Living Sequential Expression

Christophe Rico Discusses Francois Gouin’s Language Acquisition Techniques

Abstract: “Living Sequential Expression, A New Second Language Acquisition Technique Inspired by the Works of Francois Gouin.” At the end of the 19th century, a French Latin teacher by the name of Francois Gouin spent one year in Germany studying German through traditional methods. His failure to acquire this language prompted him to observe the way in which children learn their mother tongue. Using these observations, he developed his own method to teach foreign languages based on sequentiality (the first logical operation) and the mapping of the whole human experience in series and themes. This strategy takes basic life tasks and divides them into steps. In this lecture, taking inspiration from Francois Gouin, I will attempt to show how the Living Sequential Expression technique can help us teach the first steps of any foreign language much more efficiently than TPR (Total Physical Response).

Christophe Rico is the director of the Polis Institute (www.polisjerusalem.org).