Harris Winitz The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations Abstract. The four major methodological principles of the Comprehension Approach encompass the following: (1) Comprehensible input, (2) lnstruction in the foreign language, (3) Use of grammatical principles, and (4) Acquisition of speaking. Each principle is discussed relative to the beginning, intermediate, and advanced stages of language learning. Outlines of lessons and examples of learning material are presented. 0. lntroduction Tue Comprehension Approach departs in major ways from the traditional grammarbased methods of instruction. Its theoretical basis has been presented elsewhere (Asher 1965; Bleyhl 1982, 1993; McCandless/ Winitz 1986; Swaffar/ Woodruff 1978; Winitz/ Reeds 1975; Winitz 1981a; 1996). Briefly, the comprehension approach is a system of instruction that emphasizes cognitive discovery of the grammatical and lexical systems of language through experience with the foreign language. According to this system of instruction, grammatical principles are implicitly constructed by the student when the audio and visual sequences provide the meaning of sentences. Students are given no direct instruction in grammatical principles. Within this perspective, the task of the instructor is to provide language material that is comprehensible and the task of the student is to use implicitlybased, that is non-conscious, strategies to acquire an understanding of the material. With the development of comprehension-based instructional systems, it is understandable that a number of different formats for teaching meaning have emerged. One prominent system is that constructed by Krashen (1981). Certain aspects of this system of instruction, often referred to as the Monitor Hypothesis, are compatible with the Comprehension Approach. However, some components of this theory are in direct contrast to the premises that underlie the methodological procedures tobe discussed below. Attention will be given to these differences. Tue primary goal of the comprehension approach is the teaching of fluent understanding of a foreign language (FL) through the use of cognitive strategies of instruction. lt contains four primary methodological principles: (1) Tue language input is comprehensible, (2) Language instruction is provided in the second language (L2), (3) Grammatical principles are restricted to prescriptive rules presented after the student has achieved a high degree of L2 understanding, and (4) Speaking is not directly taught. Each of these methodological procedures is described. FLuL 25 (1996) 14 Harris Winitz 1. Comprehensible input Input whose meaning can be decoded by students at each instructional level of learning is referred to as comprehensible input, a term introduced by Krashen (1981). Procedures for providing for comprehensible input accommodate the student's level of learning (Asher 1965, Winitz/ Reeds 1975; Winitz 1981b), which for the purposes of this chapter are defined as the beginning, intermediate, and advanced stages of language learning. Beginning Level. Several different educational programs have been developed for beginning students (Burling 1981, Postovsky 1981, Winitz 1981, Winitz/ Reeds 1975). Students are presented with an audio-visual program in which an audio presentation is combined with a visual presentation as follows: 1. audio presentation: pencil. 2. visual presentation: a picture of a pencil. The student's task is to press a button corresponding to the quadrant in which the correct picture is located. In Figure 1 (see page 25), the first frame of the program is presented. Tue single picture indicates to the student the correct response. Additional pictures are added on each successive frame. By the 25 th frame, as illustrated in Figure 2 (see page 25), the student is presented with a picture in each of the four quadrants and is to select the picture which corresponds to the audio presentation. This procedure is particularly suited to computer presentation, but at the time of its development in the mid 1970's, the mechanical devices were costly to develop and often worked poorly. Later adaptations of this system involved video-taped presentations (Postovsky 1981). Because of the difficulty of these delivery systems, Winitz (in 1978) developed a series of books entitled The Learnables that provided for the presentation of pictures with an accompanying audio cassette. The system of instruction was guided by several psychological principles of cognitive learning. Among these was the principle that text influences pronunciation pattems (Winitz/ Reeds 1975; Winitz 1981a, 1981b). For this reason, text is not initially presented with the pictures. In The Learnables, the student looks at the picture frame and listens to two audio productions of the item. Displayed in Figure 3 (see page 26) are four frames from The Learnables, Book 1 (Winitz 1990a) representing the items airplane, bread, car, and doctor. Each word is preceded by the number of the picture, said in the FL, and each word is said twice. At a later point in this lesson the adjectives big and small are introduced, as illustrated in Figure 4 (see page 27). A grammatical sequence underlies the presentation of the material, but the student is not instructed with regard to the syntactic and semantic categories, and later