The Paderborn method for language teaching, also known as the Paderborn method or Paderborn model is a method for teaching foreign languages, originally conceived for children's education. It consists in first teaching a simple language (Esperanto), then two years later teaching a second language. Many studies confirmed that learning a complete and easy propaedeutical language helps in later learning a more difficult one with no lost time, indeed with gain of it.
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The effectiveness of this method was empirically noticed in different studies of the last century. Prof. Helmar Frank, of the University of Paderborn's Institute of Pedagogic Cybernetics, scientifically proved the method's efficacy; his study gave the name to this method.
History of the method
Many adults who learnt Esperanto had noticed that they could better understand the grammar of their own mother tongue and foreign languages — thanks to having come to know this simple, planned language with its transparent grammar — and started to think that such a language could have propaedeutical value in language teaching.
Other experiments
This consideration led to many independent experiments being done in Hungary, Great Britain and other countries. Some of the most significant were:
Experiment in University of Paderborn
Under the supervision of Helmar Frank, a professor at the Institute of Cybernetics of Paderborn, two groups of pupils (A and B), both with German as mother tongue, were created in a primary school. The aim was to prove the propaedeutical value of Esperanto for learning English (and in general, any other foreign language).
Group A started to learn English from the third year of study, while group B in the same year started to learn Esperanto (160 hours); group B also started to learn English after two years (i.e., in the fifth year of study). Although group B studied English two years less than group A did, by the seventh year the two groups reached the same level in English, while in the eighth year of school the English level of group B was more advanced than that of group A.
The following table summarizes the Paderborn experiment:
The study demonstrated not only that group B gained linguistic skills with English, but also that group members could use two languages instead of only one. Because all the pupils had a Germanic language (German) as their mother tongue, the help they got from Esperanto was not a result of its greater similarity to English than to German. In addition to cultural gains, the saving of time and resources resulted in an educational saving as well.
Hypotheses
There could be many reasons why this method works, notice also that in the following only Esperanto is mentioned, because this method uses it, but it is likely that another very easy planned language with similar features could be employed instead.
- Esperanto is extremely regular and transparent. I. e. all adjectives finish by -a and all nouns finish by -o. So the difference between those two parts of speech are passively learned by the student; when he will learn another language, it will be easier to explain to him what is an adjective and what is a noun. In addition, Esperanto is an agglutinative language, and this involves the student in active use of the lexicon.
- Teaching this language, that is the whole grammar of a language in a short time, one give the possibility to students to make a comparison between their mother tongue and Esperanto. This comparison can be used consciously or unconsciously when learning a more complex language. This can be compared to observing a model engine for students who need to learn how a complex engine works (and in addition, Esperanto is a completely working language, not just a simplified language model).
- The grammar is minimal, so that children can start to use it actively (speaking and writing) pretty soon, and this allows them to keep their initial enthusiasm that is usually lost after the first impact with a foreign language that needs to be studied for many years before being able to express mere basic sentences. This would give self-confidence, and when a new language study is started, it is seen as something easily achievable as it was for Esperanto.
- On the other side, a failure in learning a foreign language or the difficulties experienced during the first impact with it (as any other subject) can cause a small shock that reduces the self-confidence on the student's language skills. It is possible to create simple sentences since the very first lessons of Esperanto, avoiding this shock.
- The sooner one can use the language, the sooner the language can be used in meeting foreign people and this stimulates the interest of the student in other cultures and of course languages.
Other hypotheses are discussed by Claude Piron in some of his articles.