguistic comment on linguistic behaviour, for example criticizing the culture of excessive negative politeness. Such sources can enrich our knowledge of language use and attitudes to language use in the area of politeness, complementing the evidence to be gleaned from mainstream native grammars, civility manuals, merchants’ guides, and the like

French and German in British schools (1850-1945)

This article outlines the status of French and German in British education from the 1850s, when they were introduced as subjects in public examinations, to the 1930s, with a few remarks on the period thereafter, with reference to contemporary reports as well as to textbooks used in the period. It touches on differences in the status of French and German in the education of boys and girls in the 19th century, and on the question of who taught French and German in these early decades. Throughout the period, French was the first foreign language, with German a clear second, and German came under particular pressure in the early decades of the 20th century as even proponents of Modern Languages argued that most pupils needed only to learn one language; World War I also had a negative impact. Concerted efforts were made from about 1912 onwards to stress that French should not always be the first language taught, and these began to have some effect in the second half of the 20th century, but German always remained a clear second (and has now been overtaken by Spanish as second foreign language in the 21st century)

An interview with John Trim (1924–2013) on the history of modern language learning and teaching

This text is the lightly edited transcript of the last interview with John Trim before his death in early 2013. John Trim was a Director of CILT, the UK’s national Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research, and was Director of the Modern Languages Projects of the Council of Europe for over a quarter of a century (from 1971 to 1997). In the interview, John reflects on his own history of shaping the direction of language teaching and learning in Britain and Europe (with a legacy lasting well into the twenty-first century via the Common European Framework of Reference, now used world-wide), and on the importance of the history of language learning and teaching for reflecting on current policy and practice. The full video-recording of the interview is available here:

Language standards, standardisation and standard ideologies in multilingual contexts

This essay-which also serves as an introduction to the six other articles which make up this special issue-examines the development of the field of language standardisation studies in recent decades. First, it notes the change in focus occasioned by drawing on the notion of language ideologies, especially standard language ideology. That ideological awakening has, in turn, revealed that standardisation studies have, until recently, been largely ideologically monolingualist. I argue that we must consider multilingualism (broadly conceived) in at least five ways when we study language standardisation: to recognize diaglossia within a single named language; to understand the nature of polycentric standards; to analyse language purism; to appreciate the key role of (foreign/ second) language learning in codification; and to trace the transmission of ideologies across languages and cultures. The paper gives examples of the ways in which our research can be unwittingly monolingualist in its concepts and methods, and examines the role of the concepts of heteroglossia and translanguaging in challenging that monolingualism. It concludes by setting an agenda for third-wave standardisation studies, with a call for standardisation studies that are both enriched both by the ideological turn and by attending to multilingualism