the pragmatic categories that guide the early stages of the program (Winitz 1981b). For example, basic prepositions are presented early in the first book of The Learnables without explanation of their properties. English and German speakers learning Spanish are faced with the puzzling problem that sobre is equivalent to on, and en to in and on. Students hear the sentence: "La taza esta en la mesa" (The cup is on the table), and often presume that an error has occurred in the book FLuL 25 (1996) The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations 15 because they see a cup on the table and not a cup "in" the table. However, this problem is resolved by asking students to accept what they hear as correct, to deterrnine the meaning of the utterance, but not to seek grammatical explanations. To explain the spatial-semantic space of en and sobre would be of no value to the student because the explanation is exceeding complex and does not sufficiently provide a clear and unambiguous answer of appropriate usage. Similary, the verbs esta and es provide an equally puzzling problem for the student. These verbs appear early in the lesssons of The Leamables. The student is given no instruction with regard to their usage. Teachers of the Spanish language often testify that students continue to have difficulty understanding the usage of the various forms of these two verbs even though they have been given the opportunity to memorize the rule that is stated in their textbook and numerous examples of usage have been provided by the teacher. The Leamables provides examples, but these examples are given in the context of the lesson units to enable the students to interpret the meaning of sentences. Here lies a major distinction between traditional practice and the Comprehension Approach in the use of examples. In the traditional practice, students are provided with examples in order to enable them to understand and to verify the "truth value" of a rule. In the Comprehension Approach, students interpret the meaning of the examples of which a putative consequence is the development of an inplicit grammatical system. As Bleyhl (1993) expresses it, problem solving results in Selbstorganization of the linguistic system from input (or intake). He cites psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic investigations which delineate human information processing and categorizing to support the conclusion that im p l i c i t l e a r n in g of the grammatical system of a language requires the receipt of a comprehensible message, of which its meaning elements are decoded, and subsequently organized as a linguistic system. Figure 5 (see page 28) provides an illustration of this process with reference to the structure of the English relative clause. The meaning of the sentences are comprehended by examining the pictures and the social and linguistic contexts in which the sentences appear. Tests to assess the progress of the students also involve the presentation of pictures. Tue task of the student is to select the picture that corresponds to each sentence. The input is verbal, texual, or both. In Figures 6 and 7 (page 29 and 30) are examples of an early test in Basic Structures, the corresponding reader textbook for The Leamables. provided in French (Waggoner/ Winitz 1991) and Hebrew (Winitz, T./ Rosen/ Winitz, H. 1993) respectively. This procedure of testing is called picture completion. Students are presented with picture completion tests early in the program and they quickly accept•this format of testing, recognizing that the focus of instruction is comprehension. Tue evidence is strong that students perform well under these conditions with minimal anxiety, and that the need for grammatical explanations is unnecessary. Furthermore, students are extremely pleased that they are able to understand the language quickly and easily (Asher 1977; Swaffar/ Woodruff 1978) and that their retention is excellent (Postovsky 1981). FLuL 25 (1996) 16 Harris Winitz Built into the lessons are miniature scripts that enable the student to hear words that express concepts that cannot be pictured directly. A script is a sequence of events with which the student is familar and, therefore, particularly useful in enabling students to hypothesize the meaning of the words and expressions which describe the events. For example, the ward embarrassed is illustrated in English (Winitz 1990b) in the miniature script shown in Figure 8 (see page 31). The presentation of scripts enables students to infer the meaning of grammatical units and lexical items, and consequently to organize for themselves the mental lexicon of the FL with as little influence as possible from their native language. The beginning level should provide the student with a background of about 5,000 lexical items and familiarity with the basic grammatical pattems of a language. Additionally, the student should have the capability to understand basic sentence pattems uttered at a normal conversational rate. Of particular importance, the beginning level should provide the student with the confidence that the FL can be decoded (Postovsky 1981) and that sufficient personal success has taken place to encourage reenrollment in foreign language classes (Swaffar/ Woodruff 1978). lntermediate level. The format of instruction at the intermediate