Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools
The revised text of the original is reproduced here. There was need for a more extensive revision, but this would have delayed the appearance of the book which is out of print. Almost ten years have elapsed since the text was written and most of it is as valid today as it was originally. The very few of its unfulfilled promises fall into two categories: those which, even if unfulfilled, do not make the approach any less effective (teacher’s guide), and those towards whose fulfillment some steps have been taken (development of materials). Because a sufficient number of people are now involved in the expansion and exploration of The Silent Way, there is no doubt that the coming years will see an increase in the materials offered, after it has been found that they meet the needs of the students. The new appendix of this book includes short contributions by some of those who have used The Silent Way in classrooms. These contributions were requested in order to hear voices other than that of the inventor, and to allow the teachers who are looking at The Silent Way to get some testimony from the users themselves. I hope that this preface, the revised text, and the appendices will make the new book into a more handy tool for the teachers of languages. But the actual living of the approach through learning a new language remains still the best introduction. In our schools we offer three day courses of 21 hours and one-week courses of 40 hours. Both weekend and weeklong seminars are given at two or three levels. The intensity of the learning and the shortness of the course seem to complement each other, and a
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