Start afresh or return? The impact of the Reform Movement on northern German English language teaching

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 19th century Reform Movement is often regarded as a ‘language teaching innovation’ or as a contribution to ‘a questioning and rejection of the Grammar-Translation Method’ (Richards and Rodgers 2001: 7). This view usually fails to explain why ‘direct’ methods focusing on functional aspects of language teaching had already been in use for centuries, while Grammar-Translation Methods are still widely popular. One explanation could be the distinction between the Reformers’ influence on the theoretical debate on the one hand and their impact on teaching practice on the other. In the late 1960s, Rülcker investigated the impact of Reform Methodology on French language teaching by analysing German school programmes (Schulprogramme). He stated that in spite of some traces of Reform Methods, French language teaching until the First World War was still mainly based on grammar and translation (Rülcker 1969: 35-37). In my paper, I take a similar view on English language education by looking at the Reform Movements’ impact on Realschule (middle school) curricula in northern Germany and focus on the question whether stronger traces of Reform Methodology can be found in this context. This seems plausible as learning English was generally underlined by more practical reasons than learning other languages, and Bremen schools in particular had been the first ones in the German context to introduce English as a first foreign language with a traditionally stronger functional focus (cf. Giesler 2018a). I focus my analysis on Bremen school programmes which – compared to modern curricula – not only show desired methodological designs, but can be understood as more closely documenting actual teaching practices, and I use these insights to question the originality of some of the Reformers’ ideas, the validity of some of their claims and, by extension, the strength of their impact on teaching practice.