level retains the same core function of comprehensible input that defines the beginning level. Students are not required to speak, compose sentences, or translate. At this stage of development, students talk spontaneously, although their sentences contain grammatical errors. When the students talk in dass the instructor responds to them, but does not correct their grammatical errors or state grammatical rules or principles. The instructor may paraphrase their statements, thereby providing models of correct structure and lexical usage. The goal of the intermediate level of instruction is the teaching of lexical understanding with an achievement goal of about 50,000 standard lexical items. Lexical items are taught through the use of a number of instructional strategies, namely through the application of ward fields, scripts, and definitions (Rohrer 1978). Unlike other intermediate programs of instruction, the leaming of lexical items is the primary endeavor. Intermediate language courses which emphasize the reading of literature, the composing of themes, or the development of conversational skills consider lexical leaming to be a byproduct of these respective areas of study. Systematic instruction in lexical items involves an organizational format in which the words of a particular lexical field are identified and a set of scripts are written that illustrate their usage. For example, the time lexical field is very large, but it must be acquired for competent mastery of a FL. Examples of time words and expressions from the lexical time field are: of late, do it when you can, hurry up or you will be late, annual, expiration date, lifetime guarantee, a long time ago, the day before yesterday, on time, in time, about time, around Jour o'clock, delay, any day now, momentarily, good timing, presently, currently, eventually, after a while, recently, forthcoming, in the beginning, early on, week long, not now, in three hours, for three hours, long ago, so long ago, deadline, after hours etc. FLuL 25 (1996) The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations 17 An illustration of a script from the business lexical field (Winitz 1986) is given in Figure 9a,b (see page 32 f). Note that the text is provided on one page and the pictures are provided on a second page. Each lexical field contains an anchor word that defines the words and expressions of the field. For example, in the walk lexical field (Winitz 1988), walk is the "anchor word" for run, jog, amble, tiptoe, sleepwalk, walking on stilts, stroll, meander etc. An example of the use of the word meander is given in Figure lOa,b (see page 34 f). As students listen to and read the sentences associated with the teaching of meander they know that waZk is the anchor word and that the pictures and text define meander as a category of waZk. lt may appear that the use of word fields excessively complicates the language learning process. An apparently simple procedure is to tel1 students the meaning of the word in their native language or advise them to use a bilingual dictionary. As explained elsewhere (Verspoor/ Winitz, in press), equating two words from two different languages causes the students to accept the lexical field composition of the native language. This procedure has two primary defects. First, similar meaning words are not distributed the same in the native language and the FL. For example, indicating to students that Treppe is the meaning of step or stair does not define the appropriate use of the words stair or step in English. lt does not, for example, explain that the native speaker of English easily senses the difference between the phrases: He climbed the steps of the Post Office, and He climbed the stairs of the Post Office. In the first instance the person is regarded to be outside the building, and in the second instance the person is regarded to be inside the building, as the word steps is used only to refer to 'stairways' (rather then 'stepways') on the outside of a building. Second, words of similar meaning in the native language and in the FL words are collocated differently. For example, big and Zarge have essentially the same meaning in English, but one can only buy Zarge eggs, not big eggs, and Zarge shirts not big shirts. However, one can be a big shot, but not a Zarge shot. A big shot is a pejorative term for persons who are regarded as important. A Zarge shot refers to a ! arge amount of whiskey, usually poured into a shot glass. Note also that we can only refer to the big bang theory and not to the Zarge bang theory. Many teachers retain the belief that lexical units can be taught primarily through definition and direct explanation. This belief is based, perhaps, on the premise that the lexical field structure of similar meaning words in the native language and the FL are the same. This belief is fostered by the practice of using bilingual dictionaries. Bilingual dictionaries contain only a few of the essential collocations and define poorly the lexical structure of words. Consider, the English student studying German who uses a bilingual dictionary to look up the words touch and finds the words anfassen und berühren. Correct usage of these two German words is incomprehensible from a dictionary definition. Native speakers of German also may find it difficult to define these two words