GERMAN INSTRUCTION from a CHEMICAL VIEWPOINT* JOHN T. FOTOS, R. NORRIS SHREVE,
AND
J. L. BRAY
Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana
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N MOST of our universities the groups of students interested in the chemical sciences and their application have become sufficiently large so that specialized German classes are necessary. Even if only a dozen students are interested, such a course would be of value. When students of like aims are gathered together, their specific needs and objects can be considered. Students, in our utilitarian times, are intensely interested in anything of practical value. To them, German is a tool to unlock the storehouses of pure and applied science contained in such compendiums as are called, in ordinary parlance, by the name of the authors such as Beilstein, Gmelin, Landolt, Houben, Oberhoffer, and Ullmann. Students and the instructors must recognize the value of any method that facilitates and imparts a reading knowledge of this German technical literature. By placing emphasis upon the methods, usages, and vocabulary necessary to read chemical and scientific German, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, over a period of seven years, has evolved a series of four textbooks that are now being used for this instruction. These texts resulted from the desire of the Department of Modern Languages and the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering to impart to the technical student the ability to read German scientific publications. After being used for a number
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* Presented before the Division of Chemical Education at the ninety-sixth meeting of the A. C. S., Milwaukee. Wisconsin, September 6. 1938.
of years in mimeographed form and revised frequently, these books are now being published. These books bear the following titles and are all being published by John Wiley and Sons. (1) Fotos and Bray, "A German Grammar for
Chemists and Other Science Students." (2) Fotos and Bray, "Introductory Readings in Chemical and Technical German." (3) Fotos and Shreve, "Intermediate Readings in Chemical and Technical German." (4) Fotos and Shreve, "Advanced Readings in Chemical and Technical German." The grammar and the iutert'nediate reader are available, and the two others will be published within the year. The German grammar for chemists is used by the students beginning the study of German without any prerequisite. The other three books are used during the three successive semesters. All of these volumes have as a guiding principle the reading of German selections, either sentences, paragraphs, or entire pages, from the standard reference books covering chemical and related fields. From the very beginning of the student's instruction in German the simple principles of grammar are illustrated by examples from chemical literature. This arouses his interest and a t the same time begins to build the necessary specialized vocabulary. It is obvious that no one can read without a vocabulary; and that, in order to yield the richest returns in reading power, this vocabulary must com-
prise the most important words, idioms, and verb forms of any specialized scientific field. For this reason, Professor John T. Fotos of the Modern Language Department bas made a very laborious word and syntax frequency count from more than one hundred thousand running words of representative chemical and technical German selections. From this count we now know the relative importance of chemical and scientific German words. While i t is fully understood that such a word-frequency count would change slightly from one group of selections to another, yet this is sufficientlywide in scope to be very useful as a foundation for other scientific literature. The two thousand most frequently occurring words of this count constitute about eighty to ninety per cent. of any chemical texts. From an instructional point of view this frequency list is of great help, as it indicates the words that must be learned, and those that may be looked up in the dictionary. The student is frankly told that he need not memorize the German equivalent of words occurring in this list less than three times. In our modern crowded curricula the time of the student must be saved. To accomplish this, and to speed up the student's reading ability, the words given for the first time or those of low frequency are tabnlated on each page after the text followed by their English equivalents. However, all words occurring in the texts are listed in the back of the books in the complete vocabulary, with the word-frequency of each word there indicated. They have been able to determine by actual controlled examination tests, that the student who has had our first-year course can do about seventy per cent. as well as those taking the second-year chemical German with the traditional background of a firstyear literary German course. Students in the upper forty per cent. of the first year of the new instruction do as well as the students who have had the traditional first-year literary course and the second-year scientific German course. It should also be mentioned that the students are learning chemistry and German a t the same time, since the German selections are taken from worth-while and up-to-date chemical reference books, with typical abbreviations and usages. However, these selections are edited so that the German teachers iind no difficulty in teaching their classes from them. By varying the selections and by making many excerpts from Ullmann's "Enzyklopadie" and from Beilstein, Houben, Oberhoffer, and others-them-
CONFERENCE OF THE NEW ENGLAND ASSOCIATION OF CHEMISTRY TEACHERS The New England Association of Chemistry Teachers, now in its fortieth year of continuous activity, is to hold a summer conference at the University of Vermont, August 16-19, inclusive. The program themes include "The Introductory College Chemistry Course," "College-Secondary Chemistry Relationships,"
selves compilations by many authors-the student becomes accustomed to translating a wide variety of styles of German scientificliterature. In chemical and scientific German there are many characteristic usages and these are emphasized in this series of texts. Among such usages are: the participial construction, which ordinarily is not stressed in any of the literary German grammars; the omission of the "wenn" in conditional sentences; the frequent use of the passive voice; the use of verbs with separable and inseparable prefixes; the use of adjective forms as adverbs; the long complex sentences often involving an entire paragraph or page, and so forth. These reading difficulties are not only carefully outlined in the grammar with exercises based on them, but they are also stressed in the copious notes that accompany the reading selections in the other three volumes. As a result of the study of the selections from the reference books such as Ullmann or Beilstein, the student has gradually learned to overcome his psychological disinclination to use these large volumes. Prior to their present use a reluctance on the part of the student to consult these volumes had been noticed, apparently because of their bulk and number. Once the student has mastered the reading difficulties, vocabulary, and style, he learns that the German in these encyclopedic compilations is not so very difficult. The various texts, while intended for undergraduates, have also been of considerable value in preparing graduate students for their German examinations necessary for advanced degrees. Here we are presenting to our colleagues on the chemical, chemical engineering, and German staffs the experience and methods that have been tested and tried a t Purdne University during the past eight years. We have found that our methods have shortened materially the time needed to teach students a reading knuwlrd~eof chemical and technical German. Simulenhanced intaneously the students show a terest in this type of instruction. While with the former system of instruction there were many complaints from the students about the method of learning German, and the engineering and chemistry instructors also complained because of the inability of the advanced students to read the important German reference books assigned to them, now, as a result of this new method of instruction, we hear only words of praise from both students and faculty concerning . the new type of German instruction.
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"Assimilation of New Material in Teaching Form," and "The Consumer Aspect of Chemistry Teaching." Registration, $2.00, is the only cost to members in addition to living expenses which will be modest. Non-members are invited to attend on the same basis as members, vie., $2.00 registration, and $3.00 for a year's membership in the New England Association of Chemistry Teachers, including a subscription to the Report of the New England Association of C h i s t r y Teachers. Write Elbert C. Weaver, Chairman, Summer Conference Committee, Bulkeley High School, Hartford, Connecticut.
