Language Teaching from the Viewpoint of Linking School with Life

One of the inherent features of a communist society is the high culture of the language of each of its members. The present state of the mother tongue lessons is not satisfactory, in spite of the fact that the contemporaty school is achieving better results than the bourgeois school. T he twofold trend of the bourgeois school system, which was manifested by utilitarianism in selecting the subject-matter and pragmatism in methods at the former Elementary and Secondary Modern Schools, and on the other hand by intellectualism at the former Selective Secondary (Grammar) Schools, still survives both in the theory and in the practice of language teaching. T he primary aim of the language teaching, seen from the angle of the réquirem ent to link up school with real life and w ith the practice of building the socialist and the comm unist society, is to teach the pupils to express themselves both orally and in writing. Linguistic theory is a necessary means ot fulfil this aim. Language teaching develops the rational capabilities of the pupils and in this sense the theory is an aim in itself. The knowledge of the task of the language in the life of society and the life of the nation, the knowledge of the refinements of the language leads to the respect and love of the mother tongue, and this is one of the aspects of socialist patriotism. In. selecting the basic subject-matter it will be necessary to pay much more attention to the need for an active mastery of the language. This requires laying greater stress on the stylistic appreciation of the linguistic means, the correctness of the language, linguistic skills and habits. It will be necessary to include a greater number of exercises dealing with style, semantics, and synonyms. Training in composition is to be an integral part of language teaching, which is done not only in special composition lessons, but also in lessons of grammar, reading and literature. Furthermore, it is necessary to alter teaching methods: to bring individual components of the subject closer together, to bridge the gap between theory and practice, to introduce regular all-round linguistic analyses, to teach the pupils to use prescriptive reference books. — The main task at the Secondary General Education School is the care for the culture of the language. The new textbooks must be textbooks of the language, and not only textbooks of grammar and orthography. Textbooks for the highest grades should also contain articled like those in a reader; their content would not be part of the subject-matter, and they would be set as home reading. Radical changes are also needed in the graphic arrangements of the textbooks.