and the circumstances in which they may be used correctly, but nonetheless they use them in conversation appropriately. Simi- FLuL 25 (1996) 18 Harris Winitz larly, the German learner of English may find the use of the ward cup somewhat baffling if told that cup is the English ward for Tasse. The native speaker knows the lexical field for cup, that, for example, a 'cup of soup' means a small bowl with no handles or two handles (a cup with one handle is usually called a 'mug of soup'), that a cup-like container made of paper is a 'paper cup' when it has no handles, and a 'coffee cup' when it has one handle. A small paper cup is often called a 'Dixie cup'. Tue use of lexical fields facilitates the teaching of meaning. Consider again the lexical field that contains the words for 'big' and 'small', denoted the Big and Small Lexical Field. In the Big and Small Lexical Field, some of the big words are Zarge, great, gigantic, jumbo, large-sized, monstrous, astronomical, mushroom, augment, distend, escalate, king-sized, magnify, balloon, huge, humongous, overstate, a lot, boost, raise, increase, overgrown etc. Same of the small words are little, shrink, puny, midget, dwa,f, picayune, iota, speck, reduce, minutia, short-cut, pip-squeak, shrivel, wane, scant, dinky etc. When asking someone to talk louder the big ward phrase is a lot as in: Please talk a Lot louder, but not Please talk a big louder. The corresponding small ward phrase is a little as in Please talk a little louder, but not Please to a small louder. When talking about trading on the stock market, a large amount of trading is expressed by the phrases: Trading was active or Trading was heavy. However, a small amount of trading is expressed as follows: Trading was quiet, or Trading was light, but not Trading was inactive. Similary, heavy trading cannot be expressed as: Trading was noisy. Advanced level. A thorough grounding in the major lexical fields of a language enables the student to understand advanced material, such as newspaper articles, academic textbooks, interviews, conversation, literature, colloquialisms and slang. Each of these areas of study is taught within the framework of the theory of comprehensible input. For example, students are taught to understand dialogues by listening to dialogues. Traditional procedures involve students directly in dialogues, encouraging them to talk and to express themselves. However, providing meaningful input in the form of dialogues, as suggested here, involves listening to a large number of dialogues in order to understand the meaning that is conveyed through the lexical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic systems without studying the formal properties of these systems. Similarly, students at the beginning stages of the advanced level are not asked to write themes, but to study the meaning of difficult sentences taken from original sources. For example, students studying newspaper articles may be presented with the following paragraph from the Sunday, June 11, 1995 Los Angles Times as an example: Despite claims to shrink govemment, he [Govemor of California Pete Wilson] has boosted the number of political appointees since his predecessor. His aides say the increase is in response to new demands. FLuL 25 (1996) The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations 19 Using this text, the instructor prepares a lesson that defines, through the use of ward fields and sentence examples, the difficult words of the passage (see Rohrer 1978, for a füll explanation of these procedures). For example, the instructor would inform the students that shrink is from the Big and Small Lexical Field and that it means to make small or reduce in size. Next the student is given the sentences: She puts the shirt into the washing machine. Later she takes the shirt out of the washing machme and hangs it up to dry. Then she gives the shirt to her husband. He puts on the shirt. lt 1s too small. The shirt shrank. With regard to the ward boost, the student is informed that the ward comes from the Big and Small Lexical Field and that boost, raise and increase have similar meanings. Boost means to increase, the students are told, and shrink means to decrease. The instructor continues to provide the meaning of each difficult expression, using a prepared text containing lexical field explanations and examples of ward usage within the lexical field. These lesson plans are time-consuming to prepare, but they enable the instructor to consider carefully in advance the difficulty the student may have in the comprehension of a paragraph. Word Fields are particularly useful in teaching colloquialisms, metaphors, idioms, and slang. For example, the expressions for death, such as: He kicked the bucket; He bought the ranch; He passed away; He is not with me anymore; He is six feet under; He's gone to that great big blue world beyond; and He's met his Maker are arranged in short dialogues as in the following example for the several slang forms of the ward rich: Speaker A: The Jones live in that house. lt is a mansion. lt has 20 rooms. The are filthy rich. Speaker B: What does the family do? A: They own a restaurant. He is the head waiter. She manages the kitchen. They make a bundle from the restaurant. They are really in the chips. B: I can teil they are loaded. They spend money