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There was a revival of interest of the ancient world led by scholars which revitalised the study of classical languages.
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In the mid sixteenth century Europe preached the message: education should grow out of the child's experience of the mother tongue and foreign languages should be relegated to a subsidiary role.
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The teacher Richard Mulcaster was one of the earliest champions of the vernacular in England who spoke up for the use of English in his 'First Part of the Elementarie'.
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Teacher's Richard Mulcaster book sets out a programme for the codification of the English language as a necessary prerequisite for any serious system of vernacular schooling and he offered a set of rules and principles which made a significant contribution to the standardisation of the English spelling system in the early seventeenth century.
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He expressed in his 'Methodus': "...There is a certain natural sequence along which the human intelligence moves in acquiring knowledge..."; which has been restated in guises by educational innovators up to the present day.
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Comenius underlined the central role of the mother tongue in the child's exploration of meaning in his 'Great Didactic' published in Czech around 1630.
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He said, "My drifted and scope therefore is, to have a child so well versed in his mother's tongue before he meddle with Latin."
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In mid seventeenth century France, for instance, the famous 'Little Schools' of Port Royal were committed to the mother tongue principle.
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English appear in schools curriculum until the late seventeenth century.
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He stressed the importance of the mother tongue as as the medium of instruction throughout the education system.
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'Some Thoughts Concerning Education' is an essay elaborated in Britain John Locke which contains advice on a modern system of education to replace the horrors of the grammar schools.
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Locke pint out that young children were better at pronouncing foreign languages.
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Europe consisted teaching of foreign languages such as Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to boys between the ages 8 and 14.
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The vernacular movement gradually gathered support throughout the eighteenth century.
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Joseph Priestley expressed," The propriety of introducing the English grammar into English schools cannot be disputed."
Robert Lowth said, "To enter as once upon the science of grammar and the study of a foreign language is to encounter two difficulties together..." -
Grammar schools accepted English in school curriculum in the mid-nineteenth century.
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The 'object lesson' had a significant influence in the history of of language teaching methodology in the mid 1860s,
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In 1616, a government committe chaired by Stanley Leathes which was set up by the Board of Education to look into the whole question of 'modern studies' including the future of foreign languages.
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The psychologist Penfield answer the call in paper which supported the view that pre-adolescent children were well-suited to the acquisition of foreign languages.
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The absence of foreign languages from most of the state education sector was the cause of a solution to introduce foreign language to all children in secondary schools.
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In the mid 60s, a project was created involving the production of audio-visual courses for primary French and secondary French, German, Spanish, and Russian.
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A small but highly publicised experiment to teach French to primary school children was carried out by a native-speaking teacher in Leeds.
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In Britain, before the 1970s foreign languages were reserved to bright adolescents.