Like all the other subjects taught at a Waldorf school, foreign language teaching should also contribute to the overall process of human development. By virtue of the fact that it opens up new ways of experiencing the world, the learning of new languages initiates a process of change and development which enriches self-knowledge and personal identity. Steiner’s awareness of the pedagogical importance of this is clearly apparent in his insistence that from grade one onwards there should be two foreign languages, taking up a total of six lessons per week. He points out that the reasons for teaching this subject do not only relate to achieving practical mastery of a language, but to opening up an essential dimension of human nature that only foreign language learning can reach. The various aims of foreign language teaching described below should be seen within this overall context.
It follows from what has already been said that among the reasons for learning foreign languages one of central importance is the support it gives to developing a positive attitude to people of other cultures through the ability to identify with other ways of seeing the world. It thus promotes inter-cultural understanding. In learning to understand, speak and read foreign languages and in {the process} becoming familiar with aspects of their history, literature and present culture, young people {thus} attain the possibility of being able to embrace social and cultural diversity. This kind of personal competence rests upon the ability to perceive and value others as they are, while at the same time finding one’s own identity and “voice”.
Learning foreign languages also opens up for young people {correspondingly} new perspectives in relation to their own language, culture and mentality, and to their own personal attitudes. This helps them both to a more comprehensive experience of the world and an appreciation of its rich contrasts, all of which creates a broader context for communicative dialogue. New ways of structuring and presenting ideas arise. The learners are thereby equipped to deepen their knowledge of the world and of themselves, to broaden their horizons and find richer and more diverse ways of articulating what they feel and think.
The way foreign languages are taught basically echoes the way children learn their mother tongue, although at school age this process takes a more conscious course. The learning of the foreign language, like the mother tongue, takes place in a context full of action and interaction, in which attention is focused on the typical interests and experiences of the particular age-group. Characteristic of the learning of the first language is also that it always happens in a definite context and is underpinned by non-verbal communication processes. Among these are gesture, body-language, facial expression, intonation and the language-specific micro-kinesicmovements that take place spontaneously – and mostly unconsciously – between speaker and listener.
All these communication processes are also part of learning language later in school.
The pedagogical approach to this subject in Waldorf schools entails introducing the pupils to two foreign languages from grade one onwards. The idea is that they be immersed in the living, active world of the target language right from the start. They speak rhymes, sing songs, play games and follow simple instructions – all in the foreign language. But there is no direct teaching as such. The atmosphere of the lessons should be as unforced and natural as possible. The teacher gives the children friendly encouragement and engages them in activities, without consciously directing their attention to the learning of particular words or grammatical structures. This means that in the early school-years translating things into the children’s mother tongue is not necessary. The aim is to create understanding in the foreign language through active participation.
Although learning takes place in this imitative, participatory way with no intention on the children’s part, the teacher, of course, has a clear idea of what they should learn in the first three years, and takes them into certain distinct areas of vocabulary. These include every-day experiences in the classroom and at home, greetings, modes of address, familiar every-day activities, parts of the body, clothes, sense-perceptions such as light, colour, warmth and weight, health, the seasons, times of day, days of the week, months, types of weather, means of transport, familiar professions, animals, plants and other natural phenomena. In conjunction with all this the children are learning a range of sentence structures – including active and passive – in various tenses, and that in a purely oral manner, in other words, rather like the unconscious way they learn these structures in their mother tongue. Competent speakers – the teacher and possibly also fellow-pupils – provide a framework for the child’s language development by always using what is already familiar as a springboard for getting to know new words and structures.
Learning the foreign language is thus situational and grows out of the authenticity of a particular context. This is why children often know much more under the direction of their teacher in the familiar surroundings of their classroom than when they are confronted by the foreign language in another setting. The class becomes its own learning community.