like it is going out of style. They have money to burn. They own five cars. One is a Rolls Royce. They have jillions of dollars. A: They belong to the jet set. They travel around the world. They just came back from Australia. They rake in the money from the restaurant. B: lt sounds like they are really making it in that restaurant. A: They have a summer home in Canada. They are an easy street. B: I heard they have a winter home in California. They are living the life of Riley. A: lt sounds like they are making out like bandits. B: Where did they get the money to start the restaurant? A: They were rieb to start with. Old money, you know. B: I see. Their family has lots of money. A: Yes. Their family made money years ago. Their great grandfather was a merchant. Students are advised not to use "non-standard" expressions, as they can be easily misused, but to be aware that they are are frequently used by native speakers. The objective of these lessons is teach the understanding of expressions in order to enable the FL learner to understand authentic conversation. Indeed, these expres- FLuL 25 (] 996) 20 Harris Winitz sions are not always appropriately used or understood by the native speaker. One day I entered my barber shop and looked for the barber who bad cut my hair for more than 30 years, I was quickly told by another barber that my barber "ls no langer with us." As that phrase is a neutral expression for someone who has either been released or has left a job voluntarily, I asked whether I could be given the name of my barber's new location. Tue barber stared at me for a moment and said, "He died of a heart attack." 2. Instruction in the Second Language Tue theoretical premises underlying this principle, have been discussed in detail elsewhere (McCandless/ Winitz 1986; Winitz 1981a,b; Winitz 1996). The evidence is strong that students are able to comprehend the FL without the need to translate when sufficient comprehensible input is provided (Asher 1965; Asher 1977; McCandless/ Winitz 1986). However, the practice of requiring that teacher and student use only the FL in the classroom, when the meaning of lexical items is provided through bilingual texts presents an interesting dilemma for the student. In order to learn the meaning of words, the procedure of paired associate learning is advanced. Students are given lists of words that are paired with words in their native language to leam for each lesson. Countless numbers of students have related to me that despite considerable effort on their part to memorize words, they understand no more than about 30% of the classroom teacher's utterances. There are several reasons for their low level of comprehension. Only three will be cited. First, input experience with relatively simple structures has been limited and, therefore, students are unable to identify consistently ward boundaries in spoken speech (Vogel/ Winitz 1989). Second, the utterance of the teacher often exceed the buffer storage capacity of working memory (Winitz/ Reeds 1975). Beginning teachers should use sentences that are short, usually about six to seven words in length, and should avoid the use of complex sentences. Third, students who have memorized the meaning of words through the procedure of paired association, intemally translate ward by ward as they process their teacher's FL utterances. This procedure for establishing meaning is slow and inaccurate. lt is well known that simultaneous translation requires considerable experience and training and a fluent understanding of the FL. 3. Grammatical Principles Krashen (1981) has taken the position that the acquiring of grammatical principles has a special role in language learning. He maintains, but without evidence, that conscious knowledge of grammatical principles function only to edit language output. He presumes that students can be taught to use grammatical principles to FLuL 25 (1996) The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations 21 edit. that is, repair language utterances that are generated by non-explicit, that is non-conscious, intemally-derived rules. Investigators involved in the Comprehension Approach make no such claim. Instead they take the position that implicitly acquired understanding of grammatical rules is an efficient and natural process in language leaming (Belasco 1981; Bleyhl 1993; Burling 1981; Winitz 1996; Winitz/ Reeds 1975). Grammatical units are regarded as meaning-bearing elements that contribute to the comprehensibility of sentences. In many instances, such as in the case of pronouns, prepositions, and other function words, meaning can be taught through the use of pictures. As illustrated in Figures 11 and 12 (see page ? and 37), Spanish and English pronouns respectively are explained through the use of pictures. At the more advanced levels of instruction, grammatical structures are explained by noting the meaning of a particular sentence. For example, when a truncated relative clause appears in a text, students may be given additional contrasting examples to clarify their meaning, as follows: The man eating is fat. The man is eating fat. Tue instructor explains the meaning of the two sentences citing that in the first sentence, the man, who is eating is fat whereas in the second sentence the man, not necessarily fat, is eating fat. Tue teacher may