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Whitmarsh


William Frederick Herbert Whitmarsh
W.F.H. Whitmarsh MA Licencié ès Lettres

Whitmarsh is the author of, as far as I can tell, about twenty French school text books. No snazzy names referencing French society, just do-what-they-say-on-the-tin titles, like: A First French Book, A Second French Book, A Third... you've got the gist. Whitmarsh was prolific, thorough, accurate and successful. I can't trace exactly when he published his first school book, though I have a copy of the Complete French Course which was first published in 1935,but he was churning our plenty in the early 1960's and was still being reprinted in the late seventies.

Whitmarsh was to grammar-translation as Beethoven was to the classical symphony. GT was at its most refined, in its pomp, but was about to explode and give way to a new movement, the romantic direct methodists.

To the teacher who enjoyed teaching grammar and translation these were reassuringly structured text books, usually with grammar explanations in English, translations to and from French and, with a nod to the new methods on the horizon, passages in French with questions in French or English. To teach with Whitmarsh you didn't have to speak much French at all, though it surely helped if you had a good vocabulary and knowledge of the rules of grammar. You didn't even need other books. He would supply glossaries, verb paradigms, annotations and lengthy vocab lists. Cultural information is supplied in minute doses. The language is largely literary/narrative in style.

In the copy of Modern Certificate French (1965) I have in front of me there is not a single illustration to attract the eye of the reluctant pupil. In the book's foreword Whitmarsh writes: "A wise teacher said, "The writers of French textbooks always try to teach the pupils too much." He goes on to recognise that French is no longer being taught only to the brightest pupils and that the content needs simplifying for "less able classes preparing for O-level". Remember that O-level was only meant for a minority of secondary pupils, so even this Whitmarsh-lite book still looks heavy going for the average ability pupil. It is a reminder not only of how demanding we used to be with grammar, but also of out total failure to develop other language skills.

The methodology is clear: explain the rules, practise them through translation, apply them with reading comprehension exercises, and don't worry too much listening and speaking. I suppose it was assumed that you would pick these up later when you eventually were thrown in the deep end in France. And so we had a generation of folk who say: I knew the grammar, but I couldn't speak a word.

So learning French was like learning Latin. It was a mental discipline, a puzzle for pattern-finders and some gifted individuals would go on to apply their knowledge of grammar in hesitant speech.

Let's face it: it was a poor one-club method. It's as if no-one noticed that young children acquired language skill by listening and speaking. And even if the pretext was that in school you didn't have time to learn oral and aural skills, thousands of pupils were poorly served.

When Gilbert's Cours Illustré came along, or when teachers got hold of Voix et Images de France with its audio-visual/lingual method, Whitmarsh must have looked very old hat.

I'm not sure I used Whitmarsh much at school, if at all. My teachers were enlightened practitioners. I did used to teach prose composition with his Senior French Composition for A-level, for which it is well adapted.

There is a place for grammar-translation, but it is only one club in the golf bag, and it's not the putter.

Comments

  1. I loved Whitmarsh ... so clear and mathematically logical ... and so far removed from what I actually heard when I got here! That being said, I will be forever grateful for the grounding it gave me in French grammar, which served me well in the Concours. Obviously I agree with you though about the enormous progress made in oral work. Nonetheless, on this side of the Channel it is often synonymous with confusion, particularly in the minds of French children who are used to analysing their own language. The argument that children learn by listening and repeating doesn't apply in quite the same way to pupils whose bain linguistique is reduced to two or three hours a week. I recently persuaded my French colleagues to adopt a a really great CUP TEFL course, much better than the French editions at combining oral practice with formal language work. Are your French courses based on this kind of approach?

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  2. Our courses combine an oral approach with a grammatical progression. Teachers are encouraged to work in the target language as much as is reasonable. There is a good deal of pairwork, some grammatical explanation, games and ICT are used a good deal in many schools. The IWB is in wide use with lots of resources. I guess we have an eclectic view of methodology with a healthy respect for various approaches. There is no panacea. What school slack is time and respect for modern languages. Because languages are seen as difficult they are often dropped by pupils at 14 and schools allow this partly because it makes their results look better and partly because they think children are more motivated by other activities.

