How to Make Good Teachers

The commonest cry of the campus revolutionary who concerns himself with his campus is "Good teaching is dead." The famous professors who attract good students to their campuses never see the students, the story goes; instead the undergraduates are left to a handful of graduate-student teaching fellows--and they, it is assumed, are bad teachers.

That is a large assumption, but it is at least half true--the bulk of a student's contact with faculty members is likely to be not with the Galbraiths, Eriksons, and Freunds, but with the teaching fellows, instructors, and occasional assistant professors who teach his sections, who tutor in his House or in his department.

And there is evidence that graduate-student teaching leaves something to be desired. Many departments permit first-year graduate students to teach sections without any prior instruction in how to teach. Thrown back on memories of their own high school or college teachers, the grad students must rely on their intuition to become good teachers. If some succeed, student reaction suggests that the majority do not. "The section men either make or break it," this year's Confidential Guide said of the College's largest course. "Last year, for the most part, they broke it." The Guide is dotted with courses whose sections were "a dismal waste of time," or "worthless," with section men who drew no favorable comments and several obscene ones.

But if one continues reading the Confy Guide, an oasis arrives with the courses offered by the German Department. "No matter who your section man is, you'll describe him in superlatives," a recent Guide said of German A. And the same year's analysis of German B waxed lyrical: "All of the section men and women, without exception, were praised; you can be sure that the same situation will prevail this year. The German Department has an incredible number of good section men."

How does the German Department do it? Its task is harder than the average department's, for language teaching has been revolutionized within the last decade; few section men can make use of the techniques that were used to teach them languages back in high school. The translation since then has given way to the language lab, the memorized passage to the audio-visual aid.

So the department begins by asking its graduate students to take a course in elementary teaching methods before they teach a section. Jack M. Stein, professor of German and the man responsible for the department's teacher-training courses, says that the department "has the most elaborate and complete program for teaching fellows in the whole country."

If this is true, it is a very recent development. While Cornell led the major universities in developing modern language teaching in the postwar years, using techniques borrowed from the Army's wartime programs, Harvard lagged behind. It was not until 1959 that Boylston Hall was renovated and turned over to the language departments. The latest in laboratory methods was installed, including 30 listening booths and a console that can play six separate programs simultaneously, and monitor any or all booths at once. A huge library of tapes, a lab director and assistant, and six employees completed the laboratory set-up.

William Riley Parker, who dedicated the renovated Boylston in 1960, demanded "Now that you have nice facilities, what are you going to do with them?" The German Department's answer was to match the facilities with teaching skill. They had already brought Stein with his modern audio-lingual and anti-grammarian philosophy from Columbia in 1958. In his newly-established position as co-ordinator of Language Instruction in the German Department, Stein developed the present teacher-training course.

It goes under the unlikely title of Germanic Philosophy 280, subtitled "The German Language and the Teaching of German." It is not just a course in teaching; it investigates the variety of methods now available to the teacher of elementary languages, and goes on to examine such professional matters as text books and the leading pedagogical journels.

The teaching techniques which Stein stresses in the course and for which the German Department at Harvard is famous are aural-oral. Stein counsels his future college teachers to develop in their students the ability for automatic response and communications--the same kind a child develops learning his native language. He opposes this to the old-fashioned grammar-and-translation approach. In fact, a "Do's and Don'ts" sheet which Stein distributes to his teaching fellows concludes with a warning: "There is a departmental ban on the use of the words 'memorize' and 'translate,' and a total ban on the translation of any sentence German-to-English or English-to-German from an open book by the student. No exceptions!"

Instead, modern language teachers must drill, drill, drill, orally and in the foreign language, too. But they must vary the drills, Stein thinks; a single technique will reduce in effectiveness after about 20 minutes.

Active attention and participation of every student every minute is required, and the teacher must construct natural conversations, the advice sheet notes. Also, "Don't be satisfied that one student can get the right answer (least of all a volunteer). Be sure all understand and can perform."

After learning about teaching techniques, the graduate students observe them in practice during visits to classes given by experienced instructors. Then the students are briefed in the language laboratory, which was completely resupplied with up-to-date equipment last summer.

The whole emphasis is on elementary teaching, because this is what the graduate students will be doing first--this is the burning issue for them, Stein says in his introduction to a forthcoming anthology of modern language-teaching papers.