indicate that the first sentence also can be said as: The man who is eating is fat. As this example indicates, the focus of instruction in the teaching of grammatical units is on the meaning of the sentence and its communicative intent. In the advanced stage of comprehension instruction, when students have achieved near-native listening fluency, it may be helpful on occasion to cite a rule for a particular student, recognizing that the process is common when one studies grammar and composition in one's native language. lt is not uncommon for English teachers to instruct American students in composition classes with regard to grammatical conventions, such as the avoidance of dangling participles, the use of number, such as data are and none is; the preference for the use of certain verbpreposition structures, such as wait for instead of wait on when in attendance for a particular purpose; different from in preference to different than; and the correct choice when using collocations, such as raising animals and rearing children. However, this process is decidedly different from that advocated by Krashen. Implicit in Krashen's theory is that explicit grammatical monitoring of utterances generated by implicitly acquired grammatical rules can be effectively implemented by the student at all stages in the language leaming process, a premise that is without empirical support. lt is well recognized that teaching prescriptive rules of grammar to native speakers is not always effective, especially when the rules require more than an elementary understanding of grammatical structure. Krashen's theory is largely a theory of language correction, a premise abandoned more than 30 years ago by FLuL 25 (1996) 22 Harris Winitz native language theorists and put to rest in Brown's (1973) monumental study of child language andin the writings of Wode (1979). Additionally, Krashen's theory lacks specificity with regard to the citing of specific grammatical rules that are to be used as monitors at each level of instruction (Delay/ Burt/ Krashen 1982). Finally, support is not provided by Krashen that students acquiring a FL have the capacity to know when and precisely for how long to invoke the use of the monitor (Winitz 1996). That is, over what length of discourse should the monitor operate when it is invoked? Should it be for a particular unit or should it extend to the next occurrence of a particular unit? Clearly the use of the monitor is not a strategy that can be taught and most likely it cannot be acquired through experience with the exception of the application of prescriptive rules. 4. Speaking is not directly taught The teaching of comprehensible input does not require that students remain silent or that speaking is prohibited in the classroom. Students are encouraged to talk when they wish to, but the lesson plans focus on input at all levels of instruction. Asking students to express their opinion on a particular theme, such as a political race or a farnily practice, where the students' responses are the primary purpose of the classroom session, has serious limitations. First, in the beginning and intermediate stages of languge instruction, students hear each other's responses and are likely to intemalize these structures and pronunciation pattems. lt is recommended that students receive comprehensible input from audio and video tapes, computer lessons, and the instructor, rather than from students whose language output is incorrect. Second, in the later stages of instruction, "talk-sessions" also are not advocated because there is no support for the prernise that students will leam to talk by talking. Generating sentences requires knowledge of grammatical rules, albeit implicit knowledge, understanding of an extraordinarily large number of words and expressions, a strong sense of the pragmatics of the FL, and knowledge of the culture within which the language is used. Therefore, learning to express oneself should be encouraged after students have completed the advanced stage of language listening instruction. Taking a public speaking course, participating in a sociology class, and learning algebra in the FL are examples of classroom experiences that enable language leamers to acquire near-native use of the spoken and written language. In the Comprehension Approach, comprehensible input is singularly associated with the teaching of listening fluency. Asher's (1965) takes the position that comprehensible input is the primary strategy of instruction to achieve listening fluency, and that massive amounts of comprehensible input are essential for establishing the skill of language output. However, Krashen recommends the use of language output relatively early in the leaming process, suggesting that a monitor can be invoked that corrects intemally-generated language utterances (Dulay/ Burt/ Krashen 1981). FLuL 25 (1996) The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations 23 In this regard Krashen's monitor hypothesis is more closely allied with the traditional practice of encouraging output early in the classroom experience rather than encouraging listening to input that is comprehensible as in the Comprehension Approach. In summary, three stages of language teaching have been defined. Each stage has as its primary goal the teaching of meaning. In each stage, students