Charlotte Mason and foreign language

Charlotte Mason and foreign language (part 2)

He went home to France, in his eyes, a failure. His homecoming brought an amazing revelation to him. He discovered that while he was gone, his three year old nephew had developed into a little chatterbox. He studied child language acquisition and attained many insights. He discovered that he and all other language teachers were teaching the wrong way!

Monsieur Gouin's method has as foundation the "Gouin Series" or what he calls the "language series." These series take basic life tasks and divide them into steps. Learning occurs by actually performing the action or visualizing it intensely while speaking. This method differed widely from the neo-Humanistic method of grammar-translation that was so prevalent at the time, and still continues to inundate our foreign language methods. Monsieur Gouin believed that the lessons should start with a domestic series. The child obviously first learned from those around and therefore he felt it was a great start.

Many programs interpret these directions by having elaborate drawings for the child to view. This is not in keeping with the Charlotte Mason Method nor is it what Monsieur Gouin desired. Watching the action or creating enough of a verbal description that the child can picture the action was his goal. The Gouin Series has deeper parameters than this simple explanation though.

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note: this is part 2 of 10. Have you read Part 1?

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