Learning Foreign Languages as a Means of Interstate Communication Based on Direct Methods of Language Teaching at the Beginning of the XXth Century

Abstract

The article determines the dependence of the origination and implementation of methods of foreign language teaching on geopolitical events in different countries of the world. At the beginning of the XXth century, it was the industrial revolution in the USA, which led to the participation of millions of multilingual people in it. Therefore, the rapid mastery of the English interstate language, as a means of professional communication, became the most important need for them. Direct methods of language teaching were chosen by scientists to solve this problem.
H. Palmer’s oral-aural method ensured the achievement of English-­speaking professional communication skills thanks to the organization of daily English classes which were going to be conducted for half a year in small groups under the guidance of English-­speaking teachers. This method principles were the following: the oral basis of teaching; oral, untranslatable study of vocabulary and intuitive grammar learning by using grammar constructions in sentences with the help of oral substitution tables; oral speech development based on connecting multi-­structured sentences, questions picture responses, communication according to communicative tasks.
Audio-lingual method of Ch. Friza, R. Lado was based on the following principles: prioritizing oral speech over written speech; study of vocabulary in ready-made speech samples; structural, intuitive study of grammar; lack of a written record of the material under study and therefore, the impossibility of revising it during out-of-classroom activity; exclusion of translation from the learning process; development of the ability to guess the context of language units when reading texts and listening to speech; development of dialogical speech skills based on communicative tasks.
P. Guberin’s audio-­visual method of teaching French is based on the following principles: globality, that is, consideration of a sentence as a unit of learning; adherence to the oral basis of learning, but with possible reliance on a printed image of ready-made speech samples; the dominant untranslatability of learning, but with the possibility of translating only complex grammatical phenomena; situationality and functionality of education; audio-­visual accompaniment of speech through the use of documentary and feature films.