are taught directly in the FL, they are not forced to speak, and bilingual dictionaries are not used. Finally, grammatical explanations are not provided. Instead grammatical units are approached as meaning-bearing elements that contribute to the meaning of sentences. Our anticipation is that comprehension-based methods will increase in popularity as computer software for language teaching enters the market. The possibilities for creative prograrnming are enormous and the general acceptance of computer prograrns will cause the foreign language profession to rethink the role of comprehensible input in the teaching of listening fluency. References ASHER, James J. (1965): "The Strategy of the Total Physical Response: An application to leaming Russian". In: International Review of Applied Linguistics 3, 291-300. ASHER, James J. (1977): "Children Leaming Another Language: A Developmental Hypothesis". In: Child Development 48, 1040-1048. BELASCO, Simon (1981): "The Key to Second Language Learning". In: WINITZ (ed.) 1981c, 14-33. BLEYHL, Werner (1982): "Variationen über das Thema: Fremdsprachenmethoden". In: Praxis des neusprachlichen Unterrichts 29.1, 3-14. BLEYHL, Werner (1993): "Nicht Steuerung, Selbstorganisation ist der Schlüssel". In: BAUSCH, Richard/ CHRIST, Herbert/ KRUMM, Hans-Jürgen (Hrsg.): Fremdsprachenlehr- und -lemprozesse im Spannungsfeld von Steuerung und Offenheit. Arbeitspapiere der 13. Frühjahrskonferenz zur Erforschung des Fremdsprachenunterrichts. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 27-42. BURLING, Robins/ BECKER, Alton L./ HENRY, Patricia B./ TOMASOWA, Joyce (1981): "Machineaided Instruction in Bahasa Indonesia". In: WINITZ (ed.) 1981c, 154-169. BROWN, Roger (1973): A First Language. Cambridge_: Harvard University Press. DULAY, Heidi/ BURT, Marina/ KRASHEN, Stephen (1982): Language Two. Oxford: Oxford University Press. KRASHEN, Stephen D. (1981): Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Leaming. Oxford: Pergamon. · McCANDLESS, Peter/ WINITZ, Harris (1986): "Test of Pronunciation Following One Year of Comprehension Instruction in College Gerrnan". In: Modem Language Journal 70, 355-362. POSTOVSKY, Valerian A. (1981): "The Priority of Aural Comprehension in the Acquisition Process. In: WINITZ (ed.) 1981c, 170-186. ROHRER, Josef (1978): Die Rolle des Gedächtnisses beim Sprachenlemen. Bochum: Kamp. 24 Harris Winitz SAGARNA, Blanca/ WINITZ, Harris (1990): Basic Structures, Spanish. A Textbookfor The Learnables. Book 1. Kansas City, Mo: International Linguistics. SWAFFAR, Janet K./ WOODRUFF, Margaret, S. (1978): "Language for Comprehension: Focus on Reading. A Report on the University of Texas German Program." In: Modem Languages Journal 60, 27-32. VERSPOOR, M./ WINITZ, Harris (in press): "Assessment of the Lexical-Field Approach for Intermediate Language Learners". In: International Review of Applied Linguistics. VOGEL, Deanie/ WINITZ, Harris (1989): "World Isolation and Meaning in Segmentation". In: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 18, 473-484. WAGGONER, Carmen/ WINITZ, Harris (1991): Basic Structures, French. A Textbook For the Learnables. Book 1. Kansas City: International Linguistics. WINITZ, Harris (1978): The Learnables. Book 1-4. Kansas City: International Linguistics. WINITZ, Harris (1981a): "The Comprehension Approach. An Introduction. In: Winitz (ed.) 1981c, ix-xviii. WINITZ, Harris (1981b): "Nonlinear Leaming and Language Teaching". In: WINITZ (ed.) 1981c, 1-13. WINITZ, Harris (ed.) (1981c): The Comprehension Approach to Foreign Language Instruction. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. WINITZ, Harris (1986): Business I. Kansas City: International Linguistics. WINITZ, Harris (1988): Verbs of Walking. Kansas City: International Linguistics. WINITZ, Harris (1990a): The Learnables. Book 1. Kansas City: International Linguistics. WINITZ, Harris (1990b): Basic Structures, English. A Textbook for The Learnables. Book 1. Kansas City, Mo: International Linguistics. WINITZ, Harris (1996): "Grammaticality Judgement as a Function of Explicit and Implicit Instruction in Spanish". In: Modem Language Journal 80, 32-46. WINITZ, Harris (in press): Basic Structures, English. A Textbook For The Learnables. Book 3. Kansas City: International Linguistics. WINITZ, Harris/ REEDS, James (1975): Comprehension and Problem Solving as Strategies for Language Training. The Hague: Mouton. WINITZ, Tami/ ROSEN, Taly/ WINITZ, Harris (1993): Basic Structures, Hebrew. A Textbook For The Learnables. Book 1. Kansas City: International Linguistics. WODE, Henning (1979): Learning a Second Language. An lntegrated View of Language Acquisition. Tübingen: Narr. FLuL 25 (1996) The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations 25 Appendix 80 FIGURES Figure 1: Example of the initial picture frame in the audio-visual lessons (Winitz/ Reeds 1975) 0 Figure 2: Example of the 25 th frame in the audio-visual lessons (Winitz/ Reeds 1975) FLuL 25 (1996) 26 Harris Winitz C / >-- ( 1 2 3 4 Figure 3: Examples of picture items in Lesson 1 of The Leamables (Winitz 1990a) FLuL 25 (1996) The Comprehension Approach: Methodological considerations 27 1 2 A _____ ({ ffl 00 1 II ~ . lt~ 3 4 Figure 4: Example of picture items demonstrating the introduction of big and small in Lesson l of The Leamables (Winitz 1990a) FLuL 25 (1996)