Only now is the student able to begin teaching. But the department does not permit him, even with his new-found knowledge, to plunge into teaching on his own. He may take only one section, and the department continues to guide him and offer advice. In the first place, it provides him with a plan for the day-to-day conduct of his course, a thorough discussion of its aims, an analytical examination of the textbook and other materials used, assistance in preparation of tests and examinations, and a program of observation and visits. The new teaching fellow is encouraged to visit classes similar to the ones he is teaching. Permanent members of the department visit his class with advanced warning (surely a harrowing experience) and then consult with him.

In his second year of teaching, the teaching fellow is placed in "full charge" of a section of an elementary language course--German, A, B, C, or D--though he is still given some guidance.

Stein considers this "teacher-preparation reduced to essentials" reduced because of heavy scholarly demands on the graduate students. He adds, however, that the demands of study must not be considered so great that teacher training is neglected completely. "We are not a teacher's college and we don't want to be, but we do believe that teaching fellows, as scholar-teachers, should receive training in both fields," he said. Schools have existed for years to train high school teachers, but there are none to train college teachers. "We are filling this gap," Stein noted.

It is his coordinator position which has enabled Stein to lead the German Department to its present distinction in teaching. One single tenured person in charge of all the language courses in a department provides the continuity and unity which are essential in the early stages of language instruction, he explains. The University has established Co-ordinator of Language Instruction positions in the Romance and Slavic Languages and Literatures also. The only other University in the country to have a comparable position is Columbia, Stein says.

The Romance Languages Department with Dwight LeM. Bolinger, professor of Romance Languages and Literature, as coordinator of language instruction has begun to follow, in the last two years, in the German Department's footsteps. Since the Romance Languages Department has not been as enthusiastic in the transition to oral-aural-methods as the German Department, experts think is will take about three more years before the former's teacher-training program begins to produce as well. But the two departments are now working together--Stein and Bolinger, as co-ordinators are co-operating on further developments in the training program.

Horace G. Lunt 2d '41, who serves both as chairman and as co-ordinator of language instruction in the Slavic Department, has developed no teacher-training course. The department has instead planned more meetings for teaching fellows next year in hopes of strengthening and co-ordinating the elementary teaching program.

The basic similarity between the German and Romance training programs is in the applied linguistics courses. Bolinger taught Romance Philology 201. "General Linguistics and the Romance Languages: Theory and Application," in its present form for the first time last Fall. The course is about one-third linguistics and two-thirds pedagogy, Bolinger said. Like the German course, it covers teaching techniques, the making of tests and drills, and analysis of textbooks.

In addition to criticism from about six visits a year from professors, teaching fellows in Romance Languages are now asked to make tape recordings of two of their classes, write criticisms and comparisons of the two, and sumbit their comparisons to the department. Field trips to secondary schools are also part of the curriculum of the training course, which in the past has been meeting two times a week. Next year the department will add special meetings on Fridays which will split up the class into two sections: Spanish-Italian, and French. This is intended to provide a chance for specific discussions of problems peculiar to the different languages.

In the Fall before they begin teaching the new teaching fellows attend a four-day orientation program, which includes demonstration classes, films on language and language teaching, explanations of how to cope with some of the special problems of Harvard's 'special breed" of students, and advice from observers of the previous year's teaching fellows, Bolinger said. This was the first year such an orientation program was adopted, and it was so successful that it will be continued, he added, with Kathleen O. Elliott, Dean of Radcliffe College, as the guest speaker.

Problems have arisen with Stein's teacher-training plan. A frequent criticism is that it denies teaching salaries to first-year graduate students; universities have traditionally used the sal- aries as a kind of scholarship for their graduate students. Stein thinks this could be avoided by spreading second and third year teaching money over the full three years of study.

In recognition of the special training programs in the German and Romance Language Departments, and as an incentive for student-teachers, the Harvard Graduate Society for Advanced Study and Research has developed a Travel Study Prize. Susan M. Rubin 4G, teaching fellow in Romance Languages, received this year's first prize of $750 for a summer of travel.

"We are very happy that the Graduate Society thinks so highly of our teaching fellows and that superb instruction in lower-level German courses is becoming legendary among the students," Stein said. "But in view of the fact that we give them only a minimum training program, it makes me shudder to think what teaching fellows are like in other departments," he added.

A more objective measure of the effectiveness of the new teaching program might be the inclusion of pedagogical as well as scholarly topics on Ph.D. general examinations, Stein suggested.

But J. Peterson Elder, Dean of the Graduate School, said that he was very impressed with the present teacher-training program. It's a dandy thing and it produces excellent teaching fellows," Elder said. He and Stein are both in favor of other Harvard departments and other universities following the Harvard German Department's lead to develop complete teaching fellow programs. A lot of students apparently are too