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  3. I think you're being too harsh on Whitmarsh, perhaps based upon only knowing certain of his books. I was taught French using his "More Rapid French", and it gave me a very solid foundation in the language that enabled me to go on to study at Uni in both France and Switzerland. Later I taught French using his "A First (etc.) French Book" with (I am informed) great success. Naturally he lacks the audio-visual supports in language learning we have now, but only a very poor teacher would rely purely on the book. I was fortunate to have had enthusiastic teachers, for whom pronunciation, self-expression, conversational skills and indeed a trip to France were all part of the course. Nowadays we lack a sold grammatical foundation in many language courses: we may have made many gains along the way, but haven't we also lost something that Whitmarsh used to provide?

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    1. Agree totally. I was taught O level French using Whitmarsh, and at the same time, taught O level German using some new fangled approach (1980's). As a result, largely, the school had rubbish German results and very good French results. I went on to do French at A level, and can still remember some useful stuff. Can't speak a word of German.

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  4. Whitmarsh gave me an excellent grounding in the spoken language. I, too, was taught with "More Rapid French" and fifteen years (and NO French holidays) later found that the Alliance Francaise had no course at my ability level because I was already at "Niveau Quatre" - fluent!

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  5. The number of books Whitmarsh published is a mark of his success and, no doubt, the success of the method. I wouldn't mind betting, however, that the method only suited certain pupils. These pupils were in grammar schools and independents. Yes, good teachers would have supplemented his books with other resources. I would still argue that there are better ways of getting grammar internalised whilst also developing comprehension and oral skills.

    I hesitate to be dogmatic about methodology, partly because all children are different and prefer different methods. In addition, a teacher has to be comfortable with the approach he or she is using. That said, if there isn't plenty of foreign language input to listen to, comprehension is bound to be limited.

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  6. WFH Whitmarsh was my grandfather, I'm very proud of his success and grateful for the comments about his work.

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    1. Thank you for leaving your comment. There is no-one more famous for his single contribution to French text book writing. Did you inherit any linguistic skills from him?

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  7. I found as a schoolboy the Whitmarsh textbooks to be totally unintersting. The passages to be translated were dull.

    I am now professor of mathematics at a French university and to achieve this I had to enormously improve my French from the standard (Whitmarsh) school French.

    I do not know what teaching of French is like now in England but I hope it is better than when I was taught.

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  8. Thank you for leaving a comment, Martin. I suspect your views are shared by many. At that time the books were, I suppose, "state of the art", but we have moved on and i would say that studenst today get a far better deal and are generally better taught in a wider range of skills.

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  9. I am bilingual French/English. I was for some years a bilingual travelling lecturer for the Alliance Française. I learned my French at school, entirely from Whitmarsh. I still believe that grammar is the foundation of language teaching, and that one needs the bones of a language before adding the flesh of vocabulary.

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  10. Just shows we all have our preferences!

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    1. Yes indeed. I learned French from WHitmarsh's books 50+ years ago. I rarely encounter French texts and do not often visit France but the fact that, when I do, I have few problems must owe something to 'A First French Book' etc. that were the preferred books at King Edward VII School, Sheffield in the 1960s!

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    2. Yes indeed. I learned French from Whitmarsh's books 50+ years ago. I rarely encounter French texts and do not often visit France but Isuppose the fact that, when I do, I have few problems with the language must owe something to 'A First French Book' etc. that were the preferred books at King Edward VII School, Sheffield in the 1960s!

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. The fact that in the early 1960s I was also learning Latin perhaps goes some way to accounting for the fact that I seemed to react well to the "formal" approach to learning a language, its grammar etc. No doubt there has been much progress in the teaching of languages in the past half-century, and schoolchildren of course now have more opportunities to travel abroad. I just wish that young people in the UK would have more enthusiasm for learning foreign languages. As Germany is now almost my "zweite Heimat" I am only too aware of the value of learning languages and experiencing a different culture!

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  13. I agree with you of course. But I also understand why a young person brought up in a certain environment would not see the ise of languages. As reagrds the role of grammar, to respons to an ealier commnet, yes, it is one bacbone of the language, although some would argue we sometimes neglect vocabulary in our desire to establish firm grammatical foundations. But, as I often say, translation is only one way into grammar mastery. There are other ways.

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  14. Whitmarsh's Cours Superieur is to French what STEP papers are to 'A'-Level mathematicians. Make it to the end and you'll have all the skills-and-drills to be a real contender for Oxbridge entrance. Tutors might be well-versed in the modern ways but if a candidate can do the traditional stuff : bash out accurate proses quickly, write a good essay in French and talk from personal experience of reading a range of authors across the range of periods and genres, that will make them look eminently teachable for the Tripos/FHS.