In grade 4 the children are introduced to writing and reading in both foreign languages. At first they use texts which they already know by heart – little poems, prose texts or individual sentences. This is a fitting way to go about it: once it’s internalized, the written form will have living content. The “glove of literacy” fits, and precisely mirrors, the “hand of orality”. Once writing and reading become more fluent, the children can be gradually introduced to age-appropriate literature which they haven’t spoken before. The ultimate criterion in choosing a text is not as an aid to learning particular grammatical structures or elements of vocabulary (and this goes in principle for texts used all the way through school). Rather, the important thing about the chosen text is that it corresponds to the children’s phase of emotional and cognitive development and engages their interest. What is decisive for the students’ motivation and progress in becoming competent in the language is the authentic character of the reading material and its relation to the “affective dimension” of learning. Authenticity and the element of feeling are also important in classroom conversations and other activities, and in the matter of homework as well. Little plays and scenes can also make an invaluable contribution here.
The students gradually emancipate themselves from the aforementioned supporting framework, becoming more independent in relation to the language. The lessons are geared towards helping them connect with the flow of language in a more self-motivated way. This enables them to build up an active, context-related vocabulary, which means that they have access to a store of commonly used phrases, idioms, and intonation patterns. Once the lessons have succeeded in establishing a flow of language and the children have begun to “swim” in it, it gives them an increasingly confident feel for what “works”, and enables them to communicate directly in the foreign language, without translating what they want to say from their mother tongue.
In addition to reading and working in various ways with texts, in the course of classes 5 to 8 grammar comes in for more and more conscious attention. The initial stages of this make full use of what the students already know of the grammar of their own language. The way of proceeding and the grammatical terms to be used need to be agreed among all the language teachers (inc. class teachers). This means that they must figure out how they are going to describe, for instance, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or the grammatical cases and the relationships they reflect. The students then apply these terms, first learned from their class teacher, to similar structures they encounter in the foreign language. Thus the approach to grammar gradually proceeds from the simple recognition and use of correct forms, spelling and grammatical structures to a deeper understanding of the rules and principles associated with them. For a learned rule to become an internalised skill, however, requires a cycle of repetition, with many variations and additions, over several years. Then a grammatical structure, described by a rule, can spontaneously find its practical expression in an appropriate context. Revisiting the rules through such phases of repetition also enables the students to get a firmer systematic grasp of what they know, and so gradually make it their own.
Over the course of the middle school years, it becomes ever clearer that progress in learning what the lessons are aiming at depends upon lots of intense, and above all, independent practice. Repetition can be dull, however, and it helps a great deal when the exercises entail a great diversity of motivating and stimulating questions and activities. Such exercises and activities will also be more effective when the students are able (and motivated) to work on them independently. How much time, both inside and outside the lessons, can be devoted to independent work, depends upon the class concerned, the number of lessons per week and the school’s established culture of learning.
In the high school the work of enriching language capability and maintaining the effort to achieve correctness in writing and speaking continues. At the same time the range of possible topics expands. Now themes of social, cultural and historical interest within the context of the particular language can be tackled. Thus the students get to work both with authentic literature from various epochs and with a broad spectrum of topical texts.
Creative writing, both of poems and short stories, also receives more attention at this level. Theatre projects and dramatic work are also regarded as extremely important ways of helping the students to experience and embody the foreign language and literature much more concretely, thereby extending their powers of perception and expression.
Whereas writing still supported the learning process in the middle school, writing exercises in the high school go far beyond this support function. The students should now receive assistance in formulating their own thoughts in such a way that they are understandable (correct choice of words and use of grammatical structures), coherent (the content should have an order that makes sense, e.g. with the help of structural elements such as conjunctions and other links between phrases), rich and varied, and as authentically expressed as possible (e.g. with apt use of idioms). It would be too much to expect them to acquire these skills only through having the opportunity to exercise them in the short time available in lessons. It is therefore essential that they work on these written exercises outside normal lesson time. As was hinted above in regard to homework, the teacher needs to use his or her imagination in order to set the students tasks rich enough in possibilities to engage their desire to carry them out.
If the encounter with the foreign language began in the primary school with traditional nursery rhymes, songs and poems, and continued in the middle school with the reading of folk-tales and short stories, the high school brings in the meeting with the classics, with contemporary literature and other stimulating examples of modern prose. In this way the students gain “primary experience” of the aesthetic and cultural dimensions of the particular foreign language. Each of them should have the chance to arrive at such experience out of his or her own motivation. This may well bring about the kind of insights and transformative processes that Humboldt describes as “the attainment of a new perspective on the world” (Humboldt 1836: p.59)
Humboldt, W. v. (1836): Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaus und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts, Berlin