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  15. To this day I have tried many other methods, but Whitmarsh is still the best and I return to it every time I revise my language skills. Wish I had a copy of the teachers book with some of the suggested translations, any help out there, as I no longer have a teacher to correct my errors.

    Robbie

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  16. Oi! Don't knock Whitmarsh. I first encountered him in 1957, and I can still remember everything about the Mercier family, and the poisson in their bassin. Can't speak a word of French, though.

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  17. I found this blog when searching for a French book by Whitmarsh. I was taught French by Whitmarsh the man and Whitmarsh the book, I think. I was at the Coopers' Company School, then in Bow, East London from 1954 to 1960. I liked the French grammar, but pronunciation of French for an East-End boy is difficult. The last French I did was in the GCE O-level examination in June 1958, apart from the effort I made to give the first paragraph of a research lecture in Chemistry at Orsay some years ago. My effort was not overwhelmingly appreciated by the audience. I enjoyed Latin much more than French, not only because of its formal structure and grammar but also because there was no pronunciation problem, given that no one knows how the Romans spoke. Unfortunately, I could not carry on with Latin up to GCE O level if I wanted to continue with Chemistry and Physics. In a grammar school in the 1950’s French at GCE O level could not be avoided, however. An important point about learning the grammar and structure of a foreign language is that thereby one learns for the first time about the grammar of one's own language.

    Tony Legon

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    1. Thanks for commenting, Tony. I agree with you that learning a modern language is often the way pupils leran about grammar in general. That has not changed much over the years.

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  18. I am really laughing because I found my way here while on a search for Whitmarsh. I go to French classes (level B2) and really need my Whitmarsh! When I was doing A'level French in 1963, it just had all the info I needed! I wish I still had my copy!

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  19. Wasn't there at least one publication by Whitmarsh and Jukes? Whatever happened to poor Mr Jukes? He must be, at the very least, annoyed at being overshadowed by his more memorable contemporary.

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    1. Yes, I remember a Whitmarsh and Jukes. Maybe Whitmarsh, as lead writer, did most of the work!

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  20. Whitmarsh certainly should not be used on its own...but who said it should? I'm fluent in French myself (having lived and worked there for years), and when it came to teaching my son, I started with an oral approach, building in grammar of course. I started teaching him when he was around 9 1/2, doing 20 minute sessions a few times a week. When it came to month 6 to month 24 of teaching at this rhythm, I found the exercises in Whitmarsh not only excellent but unrivaled - that is say, I did not find the equivalent in any other teaching aid (correct me if I am wrong). The style and subject matter is of course rather old-fashioned, but nothing prevents a teacher from modernizing sections and bringing them up to date. The grammar taught is on the basic side for the needs of a French speaker, but way in advance of what a current O level student knows. So all in all, I do recommend the selective use of Whitmarsh. I would also add that it permits fairly rapid progress in a structured manner, which my son actually enjoyed. I followed up the Whitmarsh with topic-by-topic vocabulary (traveling, health, daily life, school, the environment etc), some rapid oral practice of grammar to lock in the Whitmarsh grammar, and then moved on eventually to more grammar (this time nailing down conjugation and spelling on all common words), some topic-based composition (short essays), reading passages from easy newspapers, and watching TV5 Monde ( I do really recommend the travel shows - the French is fairly easy to understand, much more so than news programs for example). Occasionally we take a break to talk in French and also watch French Youtube videos . I would say he is above IGCSE level (particularly in his listening and reading skills) and at about the same level in writing and speaking.

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    1. Thank you for commenting. I hope your son still enjoys his French.

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  21. I am trying to find out more about WFH Whitmarsh having been taught from his books at a higher level ( Have taught in France and lived there for prolonged periods) and now use them as a tutor as nothing else is as well structured - any success I have is due to that structure. This blog has advanced my knowledge of the man as a teacher and a location taught but I am stunned that such an influential figure is not better recognised, All info gratefully received. dadmjsdm@aol.com

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  22. I understand the books need to be understood in their context, yet still, I'm worried by sentences like this: "Et la jeune fills, quel âge a-t-elle? Eh bien, entre nous, je pense qu'elle a dix-sept ans. C'est une jolie fille." What the hell is going on here?

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